If you want to see dashboard in action before going through a major investment setting up security, here is the way I got things going quickly. I did this with v2.0.0-rc7:

• Install with the alternative method, which just sets things up a little less securely to start with.
• The ClusterRoleRef that installs with this method needs to be replaced with this one. (You need to delete the existing one first with kubectl delete ..., then add it.)
• The second paragraph here documents the "skip method". Update your deployment to get that set up.

Now you can go to the web page and click "skip". Voila! All your keys are exposed with no password. Pray nobody gets ahold of that link!

But wait, you say it's still too hard to get in? If you have a load balancer installed, here's two additional steps:

• kubectl -n kubernetes-dashboard edit service kubernetes-dashboard will allow you to change the service spec to type: LoadBalancer.
• If your load balancer is set up properly, kubectl -n kubernetes-dashboard describe service kubernetes-dashboard will now show you the IP address that it has kindly put your insecure dashboard on.

Now you have an insecure port with no password to easily browse your crown jewels. Enjoy!

Only authentication options specified by --authentication-mode flag is supported in kubeconfig file.

You can auth with token (any token in kube-system namespace):

$ kubectl get secrets -n kube-system
$ kubectl get secret $SECRET_NAME -n=kube-system -o json | jq -r '.data["token"]' | base64 -d > user_token.txt

and auth with the token (see user_token.txt file).

Two things are going on here

• the Kubernetes Dashboard Application needs an authentication token
• and this authentication token must be linked to an account with sufficient privileges.

The usual way to deploy the Dashboard Application is just

• to kubectl apply a YAML file pulled from the configuration recommended at the Github project(for the dashboard): /src/deploy/recommended/kubernetes-dashboard.yaml ⟹ master•v1.10.1
• then to run kubectl proxy and access the dashbord through the locally mapped Port 8001.

However this default configuration is generic and minimal. It just maps a role binding with minimal privileges. And, especially on DigitalOcean, the kubeconfig file provided when provisioning the cluster lacks the actual token, which is necessary to log into the dashboard.

Thus, to fix these shortcomings, we need to ensure there is an account, which has a RoleBinding to the cluster-admin ClusterRole in the Namespace kube-system. The above mentioned default setup just provides a binding to kubernetes-dashboard-minimal. We can fix that by deplyoing explicitly

apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  name: admin-user
  namespace: kube-system
---
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: kube-system

And then we also need to get the token for this ServiceAccount...

• kubectl get serviceaccount -n kube-system will list you all service accounts. Check that the one you want/created is present
• kubectl get secrets -n kube-system should list a secret for this account
• and with kubectl describe secret -n kube-system admin-user-token-XXXXXX you'd get the information about the token.

The other answers to this question provide ample hints, how this access could be scripted in a convenient way (like e.g. using awk, using grep, using kubectl get with -o=json and piping to jq, or using -o=jsonpath)

You can then either:

• store this token into a text file and upload this
• edit your kubeconfig file and paste in the token to the admin user provided there

If you want to get past dashboard's authentification prompt and then be able to do admin-things on the dashboard, I recommmend this: https://github.com/kubernetes/dashboard/wiki/Creating-sample-user.

1 - Assuming one has followed the directions to setup the dashboard here. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/eks/latest/userguide/dashboard-tutorial.html

2 - And your normal kubectl access works from the command line (i.e. kubectl get services).

3 - And you are able to login manually to the Dashboard with the token (with kubectl -n kube-system describe secret ...), by using copy/paste.

4 - But now you want to use the "Kubeconfig" (instead of "Token") option to login to the Dashboard, for simplicity.

Solution:

• Find your user in the config file, that is used to access the cluster.
• The user is "kubernetes-admin" in this original posted question.
• Add a line with the "token:".
• Dont forget this is YAML, so use spaces, not tabs.

Here is what it should look like...

apiVersion: v1
clusters:
- cluster:
    certificate-authority-data: REDACTED
    server: https://kubemaster:6443
  name: kubernetes
contexts:
- context:
    cluster: kubernetes
    user: kubernetes-admin
  name: kubernetes-admin@kubernetes
current-context: kubernetes-admin@kubernetes
kind: Config
preferences: {}
users:
- name: kubernetes-admin
  user:
    client-certificate-data: REDACTED
    client-key-data: REDACTED
    token: PUT_YOUR_TOKEN_HERE_THAT_YOU_USED_TO_MANUALLY_LOGIN