Command-line options

Static command-line configuration options.

The following command-line options are supported:

Name Type Default Since
--acme-check-period time 24h v0.9
--acme-election-id [namespace]/configmap-name acme-leader v0.9
--acme-fail-initial-duration time 5m v0.9
--acme-fail-max-duration time 8h v0.9
--acme-secret-key-name [namespace]/secret-name acme-private-key v0.9
--acme-server [true|false] false v0.9
--acme-token-configmap-name [namespace]/configmap-name acme-validation-tokens v0.9
--acme-track-tls-annotation [true|false] false v0.9
--allow-cross-namespace [true|false] false
--annotation-prefix prefix without / ingress.kubernetes.io v0.8
--apiserver-host address of K8s API server
--backend-shards int 0 v0.11
--buckets-response-time float64 slice .0005,.001,.002,.005,.01 v0.10
--configmap namespace/configmapname
--controller-class suffix "" v0.12
--default-backend-service namespace/servicename haproxy’s 404 page
--default-ssl-certificate namespace/secretname fake, auto generated
--disable-api-warnings [true|false] false v0.12
--disable-config-keywords comma-separated list of keywords "" v0.10
--disable-external-name [true|false] false v0.10
--disable-pod-list [true|false] false v0.11
--election-id identifier ingress-controller-leader
--force-namespace-isolation [true|false] false
--health-check-path path /healthz
--healthz-port port number 10254
--ingress-class name haproxy
--kubeconfig /path/to/kubeconfig in cluster config
--master-socket socket path use embedded haproxy v0.12
--max-old-config-files num of files 0
--profiling [true|false] true
--publish-service namespace/servicename
--rate-limit-update uploads per second (float) 0.5
--reload-strategy [native|reusesocket] reusesocket
--report-node-internal-ip-address [true|false] false
--sort-backends [true|false] false
--sort-endpoints-by [endpoint|ip|name|random] endpoint v0.11
--stats-collect-processing-period time 500ms v0.10
--sync-period time 10m
--tcp-services-configmap namespace/configmapname no tcp svc
--update-status [true|false] true
--update-status-on-shutdown [true|false] true
--v log level as integer 1
--validate-config [true|false] false
--verify-hostname [true|false] true
--version [true|false] false
--wait-before-shutdown seconds as integer 0 v0.8
--wait-before-update duration 200ms v0.11
--watch-ingress-without-class [true|false] false v0.12
--watch-namespace namespace all namespaces

Acme

Configures the acme server and other static options used to authorize and sign certificates against a server which implements the acme protocol, version 2.

Supported acme command-line options:

  • --acme-check-period: interval between checks for expiring certificates. Defaults to 24h.
  • --acme-election-id: prefix of the ConfigMap name used to store the leader election data. Only the leader of a haproxy-ingress cluster should start the authorization and sign certificate process. Defaults to acme-leader.
  • --acme-fail-initial-duration: the starting time to wait and retry after a failed authorization and sign process. Defaults to 5m.
  • --acme-fail-max-duration: the time between retries of failed authorization will exponentially grow up to the max duration time. Defaults to 8h.
  • --acme-secret-key-name: secret name used to store the client private key. Defaults to acme-private-key. A new key, hence a new client, is created if the secret does not exist.
  • --acme-server: mandatory, starts a local server used to answer challenges from the acme environment. This option should be provided on all haproxy-ingress instances to the certificate signing work properly.
  • --acme-token-configmap-name: the ConfigMap name used to store temporary tokens generated during the challenge. Defaults to acme-validation-tokens. Such tokens need to be stored in k8s because any haproxy-ingress instance might receive the request from the acme environment.
  • --acme-track-tls-annotation: defines if ingress objects with annotation kubernetes.io/tls-acme: "true" should also be tracked. Defaults to false.

See also:

–allow-cross-namespace

--allow-cross-namespace argument, if added, will allow reading secrets from one namespace to an ingress resource of another namespace. The default behavior is to deny such cross namespace reading. This adds a breaking change from v0.4 to v0.5 on ingress.kubernetes.io/auth-tls-secret annotation, where cross namespace reading were allowed without any configuration.

–annotation-prefix

Changes the annotation prefix the controller should look for when parsing services and ingress objects. The default value is ingress.kubernetes.io if not declared, which means SSL Redirect should be configured with the annotation name ingress.kubernetes.io/ssl-redirect. Annotations with other prefix are ignored. This allows using HAProxy Ingress with other ingress controllers that shares ingress and service objects without conflicting each other.

–apiserver-host

Allows you to specify an explicit host for the Kubernetes API server, in the format of protocol://address:port, e.g., http://localhost:8080. If this value isn’t specified, the assumption is that the binary is running inside a Kubernetes cluster and local discovery will be attempted.

–backend-shards

Defines how many files should be used to configure the haproxy backends. The default value is 0 (zero) which uses one single file to configure the whole haproxy process. Values greather than 0 (zero) splits the backend configuration into separated files. Only files with changed backends are parsed and written to disk, reducing io and cpu usage on big clusters - about 1000 or more services.

–buckets-response-time

Configures the buckets of the histogram haproxyingress_haproxy_response_time_seconds, used to compute the response time of the haproxy’s admin socket. The response time unit is in seconds.

–configmap

The name of the ConfigMap that contains the custom configuration to use, in the format namespace/configmapname. Beware that in version 0.12 and below, an incorrect value here will silently fail. Version 0.13 and later will crash if the ConfigMap is unreadable or nonexistent.

See also:

–default-backend-service

Defines the namespace/servicename that should be used if the incoming request doesn’t match any hostname, or the requested path doesn’t match any location within the desired hostname. An internal 404 error page is used if not declared.

–default-ssl-certificate

Defines the namespace/secretname of the default certificate that should be used if ingress resources using TLS configuration doesn’t provide it’s own certificate. A self-signed fake certificate is used if not declared.

–disable-api-warnings

Since v0.12.4

Disable warning logs sent from the API server. Most of the warnings are related with API deprecation. The default behavior is to log all API server warnings.

–disable-config-keywords

Since v0.10.9

Defines a comma-separated list of HAProxy keywords that should not be used on annotation based configuration snippets. Configuration snippets added as a global config does not follow this option. Use an asterisk * to disable configuration snippets using annotations.

Every keyword in the configuration will be compared with the first token of every configuration line, ignoring tabs and spaces. If a match occur, all the configuration snippet will be ignored and a warning is logged.

The default value is an empty string, enabling the configuration and accepting any HAProxy keyword.

–disable-external-name

Since v0.10.9

Services of type ExternalName uses DNS lookup to define the target server IP list. Declare --disable-external-name to disable a DNS based target IP list, refusing services of type ExternalName.

–disable-pod-list

Since v0.11

Disables in memory pod list and also pod watch for changes. Pod list and watch is used by drain-support option, which will not work if pod list is disabled. Blue/green and session-cookie-value-strategy set to pod-uid also use pod list if enabled, otherwise k8s api is called if needed. The default value is false, which means pods will be watched and listed in memory.

–election-id

The ID to be used for electing ingress controller leader. Defaults to ingress-controller-leader.

–force-namespace-isolation

Whether to force namespace isolation. This flag is required to avoid the reference of secrets, configmaps or the default backend service located in a different namespace than specified in the flag --watch-namespace (which defaults to all namespaces, so you will probably want to set that flag, too).

Ingress Class

More than one ingress controller is supported per Kubernetes cluster. These options allow to override the class of ingress resources that this instance of the controller should listen to. Classes that match will be used in the HAProxy configuration, other classes will be ignored. Ingress resources without class name and without class annotation is also ignored since v0.12, add the command-line option --watch-ingress-without-class to also listen to these ingress.

These options have a new behavior since v0.12, see the corresponding documentation if using an older controller version.

  • --ingress-class: defines the value of kubernetes.io/ingress.class annotation this controller should listen to. The default value is haproxy if not declared.
  • --controller-class: by default, HAProxy Ingress will watch IngressClasses whose spec.controller name is haproxy-ingress.github.io/controller. All ingress resources that link to these IngressClasses will be added to the configuration. The --controller-class command-line option customizes the controller name, allowing to run more than one HAProxy Ingress in the same cluster. Configuring --controller-class=staging would listen to IngressClasses whose controller name is haproxy-ingress.github.io/controller/staging.
  • --watch-ingress-without-class: defines if this controller should also listen to ingress resources that doesn’t declare neither the kubernetes.io/ingress.class annotation nor the <ingress>.spec.ingressClassName field. The default since v0.12 is to ignore ingress without class annotation and class name.
  • --ignore-ingress-without-class: this option is ignored since v0.12. Use --watch-ingress-without-class instead.

See also:

–kubeconfig

Ingress controller will try to connect to the Kubernetes master using environment variables and a service account. This behavior can be changed using --kubeconfig argument that reference a kubeconfig file with master endpoint and credentials. This is a mandatory argument if the controller is deployed outside of the Kubernetes cluster.

–master-socket

Since v0.12

Configures HAProxy Ingress to use an external haproxy deployment in master-worker mode. This option receives the unix socket of the master CLI. The default value is an empty string, which will instruct the controller to start and manage the embedded haproxy instead of an external instance.

The following conditions should be satisfied in order to an external haproxy work properly:

  1. The following paths should be shared between HAProxy Ingress and the external haproxy: /etc/haproxy, /var/lib/haproxy, /var/run/haproxy. HAProxy Ingress must have write access to all of them, external haproxy should have write access to /var/run/haproxy. This can be made using a sidecar container and k8s’ emptyDir, or a remote file system provided that it updates synchronously and supports unix sockets
  2. Start the external haproxy with:
    • -S /var/run/haproxy/master.sock,mode,600. mode 600 isn’t mandatory but recommended;
    • -f /etc/haproxy
  3. HAProxy Ingress image has a --init command-line option which creates an initial valid configuration file, this allows the external haproxy to bootstraps successfully. This option can be used as an init container.

See also:

–max-old-config-files

Everytime a configuration change need to update HAProxy, a configuration file is rewritten even if dynamic update is used. By default the same file is recreated and the old configuration is lost. Use --max-old-config-files to configure after how much files Ingress controller should start to remove old configuration files. If 0, the default value, a single haproxy.cfg is used.

–publish-service

Some infrastructure tools like external-DNS relay in the ingress status to created access routes to the services exposed with ingress object.

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
...
status:
  loadBalancer:
    ingress:
    - hostname: <ingressControllerLoadbalancerFQDN>

Use --publish-service=namespace/servicename to indicate the services fronting the ingress controller. The controller mirrors the address of this service’s endpoints to the load-balancer status of all Ingress objects it satisfies.

–rate-limit-update

Use --rate-limit-update to change how much time to wait between HAProxy reloads. Note that the first update is always immediate, the delay will only prevent two or more updates in the same time frame. Moreover reloads will only occur if the cluster configuration has changed, otherwise no reload will occur despite of the rate limit configuration.

This argument receives the allowed reloads per second. The default value is 0.5 which means no more than one reload will occur within 2 seconds. The lower limit is 0.05 which means one reload within 20 seconds. The highest one is 10 which will allow ingress controller to reload HAProxy up to 10 times per second.

–reload-strategy

The --reload-strategy command-line argument is used to select which reload strategy HAProxy should use. The following options are available:

  • native: Uses native HAProxy reload option -sf.
  • reusesocket: (starting on v0.6) Uses HAProxy -x command-line option to pass the listening sockets between old and new HAProxy process, allowing hitless reloads. This is the default option since v0.8.
  • multibinder: (deprecated on v0.6) Uses GitHub’s multibinder. This link describes how it works.

–report-node-internal-ip-address

Sets whether the node’s IP address returned in the ingress status should be the node’s internal instead of the external IP address. Defaults to false.

–sort-backends

Defines if backend’s endpoints should be sorted by name. Since v0.8 the endpoints will stay in the same order found in the Kubernetes’ endpoint objects if --sort-backends is missing. This option has less precedence than --sort-endpoints-by if both are declared.

In v0.7 and older version, if --sort-backends is missing, HAProxy Ingress randomly shuffle endpoints on each reload in order to avoid requesting always the same backends just after haproxy reloads.

Sorting backends by name has a real effect only if using a distinct backend-server-naming option, because the default value builds the server name using a numeric sequence.

See also:

–sort-endpoints-by

Since v0.11

Defines in which order the endpoints of a backend should be sorted.

  • endpoint: this is the default value, uses the same order declared in the Kubernetes’ Endpoint objects. ep is an alias to endpoint
  • ip: sort endpoints by the IP and port of the destination server
  • name: sort the endpoints by the name given to the server, see also backend-server-naming
  • random: randomly shuffle the endpoints every time haproxy needs to be reloaded, this option avoids to always send requests to the same endpoints depending on the balancing algorithm

Stats

Configures an endpoint with statistics, debugging and health checks. The following URIs are provided:

  • /healthz: a healthz URI for the haproxy-ingress
  • /metrics: Prometheus compatible metrics exporter
  • /acme/check (POST): starts check for missing, expiring or outdated certificates controlled by acme client. Should be issued in the leader.
  • /debug/pprof: profiling tools
  • /build: build information - controller name, version, git commit hash and repository
  • /stop: stops haproxy-ingress controller

Options:

  • --health-check-path: Defines the URL to be used as a health check for the default server. Defaults to /healthz.
  • --healthz-port: Defines the port number haproxy-ingress should listen to. Defaults to 10254.
  • --profiling: Configures if the profiling URI should be enabled. Defaults to true.
  • --stats-collect-processing-period: Defines the interval between two consecutive readings of haproxy’s Idle_pct, used to generate haproxy_processing_seconds_total metric. haproxy updates Idle_pct every 500ms, which makes that the best configuration value, and it’s also the default if not configured. Values higher than 500ms will produce a less accurate collect. Change to 0 (zero) to disable this metric.

–sync-period

Configures the default resync period of the Kubernetes client’s informer factory. Defaults to 10 minutes.

–tcp-services-configmap

Configure --tcp-services-configmap argument with namespace/configmapname resource with TCP services and ports that HAProxy should listen to. Use the HAProxy’s port number as the key of the ConfigMap.

The value of the ConfigMap entry is a colon separated list of the following arguments:

  1. <namespace>/<service-name>, mandatory, is the well known notation of the service that will receive incoming connections.
  2. <portnumber>, mandatory, is the port number the upstream service is listening - this is not related to the listening port of HAProxy.
  3. <in-proxy>, optional, should be defined as PROXY if HAProxy should expect requests using the PROXY protocol. Leave empty to not use PROXY protocol. This is usually used only if there is another load balancer in front of HAProxy which supports the PROXY protocol. PROXY protocol v1 and v2 are supported.
  4. <out-proxy>, optional, should be defined as PROXY or PROXY-V2 if the upstream service expect connections using the PROXY protocol v2. Use PROXY-V1 instead if the upstream service only support v1 protocol. Leave empty to connect without using the PROXY protocol.
  5. <namespace/secret-name>, optional, used to configure SSL/TLS over the TCP connection. Secret should have tls.crt and tls.key pair used on TLS handshake. Leave empty to not use ssl-offload.
  6. <check-interval>, added in v0.10, optional and defaults to 2s, configures a TCP check interval. Declare - (one single dash) as the time to disable it. Valid time is a number and a mandatory suffix: us, ms, s, m, h or d.
  7. <namespace/secret-name>, added in v0.10, optional, used to configure SSL/TLS client verification over the TCP connection. Secret should have ca.crt and optional ca.crl. Leave empty to not use ssl client verification.

Optional fields can be skipped using consecutive colons.

In the example below:

...
data:
  "3306": "default/mysql:3306::::-"
  "5432": "default/pgsql:5432::::1s"
  "8000": "system-prod/http:8000::PROXY-V1"
  "9900": "system-prod/admin:9900:PROXY::system-prod/tcp-9900"
  "9990": "system-prod/admin:9999::PROXY-V2"
  "9995": "system-prod/admin:9900:::system-prod/tcp-9995::system-prod/tcp-9995-ca"
  "9999": "system-prod/admin:9999:PROXY:PROXY"

HAProxy will listen 7 new ports:

  • 3306 will proxy to a mysql service on default namespace. Check interval is disabled.
  • 5432 will proxy to a pgsql service on default namespace. Check interval is defined to run on every second.
  • 8000 will proxy to http service, port 8000, on the system-prod namespace. The upstream service will expect connections using the PROXY protocol but it only supports v1.
  • 9900 will proxy to admin service, port 9900, on the system-prod namespace. Clients should connect using the PROXY protocol v1 or v2. Upcoming connections should be encrypted, HAProxy will ssl-offload data using crt/key provided by system-prod/tcp-9900 secret.
  • 9990 and 9999 will proxy to the same admin service and 9999 port and the upstream service will expect connections using the PROXY protocol v2. The HAProxy frontend, however, will only expect PROXY protocol v1 or v2 on it’s port 9999.
  • 9995 will proxy to admin service, port 9900, on the system-prod namespace. Upcoming connections should be encrypted, HAProxy will ssl-offload data using crt/key provided by system-prod/tcp-9995 secret. Furthermore, clients must present a certificate that will be valid under the certificate authority (and optional certificate revocation list) provded in the system-prod/tcp-9995-ca secret.

Note: Check interval was added in v0.10 and defaults to 2s. All declared services has check interval enabled, except 3306 which disabled it.

–update-status

Indicates whether the ingress controller should update the status attribute of all the Ingress resources that this controller is tracking. Defaults to true.

–update-status-on-shutdown

Indicates whether the ingress controller should update the status attribute of all the Ingress resources that this controller is tracking when the controller is being stopped. Defaults to true.

–v

Configures the log verbosity. 1 is the default value and outputs only errors, warnings and a few update events. 2 is a good balance between low verbosity and rich details about controller events. 3 is also available and provides even more details.

–validate-config

Determines whether the resulting configuration files should be validated when a dynamic update was applied. Default value is false, which means the validation will only happen when HAProxy needs to be reloaded.

If validation fails, HAProxy Ingress will log the error and set the metric haproxyingress_update_success to zero, indicating failure.

–verify-hostname

Ingress resources has spec/tls[]/secretName attribute to override the default X509 certificate. As a default behavior the certificates are validated against the hostname in order to match the SAN extension or CN (CN only up to v0.4). Invalid certificates, ie certificates which doesn’t match the hostname are discarded and a warning is logged into the ingress controller logging.

Use --verify-hostname=false argument to bypass this validation. If used, HAProxy will provide the certificate declared in the secretName ignoring if the certificate is or is not valid.

–version

Show release information about the ingress controller.

–wait-before-shutdown

If argument --wait-before-shutdown is defined, controller will wait defined time in seconds before it starts shutting down components when SIGTERM was received. By default, it’s 0, which means the controller starts shutting down itself right after signal was sent.

–wait-before-update

Since v0.11

Defines the amount of time to wait before start a reconciliation event and update haproxy. The purpose of this delay is to group all the notifications of a batch update and apply pending changes in one single shot. The default value is 200ms.

–watch-namespace

By default the proxy will be configured using all namespaces from the Kubernetes cluster. Use --watch-namespace with the name of a namespace to watch and build the configuration of a single namespace.

You may also want to use --force-namespace-isolation to completely disallow referencing secrets, configmaps or the default backend service located in a different namespace than specified with --watch-namespace.

Last modified July 9, 2021: add disable-config-keywords command-line options (5afc1047)