Can the K3s installed Traefik be updated independently through helm?

Question

If k3s installs traefik and flags it as a helm chart, can it be updated through helm? When I run the commands below,

helm repo add traefik https://traefik.github.io/charts
helm repo update
helm upgrade traefik traefik/traefik -n kube-system

I get the following

Error: UPGRADE FAILED: resource mapping not found for name: "traefik-dashboard" namespace: "kube-system" from "": no matches for kind "IngressRoute" in version "traefik.io/v1alpha1" ensure CRDs are installed first

Answer 1

Install new CRDs and RBAC for Kube v1.16+

Yes, but because of the CRDs in Helm are managed by Rancher and not Traefik, and they were changed upstream,

The apiextensions.k8s.io/v1beta1 CustomResourceDefinition is deprecated in Kubernetes v1.16+ and will be removed in v1.22+. For Kubernetes v1.16+, please use the Traefik apiextensions.k8s.io/v1 CRDs instead.

You must install the new CRDs and RBAC's.

# Install Traefik Resource Definitions:
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/traefik/traefik/v2.10/docs/content/reference/dynamic-configuration/kubernetes-crd-definition-v1.yml

# Install RBAC for Traefik:
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/traefik/traefik/v2.10/docs/content/reference/dynamic-configuration/kubernetes-crd-rbac.yml

Upgrade Traefik

Then you can install the Traefik repos and upgrade Traefik,

helm repo add traefik https://traefik.github.io/charts
helm repo update
helm upgrade traefik traefik/traefik -n kube-system

Now you should see that the upgrade was complete,

❯ helm history traefik -n kube-system
REVISION    UPDATED                     STATUS      CHART                   APP VERSION DESCRIPTION     
1           Sun Aug 13 18:45:21 2023    superseded  traefik-21.2.1+up21.2.0 v2.9.10     Install complete
2           Sun Aug 13 13:48:07 2023    deployed    traefik-24.0.0          v2.10.4     Upgrade complete

---

Remove deprecated CRDs

Now you can optionally remove the traefik-crd that Rancher provides, but because the crd's are versioned, you can just keep it too.

helm delete -n kube-system traefik-crd

Answer 2

remove old

We can uninstall traefik using helm

helm uninstall traefik -n kube-system

add new

then install the latest version

helm repo add traefik https://traefik.github.io/charts

helm repo update

helm install traefik traefik/traefik -n kube-system

If updating needed, we can do it with helm values

### save the values
helm show values traefik/traefik > value.yaml

### update and save
vim value.yaml

### apply 
helm upgrade traefik  traefik/traefik -f value.yaml -n kube-system

check

helm list -n kube-system
NAME        NAMESPACE   REVISION    UPDATED                                     STATUS      CHART                       APP VERSION
traefik     kube-system 3           2024-08-08 09:17:45.673772087 +0330 +0330   deployed    traefik-30.0.2              v3.1.0     
traefik-crd kube-system 1           2024-08-07 16:32:37.804433746 +0000 UTC     deployed    traefik-crd-25.0.3+up25.0.0 v2.10.5 

and

helm history  traefik -n kube-system 
REVISION    UPDATED                     STATUS      CHART           APP VERSION DESCRIPTION     
1           Wed Aug  7 23:04:25 2024    superseded  traefik-30.0.2  v3.1.0      Install complete
2           Thu Aug  8 09:15:08 2024    superseded  traefik-30.0.2  v3.1.0      Upgrade complete
3           Thu Aug  8 09:17:45 2024    deployed    traefik-30.0.2  v3.1.0      Upgrade complete

an issue you man face helm upgrade traefik dual-stack ipv6 is removed for traefik service #10683