<p>I'm running kubernetes v1.7.10, and Istio 1.0.4, and also, kiali v0.9, which bundled with istio 1.0.4.</p>

<p>Then I deployed bookinfo example into a namespace, gateway points to the bookinfo service, and accessed the productpage homepage from a browser, all were fine.</p>

<p>But, from Graph view of kiali, just a diamon icon with label "unknown" displayed. what's wrong with it?</p>

<p>I can see all the services, workloads, istio configs on the Kiali, just no topology.</p>

<p>At last,  I traced back to the prometheus metrics, something like:</p>

<pre><code>istio_requests_total{connection_security_policy="none",destination_app="unknown",destination_principal="unknown",destination_service="details.test.svc.cluster.local",destination_service_name="details",destination_service_namespace="test",destination_version="unknown",destination_workload="unknown",destination_workload_namespace="unknown",instance="172.22.178.111:42422",job="istio-mesh",reporter="destination",request_protocol="http",response_code="200",source_app="unknown",source_principal="unknown",source_version="unknown",source_workload="unknown",source_workload_namespace="unknown"}
</code></pre>

<p>I noticed that they were all "unknown",  destination_app, destination_version, source_app, source_version ... , I believe that's why no topo displayed.</p>

<p>And the metrics from <a href="http://istio-telemetry:42422/metrics" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://istio-telemetry:42422/metrics</a>:</p>

<pre><code>istio_requests_total{connection_security_policy="none",destination_app="unknown",destination_principal="unknown",destination_service="details.test.svc.cluster.local",destination_service_name="details",destination_service_namespace="test",destination_version="unknown",destination_workload="unknown",destination_workload_namespace="unknown",reporter="destination",request_protocol="http",response_code="200",source_app="unknown",source_principal="unknown",source_version="unknown",source_workload="unknown",source_workload_namespace="unknown"} 32
</code></pre>

<p>Then I did another testing, I setup a cluster of kubernetes v1.10.3, and installed istio 1.0.4 into it, deployed bookinfo examples, everything is fine, with a beatiful topo graph.</p>

<p>So, I doubt is there anyting different between the kubernetes versions that break the graph view of kiali? </p>

<p>Can someone give any hints?</p>

<p>thanks.</p>

<p>likun</p>

Kun Li
<p>I can't find a clear information on Istio website, but I believe kubernetes below 1.9 isn't supported. This is kind of suggested in the install page for Minikube: <a href="https://istio.io/docs/setup/kubernetes/platform-setup/minikube/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://istio.io/docs/setup/kubernetes/platform-setup/minikube/</a></p>

<p>Maybe you can try with an older version of Istio, but I wouldn't guarantee it's going to work either. You would also have to pick up an older version of Kiali.</p>

<p>Kiali builds its graph from labels in istio telemetry, so you're right to correlate with what you see in Prometheus. In particular, <code>source_app</code>, <code>source_workload</code>, <code>destination_app</code> and <code>destination_workload</code> are used by Kiali to detect graph relations.</p>
