Install OpenShift's Web Terminal Operator in any namespace

The Web Terminal Operator in Red Hat OpenShift provides a web terminal with common cluster tooling pre-installed. The operator gives you the power and flexibility to work with your product directly through the OpenShift web console, eliminating the need to have all your tooling installed locally.

This article is an overview of the new features introduced in Web Terminal Operator 1.4. One of the most important improvements is that you can now install the Web Terminal Operator in any namespace. In addition, our tooling has been updated to be compatible with OpenShift 4.9.

Install the Web Terminal Operator in any namespace

Previously, the Web Terminal Operator had to be installed in the openshift-operators namespace in order to successfully interface with the OpenShift console. As of OpenShift 4.9, we've made changes to both the OpenShift console and the Web Terminal Operator to allow the Web Terminal Operator to work when installed not just in openshift-operators, but in any other namespace as well.

Note: If you decide to install the operator in a namespace other than openshift-operators, be aware that this comes with some security risks. Anyone who has access to the namespace where the Web Terminal Operator is installed can change default tooling images.

If you are looking to enable this feature, you must create an operator group and a subscription through YAML, as illustrated in the listing below, rather than through the OpenShift UI.

# Create the new namespace
oc new-project new-web-terminal-operator-namespace

# Create the operator group
cat <<EOF | oc apply -f -
apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1
kind: OperatorGroup
metadata:
  name: web-terminal-non-openshift-operators
EOF

# Create the subscription
cat <<EOF | oc apply -f -
apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1alpha1
kind: Subscription
metadata:
  name: web-terminal
spec:
  channel: fast
  installPlanApproval: Automatic
  name: web-terminal
  source: redhat-operators
  sourceNamespace: openshift-marketplace
  startingCSV: web-terminal.v1.4.0
EOF

Tooling update

We have updated the default binaries in Web Terminal Operator 1.4 to include the latest versions of the built-in command-line tools, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Command-line tools in Web Terminal Operator 1.4.

Additional resources

For a peek into how the Web Terminal Operator works under the hood, please see A deeper look at the Web Terminal Operator by Angel Misevski. Joshua Wood's initial release article, Command-line cluster management with Red Hat OpenShift’s new web terminal, is worth a read as well. You can also refer to our previous release blog, What's new in Red Hat OpenShift's Web Terminal Operator 1.3.