kubernetes/kops · error

unknown api-loadbalancer-type: %q

Error message

unknown api-loadbalancer-type: %q

What it means

Returned by setupAPI in `kops create cluster` when the --api-loadbalancer-type flag has a value the switch statement does not recognize. Only empty, "public", and "internal" are accepted; anything else aborts cluster spec creation before any infrastructure is provisioned.

Source

Thrown at upup/pkg/fi/cloudup/new_cluster.go:1572

				cluster.Spec.API.DNS = &api.DNSAccessSpec{}
			}

		case api.TopologyPrivate:
			cluster.Spec.API.LoadBalancer = &api.LoadBalancerAccessSpec{}

		default:
			return fmt.Errorf("unknown topology type: %q", opt.Topology)
		}
	}

	if cluster.Spec.API.LoadBalancer != nil && cluster.Spec.API.LoadBalancer.Type == "" {
		switch opt.APILoadBalancerType {
		case "", "public":
			cluster.Spec.API.LoadBalancer.Type = api.LoadBalancerTypePublic
		case "internal":
			cluster.Spec.API.LoadBalancer.Type = api.LoadBalancerTypeInternal
		default:
			return fmt.Errorf("unknown api-loadbalancer-type: %q", opt.APILoadBalancerType)
		}
	}

	if cluster.Spec.API.LoadBalancer != nil && opt.APISSLCertificate != "" {
		cluster.Spec.API.LoadBalancer.SSLCertificate = opt.APISSLCertificate
	}

	if cluster.Spec.API.LoadBalancer != nil && cluster.Spec.API.LoadBalancer.Class == "" && cluster.GetCloudProvider() == api.CloudProviderAWS {
		cluster.Spec.API.LoadBalancer.Class = api.LoadBalancerClassNetwork
	}

	return nil
}

func initializeOpenstack(opt *NewClusterOptions, cluster *api.Cluster) {
	if opt.APILoadBalancerType != "" {
		cluster.Spec.API.LoadBalancer = &api.LoadBalancerAccessSpec{}
		provider := "haproxy"

View on GitHub (pinned to 4c8573c808)

Solutions

1. Set --api-loadbalancer-type to exactly "public" or "internal" (or omit it for the default)
2. Check `kops create cluster --help` for accepted values
3. Correct the value in any scripts/addons invoking kops

Example fix

// before
kops create cluster ... --api-loadbalancer-type=nlb
// after
kops create cluster ... --api-loadbalancer-type=public

valid := map[string]bool{"": true, "public": true, "internal": true}
if !valid[opt.APILoadBalancerType] {
    return fmt.Errorf("--api-loadbalancer-type must be public or internal, got %q", opt.APILoadBalancerType)
}

When it happens

Trigger: Running `kops create cluster --api-loadbalancer-type=<value>` with a misspelled or unsupported value, e.g. "Public", "private", "nlb", or "external".

Common situations: Typo or wrong casing of the flag value; copying examples from other tools (e.g. "nlb"/"alb" are AWS LB types, not kops values); older docs using deprecated synonyms.

Understand the failure class

Background: "unknown output mode", "invalid value for flag", "expects true/false": fixing invalid flag value errors in CLI tools — this error's family across 24 libraries.

Related errors

• invalid value %q for --instance-manager
• Error too many '=' (%d) in %s
• at least one channel URL is required
• error populating configuration: %v
• spec.PublicKey is required

AI-assisted analysis of kubernetes/kops@4c8573c808 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/f99636ceb13f457e. Report an issue: GitHub.