kube-controller-manager is not appearing on Google Kubernetes Engine

Question

Folks, I am using Google Cloud Kubernetes Engine. I want to browse through some of the logs that should be available namely kube-controller-manager logs. I am certain I have done this recently on the same setup but I can't figure it out now. So here's the thing:

1. There's no component anyhow related to kube-controller-manager in the kube-system namespace. I have tried: kubectl get pods -namespace=kube-system
2. There's no logs if I am connecting to the VM running k8s node (any of them, I tried all) in /var/log related to kube-controller-manager. Connected to all nodes (VMs) via SSH and tried to browse /var/logs/
3. There seem to be only one manifest in /etc/kubernetes/manifests and it's kube-proxy one. I was expecting to have kube-controller-manager and a few others to be in that directory.

Can someone point me to a place where I should be looking? Has this been changed recently on GKE?

Eos

Answer 1

The kube-controller-manager runs as a pod on the master and is managed by Google, therefore it is not accessible to the public. I do not believe that has been changed recently if ever.

Rheumatism

Out of curiosity, do you know of any ways that a mere mortal can access k8s controller manager logs on GKE similar to those that you can get when you have full control over cluster? – Eos

To my knowledge thus far only logs you can access is kube-api: 1. kubectl proxy --port=8080 & 2. curl localhost:8080/logs/kube-apiserver.log – Rheumatism

As for controller-manager it is already a feature request here – Rheumatism

Yep, i had same problem with fake alerts in GKE >! In Google Kubernetes Engine, the Kubernetes master components are managed and maintained by Google. The master components host the software that runs the Kubernetes control plane, including the API server, scheduler, controller manager and the etcd database where your Kubernetes configuration is persisted. doc – Oxazine