How to use microshift-olm?

[johanneskastl]

Dear maintainers,

I set up a new microshift machine using the latest relase 4.21 for RHEL9. I also installed the microshift-olm package, but could not get anything working.

I was hoping I would get the ususal catalog sources like the RedHat operators, community operators etc.

I found that there is a olm-operator and a catalog-operator, but no packageserver deployment. I created a catalogsource (for ArgoCD), but no matter what I did, I could not get the ArgoCD community operator to be installed. I tried different namespaces for the catalogsource, the subscription or the operatorgroup, with or without the operatorgroup, no chance. Just an error in the subscription about the catalogsource not being found.

Is it intentionally that the packageserver component is missing?
Is there documentation on how to use OLM from the microshift-olm package?

Kind Regards,
Johannes

[kastl-ars]

Sad to see no reaction of any kind. Maybe I asked in the wrong place? But maybe issues and discussions should be disabled, if no one is reacting to them?

[kastl-ars]

Nevertheless, I just found this page which seems to explain some things:
https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_build_of_microshift/4.18/html-single/running_applications/index#microshift-operators-olm

[JungyuOO]

Hi Johannes,

I think the important difference is that OLM on MicroShift is intentionally much more minimal than OLM on a normal OpenShift Container Platform cluster.

Installing microshift-olm does not give you the standard Red Hat, Certified or Community Operator catalogs automatically.

According to the current MicroShift documentation:

• OLM itself is installed by microshift-olm.
• The standard OpenShift catalogs are not included.
• You need to provide the catalogs you want to use yourself.
• OLM operations are CLI-based; there is no OperatorHub/console UI.
• openshift-marketplace is available as the global catalog namespace.

So the absence of the usual catalogs after installing the RPM is expected.

For a catalog that should be available to subscriptions in other namespaces, put the CatalogSource in:

openshift-marketplace

For example, conceptually:

apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1alpha1
kind: CatalogSource
metadata:
  name: my-catalog
  namespace: openshift-marketplace
spec:
  sourceType: grpc
  image: <your-catalog-image>
  displayName: My Catalog
  publisher: My Organization
  grpcPodConfig:
    securityContextConfig: restricted

The securityContextConfig: restricted part is particularly important on MicroShift.

After applying the catalog, I would first verify that OLM considers it ready:

oc get catalogsource -n openshift-marketplace

and:

oc describe catalogsource <catalog-name> \
  -n openshift-marketplace

You should also see the corresponding catalog pod:

oc get pods -n openshift-marketplace

Then the Subscription should reference both the exact catalog name and its namespace:

apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1alpha1
kind: Subscription
metadata:
  name: my-operator
  namespace: <operator-namespace>
spec:
  channel: <channel>
  name: <package-name>
  source: my-catalog
  sourceNamespace: openshift-marketplace

The important part is:

source: my-catalog
sourceNamespace: openshift-marketplace

If the Subscription says that the CatalogSource cannot be found, I would check those two fields first and then verify that the CatalogSource itself reached the READY state.

Regarding packageserver: I would not use the presence of the OpenShift packageserver deployment as the indication that MicroShift OLM is correctly installed. The documented MicroShift workflow is based on creating the CatalogSource and Subscription resources directly through the CLI rather than reproducing the full OpenShift console/OperatorHub stack.

The current MicroShift documentation also lists these default namespaces:

openshift-operator-lifecycle-manager
openshift-marketplace
openshift-operators

where:

• openshift-operator-lifecycle-manager runs OLM itself.
• openshift-marketplace is the global catalog namespace.
• openshift-operators is the default namespace for globally scoped Operators.

So in short: microshift-olm provides the OLM machinery, but not the preconfigured OpenShift catalogs or OperatorHub experience. You provide the catalog yourself and then install Operators using CatalogSource + Subscription.

The documentation you found is indeed the right direction, and the newer MicroShift documentation now describes this workflow explicitly.

Hope this clears it up.