AWS Redis & argocdCLI - cannot find pod with selector

[badsector3]

Hi.

I couldn't find an answer, so maybe someone had similar issue and knows the solution.

I use ArgoCD with redis deployed on AWS Elasticache.
Some of the commands triggered via argoCD CLI gives the following error:

argocd app logs argocd/example

ERRO[0001] finished streaming call with code Unknown     error="error getting app resource tree: error getting cached app resource tree: cannot find pod with selector: [app.kubernetes.io/name=argocd-redis-ha-haproxy app.kubernetes.io/name=argocd-redis] - use the --{component}-name flag in this command or set the environmental variable (Refer to https://argo-cd.readthedocs.io/en/stable/user-guide/environment-variables), to change the Argo CD component name in the CLI" grpc.code=Unknown grpc.method=PodLogs grpc.service=application.ApplicationService grpc.start_time="2024-02-07T13:37:03Z" grpc.time_ms=68.248 span.kind=server system=grpc

I understand that there is a label missing on the redis pod, but my redis is external - is there a solution?

[jgwest]

The error is coming from kube port forwarder, which appears to expect to find redis pod (and port forward to it) within the namespace. It looks as if port-forward-redis defaults to true in the places it's used, which enables this behaviour.

It may be worth setting port-forward-redis to false, and specifying env vars/params to configure the connection to the redis server:

argo-cd/util/cache/cache.go

Line 139 in 7e80f1e

cmd.Flags().StringVar(&redisAddress, opt.FlagPrefix+"redis", env.StringFromEnv(opt.getEnvPrefix()+"REDIS_SERVER", ""), "Redis server hostname and port (e.g. argocd-redis:6379). ")

[badsector3]

Thanks @jgwest

I am not sure where should I set the port-forward-redis Is that on client side?

Regarding the REDIS_SERVER I assume it's for argoCD server configuration.
I use helm charts to deploy argoCD and my config is as following:

## Argo Configs
configs:
  # General Argo CD configuration
  ## Ref: https://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/blob/master/docs/operator-manual/argocd-cm.yaml
  cm:
    create: true
    url: "http://${hostname}"
    application.instanceLabelKey: argocd.argoproj.io/instance
    ui.bannercontent: "Hello, this is: ${hostname}"

  # Argo CD configuration parameters
  ## Ref: https://github.com/argoproj/argo-cd/blob/master/docs/operator-manual/argocd-cmd-params-cm.yaml
  params:
    redis.db: "${redis_db}"

  secret:
    argocdServerAdminPassword: "${argocdServerAdminPassword}"
    argocdServerAdminPasswordMtime: "${argocdServerAdminPasswordMtime}"

# External Redis parameters
externalRedis:
  host: "${redis.hostname}"
  port: "${redis.port}"
  username: "${redis.username}"
  password: "${redis.password}"

So do I need to add another env variable called REDIS_SERVER?

[varkey]

@badsector3 Could you please share more details of your ElastiCache setup? Is it a multi node replication group with clustermode off?

[pragnarok]

Hi guys, what's up?
I have the same problem, I have an external Redis on the GCP and when I use argocd cli to add the cluster I get an error. Apparently the cluster is included in the ArgoCD but this error may result in some other problem that I don't know about.

argocd cluster add gke_cluster \                                                                                          ─╯
  --name dev-bigdata \
  --upsert --yes \
               
{"level":"info","msg":"ServiceAccount \"argocd-manager\" already exists in namespace \"kube-system\"","time":"2025-09-04T09:44:50-03:00"}
{"level":"info","msg":"ClusterRole \"argocd-manager-role\" updated","time":"2025-09-04T09:44:51-03:00"}
{"level":"info","msg":"ClusterRoleBinding \"argocd-manager-role-binding\" updated","time":"2025-09-04T09:44:51-03:00"}
{"level":"info","msg":"Use tokens from the TokenRequest API or manually created secret-based tokens instead of auto-generated secret-based tokens.","time":"2025-09-04T09:44:55-03:00"}

{"grpc.code":"Unknown","grpc.component":"server","grpc.error":"error setting cluster info in cache: cannot find ready pod with selector: [app.kubernetes.io/name=argocd-redis-ha-haproxy app.kubernetes.io/name=argocd-redis] - use the --{component}-name flag in this command or set the environmental variable (Refer to https://argo-cd.readthedocs.io/en/stable/user-guide/environment-variables), to change the Argo CD component name in the CLI","grpc.method":"Create","grpc.method_type":"unary","grpc.service":"cluster.ClusterService","grpc.start_time":"2025-09-04T09:44:54-03:00","grpc.time_ms":"1003.604","level":"error","msg":"finished call","peer.address":"127.0.0.1:43412","protocol":"grpc","time":"2025-09-04T09:44:55-03:00"}
{"level":"fatal","msg":"rpc error: code = Unknown desc = error setting cluster info in cache: cannot find ready pod with selector: [app.kubernetes.io/name=argocd-redis-ha-haproxy app.kubernetes.io/name=argocd-redis] - use the --{component}-name flag in this command or set the environmental variable (Refer to https://argo-cd.readthedocs.io/en/stable/user-guide/environment-variables), to change the Argo CD component name in the CLI","time":"2025-09-04T09:44:55-03:00"}