'Helm 3 chart install error: error validating data: apiVersion not set
I have a simple helm chart that will deploy an application to my local copy of kubernetes via docker desktop. If I use kubectl to deploy the yaml one file at a time things work correctly. However, when I try to create a helm chart for easier deployments I get the following error.
helm install demo WebApi
Error: unable to build kubernetes objects from release manifest: error validating "": error validating data: apiVersion not set
The error seems to be saying that I am missing an apiVersion map in one or more of my YAML files. However, all of my files have what seems to be the correct apiVersions.
Folder Structure
charts
└── WebApi
├── Chart.yaml
└── templates
├── deployment.yaml
├── ingress.yaml
└── services.yaml
Chart.yaml
apiVersion: v2
version: 0.1.0
name: WebApi
appVersion: "1.0"
description: A Helm Chart for WebApi
type: application
deployment.yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: demo-api
labels:
app: demo
tier: demo-api
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
app: demo
replicas: 3
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: demo
spec:
containers:
- name: demo
image: demo/image
imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
ports:
- containerPort: 80
protocol: TCP
resources:
limits:
memory: "128Mi" #128 MB
cpu: "200m" #200 millicpu (.2 cpu or 20% of the cpu)
livenessProbe:
httpGet:
path: /swagger/index.html
port: 80
initialDelaySeconds: 15
timeoutSeconds: 2
periodSeconds: 5
failureThreshold: 1
readinessProbe:
httpGet:
path: /swagger/index.html
port: 80
ingress.yaml
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: demo
spec:
rules:
- host: demo.com
http:
paths:
- backend:
serviceName: demo
servicePort: 80
service.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: demo
labels:
app: demo
spec:
type: ClusterIP
selector:
app: demo
ports:
- name: http
port: 80
targetPort: 80
As you can see all of my YAML files have the required apiVersion map however the error still says they are missing. What corrections do I need to make in order for this to work as intended?
Solution 1:[1]
I had a similar problem with the same error message, but not exactly the same problem. The problem for me seems to have been a comment at the start of one of the helm templates. It seems helm did not handle this case well. When i moved the comment down a bit it worked.
Solution 2:[2]
I run helm install anyname1 . --dry-run --debug and got incomprehensible error messages.
then I run helm template -f values.yaml . > deployChart.yaml
and I saw some strange characters in the generated file.
My error: I created an additional file 'cronJob.yaml' inside templates using VS (visual studio) and added my content... I presume helm is not compatible -somehow- with the OS-windows encoding... anyways I hope this helps.
My solution: I copied an existing file, then renamed it and then I pasted my content.
Solution 3:[3]
I had same error message. However my templates were generating broken output.
I fixed this by running first viewing helm template . This generated the output for review. The problem was ---apiVersion: v2 was at the top of the generated chart. The triple hyphens --- are not intended.
To fix, changing {{- end -}} to {{ end }} at the bottom of my generated charts files. This allows for line breaks on multi-chart generated templates.
Solution 4:[4]
In my case, I was adding .json file inside template directory.
I ran helm template -f values.yaml . > deployChart.yaml and found that json file content present in deployChart.yaml.
Moving .json file outside of template directory resolve the issue.
Solution 5:[5]
I came across this error while using Azure DevSpaces (which in turn uses helm for workload deployment). It turned out some of my template files had UTF-8 BOM and helm (in DevSpaces) was not able to handle it, although locally installed helm client was able to resolve the templates fine. I removed the BOM and that resolved the issue in DevSpaces.
Solution 6:[6]
for my case deleting the readme file in the template folder solved the problem .
Solution 7:[7]
Test!
$ helm create k8s-helm
$ helm lint k8s-helm/
==> Linting k8s-helm/
[INFO] Chart.yaml: icon is recommended
1 chart(s) linted, 0 chart(s) failed
$ kubectl apply -f k8s-helm/ --dry-run=client
error validating "k8s-helm/Chart.yaml": error validating data: kind not set; if you choose to ignore these errors, turn validation off with --validate=false
error validating "k8s-helm/values.yaml": error validating data: [apiVersion not set, kind not set]; if you choose to ignore these errors, turn validation off with --validate=false
Linter did not reveal any errors, but there are problems with validation. How to be?
Helm launch!
$ helm install --debug --dry-run test-app k8s-helm/
Solution 8:[8]
I came across the same issue. I was missing a from apiVersion in one of the yml files added to templates folder. A typo but worth checking.
Solution 9:[9]
I included a library chart. Helm created Chart.lock file that caused the error.
Solution: create .helmignore file in chart's directory with:
Chart.lock
Solution 10:[10]
Please check the NOTES.txt file under charts->template path. Solution: file name is case sensitive, not suppose to give as Notes.txt, caps is a must because helm will be trying to interpret that file and it tries to generate object for kubernetes.
Sources
This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Source: Stack Overflow

