Unable to install kubectl

[heydonovan]

Bug description

Just installed Podman & Podman Desktop:

• Podman (v5.4.0)
• Podman Desktop (v1.17.1)
• macOS (v15.3.1 24D70)

If I navigate to "Extensions" and then "kubectl CLI extension", and click the cog wheel icon, and then "Next", it throws the "Unable to install kubectl binary: Command execution failed with exit code 1: Command execution failed with exit code 1" error. No additional details to be found anywhere.

Operating system

macOS Sequoia 15.3.1 (Arm)

Installation Method

Installer from website/GitHub releases

Version

next (development version)

Steps to reproduce

No response

Relevant log output

Additional context

No response

[benoitf]

hello @heydonovan thanks for the report

if you click on the light bulb in the status bar, do you see logs ?

Also if you go to settings/cli tools and the kubectl can you try from there/ see something ?

[heydonovan]

I'm able to see additional logs, but nothing helpful in regards to kubectl. No luck through settings/cli either.

[danivilla9]

I've been trying to reproduce this issue on a mac machine without much success. We considered that maybe an API rate limit could be the culprit, but the error message that appears in that case is different than the one shown in the issue. Maybe an outage on the server? I'm unsure what else could cause this.

[odockal]

Might it be that user does not have admin right? so he cannot even initiate the admin creds on cli installation? I think we could confirm this..

@heydonovan Can you try to open cli and remove kubectl from /usr/local/bin/kubectl and also from ~/.local/share/containers/podman-desktop/extensions-storage/podman-desktop.kubectl or something similar. Then restart Podman desktop, go to Settings -> Kubectl -> Setup and try to install it via this workflow? You can create a recording, that would e helpful. Thx

[2lovecode]

Might it be that user does not have admin right? so he cannot even initiate the admin creds on cli installation? I think we could confirm this..

@heydonovan Can you try to open cli and remove kubectl from /usr/local/bin/kubectl and also from ~/.local/share/containers/podman-desktop/extensions-storage/podman-desktop.kubectl or something similar. Then restart Podman desktop, go to Settings -> Kubectl -> Setup and try to install it via this workflow? You can create a recording, that would e helpful. Thx

The same problem for me. After I deleted /usr/local/bin/kubectl , it ran normally. the root cause of this is that docker kube was installed before.

[InSuperposition]

I ran into a similar issue, I had deleted Docker Desktop manually and had quite a few dangling symlinks

> symlinks -v /usr/local/bin/ | grep dangling
dangling: /usr/local/bin/docker -> /Applications/Docker.app/Contents/Resources/bin/docker
dangling: /usr/local/bin/kubectl.docker -> /Applications/Docker.app/Contents/Resources/bin/kubectl
dangling: /usr/local/bin/docker-credential-osxkeychain -> /Applications/Docker.app/Contents/Resources/bin/docker-credential-osxkeychain
dangling: /usr/local/bin/compose-bridge -> /Applications/Docker.app/Contents/Resources/bin/compose-bridge
dangling: /usr/local/bin/docker-credential-desktop -> /Applications/Docker.app/Contents/Resources/bin/docker-credential-desktop
dangling: /usr/local/bin/hub-tool -> /Applications/Docker.app/Contents/Resources/bin/hub-tool
dangling: /usr/local/bin/docker-compose -> /Applications/Docker.app/Contents/Resources/cli-plugins/docker-compose
dangling: /usr/local/bin/kubectl -> /Applications/Docker.app/Contents/Resources/bin/kubectl

deleting the symlinks allowed me to install kubectl within Podman Desktop

symlinks -d /usr/local/bin/