x509certificate - Kubernetes: expired certificate

Question

Our Kubernetes 1.6 cluster had certificates generated when the cluster was built on April 13th, 2017.

On December 13th, 2017, our cluster was upgraded to version 1.8, and new certificates were generated [apparently, an incomplete set of certificates].

On April 13th, 2018, we started seeing this message within our Kubernetes dashboard for api-server:

[authentication.go:64] Unable to authenticate the request due to an error: [x509: certificate has expired or is not yet valid, x509: certificate has expired or is not yet valid]

Tried pointing client-certificate & client-key within /etc/kubernetes/kubelet.conf at the certificates generated on Dec 13th [apiserver-kubelet-client.crt and apiserver-kubelet-client.crt], but continue to see the above error.

Tried pointing client-certificate & client-key within /etc/kubernetes/kubelet.conf at different certificates generated on Dec 13th [apiserver.crt and apiserver.crt] (I honestly don't understand the difference between these 2 sets of certs/keys), but continue to see the above error.

Tried pointing client-certificate & client-key within /etc/kubernetes/kubelet.conf at non-existent files, and none of the kube* services would start, with /var/log/syslog complaining about this:

Apr 17 17:50:08 kuber01 kubelet[2422]: W0417 17:50:08.181326 2422 server.go:381] invalid kubeconfig: invalid configuration: [unable to read client-cert /tmp/this/cert/does/not/exist.crt for system:node:node01 due to open /tmp/this/cert/does/not/exist.crt: no such file or directory, unable to read client-key /tmp/this/key/does/not/exist.key for system:node:node01 due to open /tmp/this/key/does/not/exist.key: no such file or directory]

Any advice on how to overcome this error, or even troubleshoot it at a more granular level? Was considering regenerating certificates for api-server (kubeadm alpha phase certs apiserver), based on instructions within https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/kubeadm-alpha/#cmd-phase-certs ... but not sure if I'd be doing more damage.

Relatively new to Kubernetes, and the gentleman who set this up is not available for consult ... any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

I think you need re-generate the apiserver certificate /etc/kubernetes/pki/apiserver.crt you can view current expire date like this.

openssl x509 -in /etc/kubernetes/pki/apiserver.crt -noout -text |grep ' Not '
            Not Before: Dec 20 14:32:00 2017 GMT
            Not After : Dec 20 14:32:00 2018 GMT

Here is the steps I used to regenerate the certificates on v1.11.5 cluster. compiled steps from here https://github.com/kubernetes/kubeadm/issues/581

---

to check all certificate expire date:

find /etc/kubernetes/pki/ -type f -name "*.crt" -print|egrep -v 'ca.crt$'|xargs -L 1 -t  -i bash -c 'openssl x509  -noout -text -in {}|grep After'

Renew certificate on Master node.

*) Renew certificate

mv /etc/kubernetes/pki/apiserver.key /etc/kubernetes/pki/apiserver.key.old
mv /etc/kubernetes/pki/apiserver.crt /etc/kubernetes/pki/apiserver.crt.old
mv /etc/kubernetes/pki/apiserver-kubelet-client.crt /etc/kubernetes/pki/apiserver-kubelet-client.crt.old
mv /etc/kubernetes/pki/apiserver-kubelet-client.key /etc/kubernetes/pki/apiserver-kubelet-client.key.old
mv /etc/kubernetes/pki/front-proxy-client.crt /etc/kubernetes/pki/front-proxy-client.crt.old
mv /etc/kubernetes/pki/front-proxy-client.key /etc/kubernetes/pki/front-proxy-client.key.old


kubeadm alpha phase certs apiserver  --config /root/kubeadm-kubetest.yaml
kubeadm alpha phase certs apiserver-kubelet-client
kubeadm alpha phase certs front-proxy-client
 
mv /etc/kubernetes/pki/apiserver-etcd-client.crt /etc/kubernetes/pki/apiserver-etcd-client.crt.old
mv /etc/kubernetes/pki/apiserver-etcd-client.key /etc/kubernetes/pki/apiserver-etcd-client.key.old
kubeadm alpha phase certs  apiserver-etcd-client


mv /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/server.crt /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/server.crt.old
mv /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/server.key /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/server.key.old
kubeadm alpha phase certs  etcd-server --config /root/kubeadm-kubetest.yaml

mv /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/healthcheck-client.crt /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/healthcheck-client.crt.old
mv /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/healthcheck-client.key /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/healthcheck-client.key.old
kubeadm alpha phase certs  etcd-healthcheck-client --config /root/kubeadm-kubetest.yaml


mv /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/peer.crt /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/peer.crt.old
mv /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/peer.key /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/peer.key.old
kubeadm alpha phase certs  etcd-peer --config /root/kubeadm-kubetest.yaml

*)  Backup old configuration files
mv /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf.old
mv /etc/kubernetes/kubelet.conf /etc/kubernetes/kubelet.conf.old
mv /etc/kubernetes/controller-manager.conf /etc/kubernetes/controller-manager.conf.old
mv /etc/kubernetes/scheduler.conf /etc/kubernetes/scheduler.conf.old

kubeadm alpha phase kubeconfig all  --config /root/kubeadm-kubetest.yaml

mv $HOME/.kube/config .$HOMEkube/config.old
cp -i /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf $HOME/.kube/config
chown $(id -u):$(id -g) $HOME/.kube/config
chmod 777 $HOME/.kube/config
export KUBECONFIG=.kube/config

Reboot the node and check the logs for etcd, kubeapi and kubelet.

Note: Remember to update your CI/CD job kubeconfig file. If you’re using helm command test that also.