How to use "kubectl" command instead of "sudo kubectl"

Fix file permissions

Most likely your kubectl files are not owned by your user.

You can set these permissions using below command.

sudo chown -R $USER $HOME/.kube

Run kubectl with sudo

Alternatively you can run kubectl as sudo user using a persistent sudo shell.

sudo -s

then run your kubectl commands

kubectl get pods

kubectl describe <resource_type> <resource_name>

finally exit the sudo shell

exit

Ansible way to make kubectl able to run without sudo:

- name: Setup kubeconfig for user
  become: no
  command: "{{ item }}"
  with_items:
    - mkdir -p /home/$USER/.kube
    - sudo cp -i /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf /home/$USER/.kube/config
    - sudo chown $USER:$USER /home/$USER/.kube/config

Or you could run this commands manually:

mkdir -p /home/$USER/.kube
cp -i /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf /home/$USER/.kube/config
chown $USER:$USER /home/$USER/.kube/config

You don't need to (and shouldn't) run kubectl with sudo. kubectl doesn't need any special permissions, and is interacting entirely with a remote server over an HTTPS connection. Kubernetes tends to take over the system it runs on, so even if you somehow were running kubectl against a local apiserver, being logged into the node at all would be odd and you could do the same level of administration remotely.

If you have been running it under sudo, it might have changed the ownership of some files to be inaccessible, and you can fix this (once) with

sudo chown -R $USER $HOME/.kube

(In your listing, ~/.kube/cache is owned by root, not by myuser.)

I had the same issue. It is suggested (by minikube) to change the ownership and permissions of ~/.kube and ~/.minikube after the installation.

sudo mv /root/.kube $HOME/.kube # this will write over any previous configuration
sudo chown -R $USER $HOME/.kube
sudo chgrp -R $USER $HOME/.kube

sudo mv /root/.minikube $HOME/.minikube # this will write over any previous configuration
sudo chown -R $USER $HOME/.minikube
sudo chgrp -R $USER $HOME/.minikube