What is Helm and How to Deploy it and Configure an App

In this post, we’ll install Helm, explore the essential Helm commands, and deploy a real application: Stirling‑PDF, a powerful self‑hosted PDF toolkit.

Installing Helm on Ubuntu

Helm is the package manager for Kubernetes just like apt is for ubuntu and Helm is the best way to find, share, and use software built for Kubernetes

https://helm.sh/docs/intro/install

Check version

awk k3s-cp-01 ~ ❯ helm version
version.BuildInfo{Version:”v3.20.1″, GitCommit:”a2369ca71c0ef633bf6e4fccd66d634eb379b371″, GitTreeState:”clean”, GoVersion:”go1.25.8″}

Here are the core Helm commands every Kubernetes admin should know:

helm repo add — add a chart repository
helm repo update — refresh the repo cache
helm search repo — search for charts
helm install — install a chart
helm list — list installed releases
helm uninstall — remove a release
helm upgrade — upgrade an existing release
helm show values — view configurable options for a chart

All Helm charts are published on ArtifactHub: https://artifacthub.io

Deploying Stirling‑PDF on Kubernetes

Stirling‑PDF is a locally hosted web application for performing PDF operations — merge, split, convert, compress, rotate, OCR, and more.

Pull the Helm Chart

helm pull stirling-pdf/stirling-pdf-chart

This downloads a .tgz package:

stirling-pdf-chart-3.1.0.tgz

Extract the Chart

tar -xzvf stirling-pdf-chart-3.1.0.tgz

Inside the folder:

Chart.yaml
README.md
templates/
values.yaml

The values.yaml file is where you add your custom configuration.

Below is a typical configuration for a homelab setup:

Setting	Value	Why
service.type	NodePort	Direct node access, no LoadBalancer needed
service.nodePort	30081	Fixed port for easy access
persistence.enabled	true	Keeps data between restarts
persistence.storageClass	local-path	Works with K3s local-path provisioner
persistence.size	1Gi	Enough for temporary PDF storage
ingress.enabled	false	Using NodePort instead
probes.initialDelaySeconds	90	App takes time to start

Install Stirling‑PDF

helm install stirling-pdf stirling-pdf/stirling-pdf-chart \
  --namespace stirling --create-namespace \
  -f values.yaml

Check Logs & Resources

Follow logs

kubectl logs -n stirling -l app.kubernetes.io/name=stirling-pdf -f

List all resources:

kubectl get all -n stirling

Describe pod status

kubectl describe pod -l app.kubernetes.io/name=stirling-pdf
kubectl get pvc

Check logs:

kubectl logs -l app.kubernetes.io/name=stirling-pdf --previous

Upgrade the Helm Chart

Its very easy to upgrade

helm upgrade stirling-pdf . -n stirling

Helm Rollback

Its very easy to rollback

helm history stirling-pdf

Roll back by version number

helm rollback stirling-pdf 2

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