kubernetes/kops · error

--region is required (when --external)

Error message

--region is required (when --external)

What it means

When deleting a cluster with --external (cluster not managed in the kOps state store / config not available), kOps discovers resources directly in AWS, which requires a region. If options.Region is empty it returns this error before any API call.

Source

Thrown at cmd/kops/delete_cluster.go:118

	cmd.Flags().DurationVar(&options.interval, "interval", options.interval, "Time in duration to wait between deletion attempts")

	return cmd
}

func RunDeleteCluster(ctx context.Context, f *util.Factory, out io.Writer, options *DeleteClusterOptions) error {
	clusterName := options.ClusterName
	if clusterName == "" {
		return fmt.Errorf("--name is required (for safety)")
	}

	var cloud fi.Cloud
	var cluster *kopsapi.Cluster
	var err error

	if options.External {
		region := options.Region
		if region == "" {
			return fmt.Errorf("--region is required (when --external)")
		}

		tags := map[string]string{"KubernetesCluster": clusterName}
		cloud, err = awsup.NewAWSCloud(region, tags)
		if err != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("error initializing AWS client: %v", err)
		}
	} else {
		cluster, err = GetCluster(ctx, f, clusterName)
		if err != nil {
			return err
		}
	}

	wouldDeleteCloudResources := false

	if !options.Unregister {
		if cloud == nil {

View on GitHub (pinned to 4c8573c808)

Solutions

1. Pass `--region <aws-region>` together with `--external`.
2. Set the KOPS_REGION environment variable.
3. If the cluster is actually in the state store, drop --external so region is derived from the cluster spec.

Example fix

// before
kops delete cluster --external --name cluster.example.com
// after
kops delete cluster --external --name cluster.example.com --region us-east-1

if external {
    region := os.Getenv("KOPS_REGION")
    if region == "" {
        return fmt.Errorf("--external requires --region")
    }
    args = append(args, "--region", region)
}

When it happens

Trigger: Running `kops delete cluster --external` without also passing `--region` (and no KOPS_REGION env var), so the AWS cloud client cannot be constructed.

Common situations: Cleaning up a cluster whose state store was lost; deleting clusters created outside kOps where the region cannot be inferred from the cluster config.

Understand the failure class

Background: "--flag is required" and "must specify" CLI errors: how missing-required-flag validation works and how to fix it — this error's family across 20 libraries.

Related errors

• --name is required (for safety)
• --name is required
• --name is required
• at least one channel URL is required
• error populating configuration: %v

AI-assisted analysis of kubernetes/kops@4c8573c808 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/97c6ed8312d2d73f. Report an issue: GitHub.