A Read Only Kubernetes Dashboard

Source

the default configuration for the dashboard does not give it permissions to see anything within the cluster. The dashboard page acknowledges this and suggests simply binding the dashboard service account to cluster-admin…YIKES:

---

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: admin-user
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: cluster-admin
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: admin-user
  namespace: kube-system

Ugh! Thats not OK. Better would be a read only user…like the ‘view’ ClusterRole:
But there’s a problem - the view ClusterRole doesn’t actually have permissions for the Cluster level objects like Nodes and Persistent Volume Claims. So we’ll have to create a new RBAC config.
First, we’ll create a new dashboard-viewonly ClusterRole:

---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
  name: dashboard-viewonly
rules:
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - configmaps
  - endpoints
  - persistentvolumeclaims
  - pods
  - replicationcontrollers
  - replicationcontrollers/scale
  - serviceaccounts
  - services
  - nodes
  - persistentvolumeclaims
  - persistentvolumes
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - bindings
  - events
  - limitranges
  - namespaces/status
  - pods/log
  - pods/status
  - replicationcontrollers/status
  - resourcequotas
  - resourcequotas/status
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - namespaces
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - apps
  resources:
  - daemonsets
  - deployments
  - deployments/scale
  - replicasets
  - replicasets/scale
  - statefulsets
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - autoscaling
  resources:
  - horizontalpodautoscalers
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - batch
  resources:
  - cronjobs
  - jobs
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - extensions
  resources:
  - daemonsets
  - deployments
  - deployments/scale
  - ingresses
  - networkpolicies
  - replicasets
  - replicasets/scale
  - replicationcontrollers/scale
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - policy
  resources:
  - poddisruptionbudgets
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - networking.k8s.io
  resources:
  - networkpolicies
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - storage.k8s.io
  resources:
  - storageclasses
  - volumeattachments
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  resources:
  - clusterrolebindings
  - clusterroles
  - roles
  - rolebindings
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch

And then bind it to the service account:

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  name: kubernetes-dashboard 

  namespace: kube-system 

---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: kubernetes-dashboard
  labels:
    k8s-app: kubernetes-dashboard
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: dashboard-viewonly
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: kubernetes-dashboard
  namespace: kube-system

Now we’ve configured a readonly dashboard we can safely share with people that dont even have K8S cluster access (many devs dont - they just push via a CI/CD pipeline). As a side note, this RBAC config does NOT grant access to Secrets, just to be a little safe.