Ran into same issue , the default error log looks of not much help

$ helm install stable/mysql --debug
[debug] Created tunnel using local port: '36127'

[debug] SERVER: "127.0.0.1:36127"

[debug] Original chart version: ""
[debug] Fetched stable/mysql to /home/ubuntu/.helm/cache/archive/mysql-1.6.2.tgz

[debug] CHART PATH: /home/ubuntu/.helm/cache/archive/mysql-1.6.2.tgz

Error: no available release name found

playing around with helm --help it suggest that if we do not provide --name it is auto generated (Note I was using helm 2.16.1)

-n, --name string              The release name. If unspecified, it will autogenerate one for you

But i decided to --name anyway and then i finally get a more meaning full error give me the root cause to failure

$ helm install stable/mysql --name=happy-panda --debug
[debug] Created tunnel using local port: '39848'

[debug] SERVER: "127.0.0.1:39848"

[debug] Original chart version: ""
[debug] Fetched stable/mysql to /home/ubuntu/.helm/cache/archive/mysql-1.6.2.tgz

[debug] CHART PATH: /home/ubuntu/.helm/cache/archive/mysql-1.6.2.tgz

Error: release happy-panda failed: namespaces "default" is forbidden: User "system:serviceaccount:kube-system:default" cannot get resource "namespaces" in API group "" in the namespace "default"

Then i used the steps shared by @abinet above to fix the issue by using below three commands.

kubectl create serviceaccount --namespace kube-system tiller

kubectl create clusterrolebinding tiller-cluster-rule --clusterrole=cluster-admin --serviceaccount=kube-system:tiller

kubectl patch deploy --namespace kube-system tiller-deploy -p '{"spec":{"template":{"spec":{"serviceAccount":"tiller"}}}}'

Run $ helm repo update before install command.

If rbac and namespace has not been created/enabled. Run this command if you have defined a version in your Chart.yaml
helm install --name "mysql" stable/mysql --version Mysql.1.3

If rbac and namespace has been enabled, first list the namespaces using
kubectl get namespaces --all-namespaces=true
This shall list if your namespace is created. Then run this command
helm install -n namespace_name --name mysql stable/mysql --version Mysql1.3

Depending on your Kubernetes version/configuration you probably have to configure rbac for tiller:

$ kubectl create serviceaccount --namespace kube-system tiller $ kubectl create clusterrolebinding tiller-cluster-rule --clusterrole=cluster-admin --serviceaccount=kube-system:tiller $ helm init --service-account tiller

as per https://github.com/helm/helm/issues/3055