Accessing Traefik Dashboard in K3s

Overview

K3s comes with Traefik ingress controller pre-installed in the kube-system namespace. This guide explains how to access the Traefik dashboard.

Prerequisites Check

1. Verify that the dashboard is enabled:
   • Check for -api.dashboard=true in containers.args of Traefik deployment
   • If enabled, dashboard is accessible at http://<pod_ip>:9000

Setting Up Local Domain Access

Step 1: Update Traefik Deployment

Add the following label to the deployment:

spec:
  template:
    labels:
      app: traefik-dashboard
 

Step 2: Create Service and Ingress

Create a file named traefik-dashboard.yaml:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: traefik-svc
  namespace: kube-system
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  selector:
    app: traefik-dashboard
  ports:
  - port: 80
    targetPort: 9000
---
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: traefik-igrs
  labels:
    name: traefik-igrs
  namespace: kube-system
spec:
  rules:
  - host: traefik.local
    http:
      paths:
      - pathType: Prefix
        path: "/"
        backend:
          service:
            name: traefik-svc
            port:
              number: 80
 

Step 3: Configure DNS

Add domain mapping in either:

• Local /etc/hosts file
• Your domain DNS configuration

Accessing the Dashboard

• URL format: http://<domain_name>/dashboard/
• Important: Always include the trailing slash (/) after dashboard

Troubleshooting

• If you get an error, verify that:
  1. The trailing slash is present in the URL
  2. DNS mapping is correctly configured
  3. All components are in the kube-system namespace