“The ClusterRoleBinding “kubernetes-dashboard” is invalid: roleRef: Invalid value” when deploying Web UI

I’m trying to deploy Kubernetes Web UI as described here: https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/access-application-cluster/web-ui-dashboard/

My system configuration is as follows:

$ uname -a
Linux debian 4.19.0-6-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.67-2+deb10u2 (2019-11-11) x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ /usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 --version
QEMU emulator version 3.1.0 (Debian 1:3.1+dfsg-8+deb10u3)
Copyright (c) 2003-2018 Fabrice Bellard and the QEMU Project developers

$ minikube version
minikube version: v1.5.2
commit: 792dbf92a1de583fcee76f8791cff12e0c9440ad-dirty

$ kubectl version
Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"16", GitVersion:"v1.16.3", GitCommit:"b3cbbae08ec52a7fc73d334838e18d17e8512749", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2019-11-13T11:23:11Z", GoVersion:"go1.12.12", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}
Server Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"16", GitVersion:"v1.16.2", GitCommit:"c97fe5036ef3df2967d086711e6c0c405941e14b", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2019-10-15T19:09:08Z", GoVersion:"go1.12.10", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}

After starting the minukube cluster minikube start I created a Service Account and ClusterRoleBinding as described here: https://github.com/kubernetes/dashboard/blob/master/docs/user/access-control/creating-sample-user.md

$ nano dashboard-adminuser.yaml

apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  name: admin-user
  namespace: kubernetes-dashboard

$ kubectl apply -f dashboard-adminuser.yaml
$ nano dashboard-adminuser.yaml

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: admin-user
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: cluster-admin
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: admin-user
  namespace: kubernetes-dashboard

$ kubectl apply -f dashboard-adminuser.yaml

Now I execute:

$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/dashboard/v2.0.0-beta6/aio/deploy/recommended.yaml

or

$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/dashboard/master/aio/deploy/recommended.yaml

and get the following output:

namespace/kubernetes-dashboard configured
serviceaccount/kubernetes-dashboard configured
service/kubernetes-dashboard configured
secret/kubernetes-dashboard-certs configured
secret/kubernetes-dashboard-csrf configured
secret/kubernetes-dashboard-key-holder configured
configmap/kubernetes-dashboard-settings configured
role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/kubernetes-dashboard configured
clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/kubernetes-dashboard configured
rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/kubernetes-dashboard configured
deployment.apps/kubernetes-dashboard configured
service/dashboard-metrics-scraper configured
deployment.apps/dashboard-metrics-scraper configured
The ClusterRoleBinding "kubernetes-dashboard" is invalid: roleRef: Invalid value: rbac.RoleRef{APIGroup:"rbac.authorization.k8s.io", Kind:"ClusterRole", Name:"kubernetes-dashboard"}: cannot change roleRef

What happened and how to fix it?

Answer

issue is you missed this note :

NOTE: apiVersion of ClusterRoleBinding resource may differ between Kubernetes versions.

Prior to Kubernetes v1.8 the apiVersion was rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1beta1.

This should solve this problem.

Edit1:

this issue talks about same problem. specifically this comment. talks about

Role bindings are immutable

Cause here is

dashboard-adminuser.yaml sets roleRef.

and

yaml file you are applying later has roleRef in same namespace.

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: RoleBinding
metadata:
  labels:
    k8s-app: kubernetes-dashboard
  name: kubernetes-dashboard
  namespace: kubernetes-dashboard
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: Role
  name: kubernetes-dashboard
subjects:
  - kind: ServiceAccount
    name: kubernetes-dashboard
    namespace: kubernetes-dashboard