Kubernetes invalid API version

While trying to run some kubectl commands I faced this problem:

To further debug and diagnose cluster problems, use 'kubectl cluster-info dump'.
error: exec plugin: invalid apiVersion "client.authentication.k8s.io/v1alpha1"

Check version

So, in order to reach to a solution let’s start checking:

what’s the version I am running

╰─○ kubectl version --client --output=yaml
clientVersion:
  buildDate: "2022-05-03T13:36:49Z"
  compiler: gc
  gitCommit: 4ce5a8954017644c5420bae81d72b09b735c21f0
  gitTreeState: clean
  gitVersion: v1.24.0
  goVersion: go1.18.1
  major: "1"
  minor: "24"
  platform: darwin/amd64
kustomizeVersion: v4.5.4

As hinted by the error, lets see what cluster-info give us

**╰─○ kubectl cluster-info
Kubernetes control plane is running at https://DDC6A7373DC86D737EE035F49DBDF939.gr7.us-east-1.eks.amazonaws.com
CoreDNS is running at https://DDC6A7373DC86D737EE035F49DBDF939.gr7.us-east-1.eks.amazonaws.com/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/kube-dns:dns/proxy
KubeDNSUpstream is running at https://DDC6A7373DC86D737EE035F49DBDF939.gr7.us-east-1.eks.amazonaws.com/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/kube-dns-upstream:dns/proxy**

Check current kube config

The file used to configure access to a cluster is sometimes called a kubeconfig file. This is a generic way of referring to configuration files. It does not mean that there is a file named kubeconfig.

It’s possible to have multiple kube config files specifying the clusters, context, namespaces, and users, and switch between them to use the desired configuration.

kubectl config —kubeconfig=<myfile>

The default kube config lives in config file under $KUBECONFIG variable or $HOME/.kube directory.

To check what is the k8s configuration being used I do

kubectl config view

In my case it includes

Untitled

Observe it says that current context is staging-sandbox. So far so good.

current-context: staging-sandbox

My execution of config get-context

─○ kubectl config get-contexts   
CURRENT   NAME              CLUSTER                                                    AUTHINFO                                                   NAMESPACE
          k8s-b-staging     arn:aws:eks:us-east-1:265645408852:cluster/k8s-b-staging   arn:aws:eks:us-east-1:265645408852:cluster/k8s-b-staging   education
          minikube          minikube                                                   minikube                                                   default
          rancher-desktop   rancher-desktop                                            rancher-desktop                                            rcifuentes
*         staging-sandbox   arn:aws:eks:us-east-1:265645408852:cluster/k8s-b-staging   arn:aws:eks:us-east-1:265645408852:cluster/k8s-b-staging   rcifuentes

Invalid apiVersion

After a little research I found out that editing the ~/.kube/config file and replacing the alpha for beta solves the issue

Before

- name: arn:aws:eks:us-east-1:265645408852:cluster/k8s-b-staging
  user:
    exec:
      apiVersion: client.authentication.k8s.io/v1alpha1

After

- name: arn:aws:eks:us-east-1:265645408852:cluster/k8s-b-staging
  user:
    exec:
        apiVersion: client.authentication.k8s.io/v1beta1