Installing Minikube on Linux¶

Minikube can run directly on a Linux host using either the VirtualBox or KVM hypervisor to manage its virtual machines. When you're installing Gestalt directly on a PC running the Linux OS, we recommend using a hypervisor.

However, Minikube also supports a --vm-driver=none option to run containers on Linux without a hypervisor. You may want to try this if you're installing Gestalt on a Linux virtual machine. With this option there's no need for an additional virtualization layer, and Kubernetes containers will run within the host OS.

You should not use the --vm-driver=none option to run Minikube directly on your Linux laptop or PC.

The commands in the steps below are for CentOS or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but you should be able to install all the same packages using your distro's package manager.

Install Docker Community Edition ¶

Minikube requires Docker Community Edition for Linux, and will not launch with Docker EE installed.

Remove any previously installed Docker versions¶

# Check for an installed docker binary
which docker
# or
docker version

# Check for a running docker daemon
sudo netstat -lntp | grep dockerd
# the docker version command will also report the docker daemon version if it's running

# Stop docker if it's running
sudo systemctl stop docker.service

# Remove an existing docker install
sudo yum remove docker docker-client docker-client-latest docker-common docker-latest docker-logrotate docker-latest-logrotate docker-selinux docker-engine-selinux docker-engine

Install Yum utils¶

sudo yum install -y yum-utils device-mapper-persistent-data lvm2

Add the Docker CE Yum repo¶

sudo yum-config-manager --add-repo https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo

Install container-selinux¶

Go to http://mirror.centos.org/centos/7/extras/x86_64/Packages/ and search the page for container-selinux, then install the latest release version.

sudo yum install -y http://mirror.centos.org/centos/7/extras/x86_64/Packages/container-selinux-2.68-1.el7.noarch.rpm

Install the Docker CE package¶

sudo yum install docker-ce

Start Docker¶

# start the docker daemon
sudo systemctl start docker.service

# start the docker daemon automatically when the system starts up
sudo systemctl enable docker.service

# the docker version command should return the installed client and running server versions
docker version

Install ebtables¶

sudo yum install ebtables -y

Install socat¶

sudo yum install socat -y

Install Minikube and kubectl binaries¶

Check for an existing kubernetes or Minikube installation.

# If cwany of these directories exists and isn't empty, you'll want to delete them.
ls -alhF ~/.kube/
sudo ls -alhF /root/.kube/
sudo ls -alhF /etc/kubernetes

# Deleting the existing directories
rm -Rf ~/.kube
sudo rm -Rf /root/.kube/
sudo rm -Rf /etc/kubernetes

# If any of these commands returns the path to a minikube or kubectl executable, you may want to uninstall it first.
which minikube
sudo which minikube
which kubectl
sudo which kubectl

Use curl to download and install minikube and kubectl binaries

sudo curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-linux-amd64 && sudo install minikube-linux-amd64 /usr/bin/minikube

sudo curl -LO kubectl https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/v1.10.0/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl && sudo chmod +x kubectl && sudo cp kubectl /usr/bin/ && rm kubectl

Install crictl ¶

Go to https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cri-tools/releases to find the latest release version and use it to set the VERSION env variable below.

# You may need to install wget
sudo yum install wget zip unzip file

# Check for the latest version and set a shell variable to store it
VERSION="v1.12.0"

# Then download the latest version using wget and install it in /usr/bin
wget https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cri-tools/releases/download/$VERSION/crictl-$VERSION-linux-amd64.tar.gz
sudo tar zxvf crictl-$VERSION-linux-amd64.tar.gz -C /usr/bin crictl
rm -f crictl-$VERSION-linux-amd64.tar.gz

Add minikube as a localhost alias in the /etc/hosts file¶

# Use sudo to open a shell with root permissions
sudo bash

# Use your favorite text editor to add minkube to the end of the first line.
# It should look something like this:
127.0.0.1   localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4 minikube
::1         localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6

Set bridge network filtering to use iptables¶

# Use sudo to open a shell with root permissions
sudo bash

# Write "1" into the bridge-nf-call-iptables file
echo '1' > /proc/sys/net/bridge/bridge-nf-call-iptables

# Close your sudo bash shell
exit

Start Minikube¶

sudo minikube start --vm-driver=none

# Wait a bit, and then verify that minikube is running
sudo minikube status

# Expected output should look something like this
minikube: Running
cluster: Running
kubectl: Correctly Configured: pointing to minikube-vm at 172.31.30.180

After a few minutes, minikube should be running 10 pods in the kube-system namespace

# List the running pods in the kube-system namespace
sudo kubectl get pods -n kube-system

Configure kubectl to look for its cluster on localhost¶

Replace the IP address with “localhost” in the .kube/config file

# Use sudo to open a shell with root permissions
sudo bash

# Look for the cluster config section in your user's .kube/config file
clusters:
- cluster:
    certificate-authority: /root/.minikube/ca.crt
    server: https://172.31.30.180:8443
  name: minikube

# Edit the file to change that host IP to localhost using your favorite text editor
clusters:
- cluster:
    certificate-authority: /root/.minikube/ca.crt
    server: https://localhost:8443
  name: minikube

# Save the file and close your sudo bash shell
exit

If your server is assigned a new IP the next time it restarts, kubectl will now find its cluster on localhost instead of looking for it at the old IP address.

Verify Minikube is Running¶

Minikube should be running on your host - try out some of these commands to start exploring your new Kubernetes cluster!

# Verify that minikube is running
minikube status

# List the Kubnernetes namespaces
sudo kubectl get namespaces

# List all running Kubnernetes services
sudo kubectl get services --all-namespaces

# List running Kubernetes pods in the kube-system namespace
sudo kubectl get pods -n kube-system

Next Steps¶

Install Gestalt Platform on a Running Minikube Cluster