rothgar/ngrok-k8s

Using ngrok to expose k8s services

ngrok-k8s

This is a simple Docker container that can be used to launch ngrok in a Kuberntes cluster to surface either services or other pods directly.

This is strictly intended for debug/dev type scenarios.

Running in Kubernetes

kubectl run --restart=Never \
  -t -i --rm \
  ngrok --image=gcr.io/kuar-demo/ngrok \
  -- http my-service:8080

Some explanation:

• --restart=Never This says "I just want a Pod". If you don't specify this you get a Deployment. We don't need that.
• -t -i --rm These options state that I want an interactive tty. Also clean things up when I'm done.
• -- Says "everything past this are arguments for the container".
• http my-service:8080 These are arguments to the ngrok utility. This says "create an HTTP forwarding tunnel to my-service:8080"

Notes

You can password protect this tunnel easily with auth='username:password'. You can make this https only with --bind-tls=true. See the ngrok docs for more options.

NOTE Using TLS tunnels for secure services (e.g. kubernetes api) you need a pro or business plan

There is nothing Kubernetes specific (yet) in the container here. This is really a super simple container with just ngrok in it. I created a separate version just for this README.

Why not kubectl port-forward? First, port-forward doesn't support targetting Services. Second, you may want this to be available beyond your local machine.

Why not kubectl proxy? This will modify/rewrite HTTP and can get a little wacky. It also requires your browser to auth to the API server -- something that may not be easy if you aren't using password auth.