kubernetes/kops · error

clusterName is required

Error message

clusterName is required

What it means

The deprecated ClusterVFS.configBase helper builds the VFS path to a cluster's config directory by joining the cluster name onto the store base path. An empty cluster name would produce an invalid base path, so the function rejects it upfront.

Source

Thrown at pkg/client/simple/vfsclientset/cluster.go:67

func (c *ClusterVFS) Get(ctx context.Context, name string, options metav1.GetOptions) (*api.Cluster, error) {
	if options.ResourceVersion != "" {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("ResourceVersion not supported in ClusterVFS::Get")
	}
	o, err := c.find(ctx, name)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	if o == nil {
		return nil, errors.NewNotFound(schema.GroupResource{Group: api.GroupName, Resource: "Cluster"}, name)
	}
	return o, nil
}

// Deprecated, but we need this for now..
func (c *ClusterVFS) configBase(clusterName string) (vfs.Path, error) {
	if clusterName == "" {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("clusterName is required")
	}
	configPath := c.basePath.Join(clusterName)
	return configPath, nil
}

func (c *ClusterVFS) List(ctx context.Context, options metav1.ListOptions) (*api.ClusterList, error) {
	names, err := c.listNames(ctx)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}

	var items []api.Cluster

	for _, clusterName := range names {
		cluster, err := c.find(ctx, clusterName)
		if err != nil {
			klog.Warningf("cluster %q found in state store listing, but cannot be loaded: %v", clusterName, err)
			continue

View on GitHub (pinned to 4c8573c808)

Solutions

1. Ensure a non-empty cluster name is passed to Get/find/configBase
2. Validate the cluster name (e.g. from flags or config) before calling the store
3. If the name is derived from context or a Cluster object, check ObjectMeta.Name is populated

Example fix

// before
base, err := c.configBase(clusterName) // clusterName may be ""
// after
if clusterName == "" {
	return nil, fmt.Errorf("cluster name must be provided")
}
base, err := c.configBase(clusterName)

func validateClusterName(name string) error {
	if strings.TrimSpace(name) == "" {
		return fmt.Errorf("cluster name must be provided")
	}
	return nil
}

base, err := c.configBase(clusterName)
if err != nil {
	return fmt.Errorf("cannot resolve config base for %q: %w", clusterName, err)
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling ClusterVFS.configBase("") directly, or indirectly via find() when Get/List are invoked with an empty cluster name.

Common situations: Variables holding the cluster name that are empty due to failed flag parsing, unset config values, or uninitialized structs passed to Get/find.

Understand the failure class

Background: "missing required argument" and "the following required arguments were not provided": what required-argument errors mean and how to fix them — this error's family across 20 libraries.

Related errors

• ReadOnlyError
• unexpected kind for cluster, got %T, want kops.Cluster
• method ConfigBaseFor not supported in server-side client
• ResourceVersion not supported in InstanceGroupVFS::Get
• error loading secret %q: %w

AI-assisted analysis of kubernetes/kops@4c8573c808 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/6cd820c06cf32764. Report an issue: GitHub.