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Installing Kubernetes with Minikube

Minikube is a tool that makes it easy to run Kubernetes locally. Minikube runs a single-node Kubernetes cluster inside a Virtual Machine (VM) on your laptop for users looking to try out Kubernetes or develop with it day-to-day.

Minikube Features

Minikube supports the following Kubernetes features:

  • DNS
  • NodePorts
  • ConfigMaps and Secrets
  • Dashboards
  • Container Runtime: Docker, CRI-O, and containerd
  • Enabling CNI (Container Network Interface)
  • Ingress

Installation

See Installing Minikube.

Quickstart

This brief demo guides you on how to start, use, and delete Minikube locally. Follow the steps given below to start and explore Minikube.

  1. Start Minikube and create a cluster:

    minikube start

    The output is similar to this:

    Starting local Kubernetes cluster...
Running pre-create checks...
Creating machine...
Starting local Kubernetes cluster...

    For more information on starting your cluster on a specific Kubernetes version, VM, or container runtime, see Starting a Cluster.

  2. Now, you can interact with your cluster using kubectl. For more information, see Interacting with Your Cluster.

    Let’s create a Kubernetes Deployment using an existing image named echoserver, which is a simple HTTP server and expose it on port 8080 using --port.

    kubectl create deployment hello-minikube --image=k8s.gcr.io/echoserver:1.10

    The output is similar to this:

    deployment.apps/hello-minikube created

  3. To access the hello-minikube Deployment, expose it as a Service:

    kubectl expose deployment hello-minikube --type=NodePort --port=8080

    The option --type=NodePort specifies the type of the Service.

    The output is similar to this:

    service/hello-minikube exposed

  4. The hello-minikube Pod is now launched but you have to wait until the Pod is up before accessing it via the exposed Service.

    Check if the Pod is up and running:

    kubectl get pod

    If the output shows the STATUS as ContainerCreating, the Pod is still being created:

    NAME                              READY     STATUS              RESTARTS   AGE
hello-minikube-3383150820-vctvh   0/1       ContainerCreating   0          3s

    If the output shows the STATUS as Running, the Pod is now up and running:

    NAME                              READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
hello-minikube-3383150820-vctvh   1/1       Running   0          13s

  5. Get the URL of the exposed Service to view the Service details:

    minikube service hello-minikube --url

  6. To view the details of your local cluster, copy and paste the URL you got as the output, on your browser.

    The output is similar to this:

    Hostname: hello-minikube-7c77b68cff-8wdzq

Pod Information:
    -no pod information available-

Server values:
    server_version=nginx: 1.13.3 - lua: 10008

Request Information:
    client_address=172.17.0.1
    method=GET
    real path=/
    query=
    request_version=1.1
    request_scheme=http
    request_uri=http://192.168.99.100:8080/

Request Headers:
    accept=*/*
    host=192.168.99.100:30674
    user-agent=curl/7.47.0

Request Body:
    -no body in request-

    If you no longer want the Service and cluster to run, you can delete them.

  7. Delete the hello-minikube Service:

    kubectl delete services hello-minikube

    The output is similar to this:

    service "hello-minikube" deleted

  8. Delete the hello-minikube Deployment:

    kubectl delete deployment hello-minikube

    The output is similar to this:

    deployment.extensions "hello-minikube" deleted

  9. Stop the local Minikube cluster:

    minikube stop

    The output is similar to this:

    Stopping "minikube"...
"minikube" stopped.

    For more information, see Stopping a Cluster.

  10. Delete the local Minikube cluster:

    minikube delete

    The output is similar to this:

    Deleting "minikube" ...
The "minikube" cluster has been deleted.

    For more information, see Deleting a cluster.

Managing your Cluster

Starting a Cluster

The minikube start command can be used to start your cluster. This command creates and configures a Virtual Machine that runs a single-node Kubernetes cluster. This command also configures your kubectl installation to communicate with this cluster.

Note:

If you are behind a web proxy, you need to pass this information to the minikube start command:

https_proxy=<my proxy> minikube start --docker-env http_proxy=<my proxy> --docker-env https_proxy=<my proxy> --docker-env no_proxy=192.168.99.0/24

Unfortunately, setting the environment variables alone does not work.

Minikube also creates a “minikube” context, and sets it to default in kubectl. To switch back to this context, run this command: kubectl config use-context minikube.

Specifying the Kubernetes version

You can specify the version of Kubernetes for Minikube to use by adding the --kubernetes-version string to the minikube start command. For example, to run version v1.17.17, you would run the following:

minikube start --kubernetes-version v1.17.17

Specifying the VM driver

You can change the VM driver by adding the --vm-driver=<enter_driver_name> flag to minikube start. For example the command would be.

minikube start --vm-driver=<driver_name>

Minikube supports the following drivers:

Note: See DRIVERS for details on supported drivers and how to install plugins.

Caution: If you use the none driver, some Kubernetes components run as privileged containers that have side effects outside of the Minikube environment. Those side effects mean that the none driver is not recommended for personal workstations.

Starting a cluster on alternative container runtimes

You can start Minikube on the following container runtimes.

To use containerd as the container runtime, run:

minikube start \
    --network-plugin=cni \
    --enable-default-cni \
    --container-runtime=containerd \
    --bootstrapper=kubeadm

Or you can use the extended version:

minikube start \
    --network-plugin=cni \
    --enable-default-cni \
    --extra-config=kubelet.container-runtime=remote \
    --extra-config=kubelet.container-runtime-endpoint=unix:///run/containerd/containerd.sock \
    --extra-config=kubelet.image-service-endpoint=unix:///run/containerd/containerd.sock \
    --bootstrapper=kubeadm

To use CRI-O as the container runtime, run:

minikube start \
    --network-plugin=cni \
    --enable-default-cni \
    --container-runtime=cri-o \
    --bootstrapper=kubeadm

Or you can use the extended version:

minikube start \
    --network-plugin=cni \
    --enable-default-cni \
    --extra-config=kubelet.container-runtime=remote \
    --extra-config=kubelet.container-runtime-endpoint=/var/run/crio.sock \
    --extra-config=kubelet.image-service-endpoint=/var/run/crio.sock \
    --bootstrapper=kubeadm

Use local images by re-using the Docker daemon

When using a single VM for Kubernetes, it’s useful to reuse Minikube’s built-in Docker daemon. Reusing the built-in daemon means you don’t have to build a Docker registry on your host machine and push the image into it. Instead, you can build inside the same Docker daemon as Minikube, which speeds up local experiments.

Note: Be sure to tag your Docker image with something other than latest and use that tag to pull the image. Because :latest is the default value, with a corresponding default image pull policy of Always, an image pull error (ErrImagePull) eventually results if you do not have the Docker image in the default Docker registry (usually DockerHub).

To work with the Docker daemon on your Mac/Linux host, run the last line from minikube docker-env.

You can now use Docker at the command line of your host Mac/Linux machine to communicate with the Docker daemon inside the Minikube VM:

docker ps
Note:

On Centos 7, Docker may report the following error:

Could not read CA certificate "/etc/docker/ca.pem": open /etc/docker/ca.pem: no such file or directory

You can fix this by updating /etc/sysconfig/docker to ensure that Minikube’s environment changes are respected:

< DOCKER_CERT_PATH=/etc/docker
---
> if [ -z "${DOCKER_CERT_PATH}" ]; then
>   DOCKER_CERT_PATH=/etc/docker
> fi

Configuring Kubernetes

Minikube has a “configurator” feature that allows users to configure the Kubernetes components with arbitrary values. To use this feature, you can use the --extra-config flag on the minikube start command.

This flag is repeated, so you can pass it several times with several different values to set multiple options.

This flag takes a string of the form component.key=value, where component is one of the strings from the below list, key is a value on the configuration struct and value is the value to set.

Valid keys can be found by examining the documentation for the Kubernetes componentconfigs for each component. Here is the documentation for each supported configuration:

Examples

To change the MaxPods setting to 5 on the Kubelet, pass this flag: --extra-config=kubelet.MaxPods=5.

This feature also supports nested structs. To change the LeaderElection.LeaderElect setting to true on the scheduler, pass this flag: --extra-config=scheduler.LeaderElection.LeaderElect=true.

To set the AuthorizationMode on the apiserver to RBAC, you can use: --extra-config=apiserver.authorization-mode=RBAC.

Stopping a Cluster

The minikube stop command can be used to stop your cluster. This command shuts down the Minikube Virtual Machine, but preserves all cluster state and data. Starting the cluster again will restore it to its previous state.

Deleting a Cluster

The minikube delete command can be used to delete your cluster. This command shuts down and deletes the Minikube Virtual Machine. No data or state is preserved.

Upgrading minikube

See upgrade minikube

Interacting with Your Cluster

Kubectl

The minikube start command creates a kubectl context called “minikube”. This context contains the configuration to communicate with your Minikube cluster.

Minikube sets this context to default automatically, but if you need to switch back to it in the future, run:

kubectl config use-context minikube,

Or pass the context on each command like this: kubectl get pods --context=minikube.

Dashboard

To access the Kubernetes Dashboard, run this command in a shell after starting Minikube to get the address:

minikube dashboard

Services

To access a Service exposed via a node port, run this command in a shell after starting Minikube to get the address:

minikube service [-n NAMESPACE] [--url] NAME

Networking

The Minikube VM is exposed to the host system via a host-only IP address, that can be obtained with the minikube ip command. Any services of type NodePort can be accessed over that IP address, on the NodePort.

To determine the NodePort for your service, you can use a kubectl command like this:

kubectl get service $SERVICE --output='jsonpath="{.spec.ports[0].nodePort}"'

Persistent Volumes

Minikube supports PersistentVolumes of type hostPath. These PersistentVolumes are mapped to a directory inside the Minikube VM.

The Minikube VM boots into a tmpfs, so most directories will not be persisted across reboots (minikube stop). However, Minikube is configured to persist files stored under the following host directories:

  • /data
  • /var/lib/minikube
  • /var/lib/docker

Here is an example PersistentVolume config to persist data in the /data directory:

apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolume
metadata:
  name: pv0001
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  capacity:
    storage: 5Gi
  hostPath:
    path: /data/pv0001/

Mounted Host Folders

Some drivers will mount a host folder within the VM so that you can easily share files between the VM and host. These are not configurable at the moment and different for the driver and OS you are using.

Note: Host folder sharing is not implemented in the KVM driver yet.
Driver OS HostFolder VM
VirtualBox Linux /home /hosthome
VirtualBox macOS /Users /Users
VirtualBox Windows C://Users /c/Users
VMware Fusion macOS /Users /mnt/hgfs/Users
Xhyve macOS /Users /Users

Private Container Registries

To access a private container registry, follow the steps on this page.

We recommend you use ImagePullSecrets, but if you would like to configure access on the Minikube VM you can place the .dockercfg in the /home/docker directory or the config.json in the /home/docker/.docker directory.

Add-ons

In order to have Minikube properly start or restart custom addons, place the addons you wish to be launched with Minikube in the ~/.minikube/addons directory. Addons in this folder will be moved to the Minikube VM and launched each time Minikube is started or restarted.

Using Minikube with an HTTP Proxy

Minikube creates a Virtual Machine that includes Kubernetes and a Docker daemon. When Kubernetes attempts to schedule containers using Docker, the Docker daemon may require external network access to pull containers.

If you are behind an HTTP proxy, you may need to supply Docker with the proxy settings. To do this, pass the required environment variables as flags during minikube start.

For example:

minikube start --docker-env http_proxy=http://$YOURPROXY:PORT \
                 --docker-env https_proxy=https://$YOURPROXY:PORT

If your Virtual Machine address is 192.168.99.100, then chances are your proxy settings will prevent kubectl from directly reaching it. To by-pass proxy configuration for this IP address, you should modify your no_proxy settings. You can do so with:

export no_proxy=$no_proxy,$(minikube ip)

Known Issues

Features that require multiple nodes will not work in Minikube.

Design

Minikube uses libmachine for provisioning VMs, and kubeadm to provision a Kubernetes cluster.

For more information about Minikube, see the proposal.

  • Goals and Non-Goals: For the goals and non-goals of the Minikube project, please see our roadmap.
  • Development Guide: See CONTRIBUTING.md for an overview of how to send pull requests.
  • Building Minikube: For instructions on how to build/test Minikube from source, see the build guide.
  • Adding a New Dependency: For instructions on how to add a new dependency to Minikube, see the adding dependencies guide.
  • Adding a New Addon: For instructions on how to add a new addon for Minikube, see the adding an addon guide.
  • MicroK8s: Linux users wishing to avoid running a virtual machine may consider MicroK8s as an alternative.

Community

Contributions, questions, and comments are all welcomed and encouraged! Minikube developers hang out on Slack in the #minikube channel (get an invitation here). We also have the kubernetes-dev Google Groups mailing list. If you are posting to the list please prefix your subject with “minikube: “.

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