metrics-server: Failed to create listener: bind: permission denied

What happened:

I tried to install metrics-server on an AWS EKS cluster with the official manifest

The pod goes into CrashLoopBack with this error:

Error: failed to create listener: failed to listen on 0.0.0.0:443: listen tcp 0.0.0.0:443: bind: permission denied
Usage:
   [flags]

Flags:
      --add_dir_header                                          If true, adds the file directory to the header of the log messages
      --alsologtostderr                                         log to standard error as well as files
      --authentication-kubeconfig string                        kubeconfig file pointing at the 'core' kubernetes server with enough rights to create tokenreviews.authentication.k8s.io.
      --authentication-skip-lookup                              If false, the authentication-kubeconfig will be used to lookup missing authentication configuration from the cluster.
      --authentication-token-webhook-cache-ttl duration         The duration to cache responses from the webhook token authenticator. (default 10s)
      --authentication-tolerate-lookup-failure                  If true, failures to look up missing authentication configuration from the cluster are not considered fatal. Note that this can result in authentication that treats all requests as anonymous.
      --authorization-always-allow-paths strings                A list of HTTP paths to skip during authorization, i.e. these are authorized without contacting the 'core' kubernetes server.
      --authorization-kubeconfig string                         kubeconfig file pointing at the 'core' kubernetes server with enough rights to create subjectaccessreviews.authorization.k8s.io.
      --authorization-webhook-cache-authorized-ttl duration     The duration to cache 'authorized' responses from the webhook authorizer. (default 10s)
      --authorization-webhook-cache-unauthorized-ttl duration   The duration to cache 'unauthorized' responses from the webhook authorizer. (default 10s)
      --bind-address ip                                         The IP address on which to listen for the --secure-port port. The associated interface(s) must be reachable by the rest of the cluster, and by CLI/web clients. If blank or an unspecified address (0.0.0.0 or ::), all interfaces will be used. (default 0.0.0.0)
      --cert-dir string                                         The directory where the TLS certs are located. If --tls-cert-file and --tls-private-key-file are provided, this flag will be ignored. (default "apiserver.local.config/certificates")
      --client-ca-file string                                   If set, any request presenting a client certificate signed by one of the authorities in the client-ca-file is authenticated with an identity corresponding to the CommonName of the client certificate.
      --contention-profiling                                    Enable lock contention profiling, if profiling is enabled
  -h, --help                                                    help for this command
      --http2-max-streams-per-connection int                    The limit that the server gives to clients for the maximum number of streams in an HTTP/2 connection. Zero means to use golang's default.
      --kubeconfig string                                       The path to the kubeconfig used to connect to the Kubernetes API server and the Kubelets (defaults to in-cluster config)
      --kubelet-certificate-authority string                    Path to the CA to use to validate the Kubelet's serving certificates.
      --kubelet-client-certificate string                       Path to a client cert file for TLS.
      --kubelet-client-key string                               Path to a client key file for TLS.
      --kubelet-insecure-tls                                    Do not verify CA of serving certificates presented by Kubelets.  For testing purposes only.
      --kubelet-port int                                        The port to use to connect to Kubelets. (default 10250)
      --kubelet-preferred-address-types strings                 The priority of node address types to use when determining which address to use to connect to a particular node (default [Hostname,InternalDNS,InternalIP,ExternalDNS,ExternalIP])
      --kubelet-use-node-status-port                            Use the port in the node status. Takes precedence over --kubelet-port flag.
      --log-flush-frequency duration                            Maximum number of seconds between log flushes (default 5s)
      --log_backtrace_at traceLocation                          when logging hits line file:N, emit a stack trace (default :0)
      --log_dir string                                          If non-empty, write log files in this directory
      --log_file string                                         If non-empty, use this log file
      --log_file_max_size uint                                  Defines the maximum size a log file can grow to. Unit is megabytes. If the value is 0, the maximum file size is unlimited. (default 1800)
      --logtostderr                                             log to standard error instead of files (default true)
      --metric-resolution duration                              The resolution at which metrics-server will retain metrics. (default 1m0s)
      --permit-port-sharing                                     If true, SO_REUSEPORT will be used when binding the port, which allows more than one instance to bind on the same address and port. [default=false]
      --profiling                                               Enable profiling via web interface host:port/debug/pprof/ (default true)
      --requestheader-allowed-names strings                     List of client certificate common names to allow to provide usernames in headers specified by --requestheader-username-headers. If empty, any client certificate validated by the authorities in --requestheader-client-ca-file is allowed.
      --requestheader-client-ca-file string                     Root certificate bundle to use to verify client certificates on incoming requests before trusting usernames in headers specified by --requestheader-username-headers. WARNING: generally do not depend on authorization being already done for incoming requests.
      --requestheader-extra-headers-prefix strings              List of request header prefixes to inspect. X-Remote-Extra- is suggested. (default [x-remote-extra-])
      --requestheader-group-headers strings                     List of request headers to inspect for groups. X-Remote-Group is suggested. (default [x-remote-group])
      --requestheader-username-headers strings                  List of request headers to inspect for usernames. X-Remote-User is common. (default [x-remote-user])
      --secure-port int                                         The port on which to serve HTTPS with authentication and authorization. If 0, don't serve HTTPS at all. (default 443)
      --skip_headers                                            If true, avoid header prefixes in the log messages
      --skip_log_headers                                        If true, avoid headers when opening log files
      --stderrthreshold severity                                logs at or above this threshold go to stderr (default 2)
      --tls-cert-file string                                    File containing the default x509 Certificate for HTTPS. (CA cert, if any, concatenated after server cert). If HTTPS serving is enabled, and --tls-cert-file and --tls-private-key-file are not provided, a self-signed certificate and key are generated for the public address and saved to the directory specified by --cert-dir.
      --tls-cipher-suites strings                               Comma-separated list of cipher suites for the server. If omitted, the default Go cipher suites will be used.
                                                                Preferred values: TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256, TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256, TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256, TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA, TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305, TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256, TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA, TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256, TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA, TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305, TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256, TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA, TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256, TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA, TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384.
                                                                Insecure values: TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256, TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA, TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256, TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA, TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256, TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA.
      --tls-min-version string                                  Minimum TLS version supported. Possible values: VersionTLS10, VersionTLS11, VersionTLS12, VersionTLS13
      --tls-private-key-file string                             File containing the default x509 private key matching --tls-cert-file.
      --tls-sni-cert-key namedCertKey                           A pair of x509 certificate and private key file paths, optionally suffixed with a list of domain patterns which are fully qualified domain names, possibly with prefixed wildcard segments. The domain patterns also allow IP addresses, but IPs should only be used if the apiserver has visibility to the IP address requested by a client. If no domain patterns are provided, the names of the certificate are extracted. Non-wildcard matches trump over wildcard matches, explicit domain patterns trump over extracted names. For multiple key/certificate pairs, use the --tls-sni-cert-key multiple times. Examples: "example.crt,example.key" or "foo.crt,foo.key:*.foo.com,foo.com". (default [])
  -v, --v Level                                                 number for the log level verbosity
      --version                                                 Show version
      --vmodule moduleSpec                                      comma-separated list of pattern=N settings for file-filtered logging

panic: failed to create listener: failed to listen on 0.0.0.0:443: listen tcp 0.0.0.0:443: bind: permission denied

goroutine 1 [running]:
main.main()
	/go/src/sigs.k8s.io/metrics-server/cmd/metrics-server/metrics-server.go:39 +0xfc

The only changes between versions 0.4.4 and version 0.5.0 of the manifest are the container port (from 4443 to 443).

@stevehipwell also had the same problem, again on EKS.

Ref: https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/metrics-server/pull/670#issuecomment-856791436

What you expected to happen:

The pod starts without problems.

Anything else we need to know?:

Environment:

• Kubernetes distribution: AWS EKS

• Container Network Setup (flannel, calico, etc.): AWS Calico

• Kubernetes version (use kubectl version): Server Version: version.Info{Major:“1”, Minor:“20+”, GitVersion:“v1.20.4-eks-6b7464”, GitCommit:“6b746440c04cb81db4426842b4ae65c3f7035e53”, GitTreeState:“clean”, BuildDate:“2021-03-19T19:33:03Z”, GoVersion:“go1.15.8”, Compiler:“gc”, Platform:“linux/amd64”}

• Metrics Server manifest

https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/metrics-server/releases/download/v0.5.0/components.yaml

/kind bug