helm init failed is not a valid chart repository or cannot be reached: Failed to fetch 403 Forbidden

Question

is not a valid chart repository or cannot be reached: Failed to fetch https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com/index.yaml : 403 Forbidden

helm init start failing today, we are using helm version HELM_VERSION: v2.13.0 in our CI/CD.

Adding stable repo with URL: https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com 
Error: Looks like "https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com" 
is not a valid chart repository or cannot be reached: 
Failed to fetch https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com/index.yaml : 403 Forbidden

While it was working fine a day ago. Here are the logs that I received while running init command.

$ helm init --client-only
Creating /root/.helm 
Creating /root/.helm/repository 
Creating /root/.helm/repository/cache 
Creating /root/.helm/repository/local 
Creating /root/.helm/plugins 
Creating /root/.helm/starters 
Creating /root/.helm/cache/archive 
Creating /root/.helm/repository/repositories.yaml 
Adding stable repo with URL: https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com 
Error: Looks like "https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com" is not a valid chart repository or cannot be reached: Failed to fetch https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com/index.yaml : 403 Forbidden

There are similar questions question but that seems different and also I am not behind a proxy like mentioned here.

Answer 1

Since November 13, 2020, the new location for the stable repository is https://charts.helm.sh/stable and the new location for the incubator repository is https://charts.helm.sh/incubator.

Try:

helm init --stable-repo-url=https://charts.helm.sh/stable --client-only 

or

$ helm repo add stable https://charts.helm.sh/stable
$ helm repo update

Name	Old Location	New Location
stable	https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com	https://charts.helm.sh/stable
incubator	https://kubernetes-charts-incubator.storage.googleapis.com	https://charts.helm.sh/incubator

• Ref

Answer 2

This fixed it for me:

helm repo add "stable" "https://charts.helm.sh/stable" --force-update