Helm installation

Helm advertises itself as "the package manager for kubernetes" -- comparing itself with RedHat/CentOS 'yum' or 'dnf' commands and Debian/Ubuntu 'apt-get'. The comparison is valid, but the reality is that helm leaves a lot to be desired as a full package manager and needs a lot of work before it becomes as commonplace as those other tools.

While helm v2.x required the privileged 'tiller' process to be active in the kubernetes cluster to do it's dirty work, the hue and cry over this obvious security faux pax was loud enough to force a redesign for v3.x that does not require such a crutch.

Installing Helm

The redesigned helm v3 only requires a client executable to be installed on whichever system where package installations will be initiated.

Every release of Helm provides binary releases for a variety of OSes. These binary versions can be manually downloaded and installed.

1. Download your desired version
2. Unpack it (tar -zxvf helm-v2.0.0-linux-amd64.tgz)
3. Find the helm binary in the unpacked directory, and move it to its desired destination:

mv linux-amd64/helm /usr/local/bin/helm

From there, you should be able to run the client: helm help.

The only other action required is to install a repo for it to pull packages from:

helm repo add stable https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com/

Note that the repo is stored locally on the system where the command was issued, not in the cluster itself. Validate that the installation was successful by listing the available packages:

helm search repo stable

These instructions were condensed from the helm quickstart guide.