Proxy / port forward to dashboard does not work

General Discussions microk8s
1

Hi,

I installed microk8s as advertized at Install a local Kubernetes with MicroK8s | Ubuntu.

Steps:
sudo snap install microk8s --classic
microk8s enable dashboard dns registry istio

microk8s kubectl port-forward -n kube-system service/kubernetes-dashboard 10443:443

results in

error: error upgrading connection: error dialing backend: dial tcp 172.10.16.12:10250: i/o timeout
(172.10.16.12 is the IP address from my host)

Using

microk8s dashboard-proxy

gives similar results.

Any ideas how to solve this?

Details:

cat /etc/os-release:
NAME=“Ubuntu”
VERSION=“20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)”
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME=“Ubuntu 20.04 LTS”
VERSION_ID=“20.04”
HOME_URL=“https://www.ubuntu.com/”
SUPPORT_URL=“https://help.ubuntu.com/”
BUG_REPORT_URL=“Bugs : Ubuntu”
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL=“Data privacy | Ubuntu”
VERSION_CODENAME=focal
UBUNTU_CODENAME=focal

uname -a
Linux ubuntu 5.4.0-91-generic #102-Ubuntu SMP Fri Nov 5 16:31:28 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

snap list
Name Version Rev Tracking Publisher Notes
core18 20211028 2253 latest/stable canonical✓ base
microk8s v1.22.4 2695 1.22/stable canonical✓ classic
snapd 2.53.4 14295 latest/stable canonical✓ snapd

microk8s status
microk8s is running
high-availability: no
datastore master nodes: 127.0.0.1:19001
datastore standby nodes: none
addons:
enabled:
dashboard # The Kubernetes dashboard
dns # CoreDNS
ha-cluster # Configure high availability on the current node
istio # Core Istio service mesh services
metrics-server # K8s Metrics Server for API access to service metrics
registry # Private image registry exposed on localhost:32000
storage # Storage class; allocates storage from host directory
disabled:

2

Hey, I’m Alex

I’m new to k8s and I installed microk8s yesterday 2026-05-05 to try it out.

I stumbled upon the same issue than you for the dashboard and I followed these steps to investigate more and try to find the root cause of what seems to be the problem:

In your terminal try to do this:

  1. sudo microk8s inspect

    This command allows you to have a complete report of the status of the system

  2. You might find at the end of the resulting command hints to guide you to what to do next.

  3. Stop then start microk8s bash sudo microk8s stop && sudo microk8s start

These steps might not fix the issue but might help you, like it did for me investigate further.

Hopefully it helps someone.

Have a delightful day Kubers!

3

A follow up to my previous reply. I saw that today it is advised to use headlamp instead of dashboard as a web ui for kubernetes. GitHub - kubernetes-sigs/headlamp: A Kubernetes web UI that is fully-featured, user-friendly and extensible · GitHub

Just my 2cents

Hopefully it helps someone