Minikube Installation


Minikube Installation

In this tutorial we will discuss about minikube installation on Linux. To those new to minikube, let’s start with an introduction before diving to the installation steps.

Minikube is an open source tool that was developed to enable developers and system administrators to run a single cluster of Kubernetes on their local machine.

Minikube starts a single node kubernetes cluster locally with small resource utilization. So this is ideal for development tests and POC purposes.

Install Kubectl

Now I’m going to do the installation of kubectl which is the command line interface to operate on minikube by using the following command

$ curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/`curl -s https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/stable.txt`/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl

So it is going to download the installable from this specific location. And do the installation. The installation of kubectl is done. Let me provide execute permission for kubectl.

$ chmod +x ./kubectl

Now I’m going to move the kubectl executable as a part of a bin directory.

sudo mv ./kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl

To check the kubectl version then run the following command

$ kubectl version -o json 
{
  "clientVersion": {
    "major": "1",
    "minor": "21",
    "gitVersion": "v1.21.1",
    "gitCommit": "5e58841cce77d4bc13713ad2b91fa0d961e69192",
    "gitTreeState": "clean",
    "buildDate": "2021-05-12T14:18:45Z",
    "goVersion": "go1.16.4",
    "compiler": "gc",
    "platform": "linux/amd64"
  },
  "serverVersion": {
    "major": "1",
    "minor": "21+",
    "gitVersion": "v1.21.1-3+1f02fea99e2268",
    "gitCommit": "1f02fea99e226878ded82f3e159f28a6706ce1fc",
    "gitTreeState": "clean",
    "buildDate": "2021-05-12T21:02:46Z",
    "goVersion": "go1.16.3",
    "compiler": "gc",
    "platform": "linux/amd64"
  }
}
Install Docker

Now I’m going to do the installation of docker. This is required the reason because I’m going to start the minikube as a part of this system without using any VM driver. So Docker is essential.

You can refer here for installation of docker. So the docker installation is done.

Install minikube

Now I’m going to do the installation of minikube, the same as it will download the minikube, change the permission and move minikube as a part of bin directory.

curl -Lo minikube https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-linux-amd64 && chmod +x minikube && sudo mv minikube /usr/local/bin/

So here all three steps will get executed in a single command. Now minikube is downloaded and it is moved as a part of the bin directory. Now I can check the status of minikube using the following command

$ minikube version
minikube version: v1.20.0
commit: c61663e942ec43b20e8e70839dcca52e44cd85ae

So this is the version that is running within the specific system.

Install conntrack

Before starting the minikube without any driver I need to have installation of conntrack. Connection tracking (“conntrack”) is a core feature of the Linux kernel’s networking stack.

It allows the kernel to keep track of all logical network connections or flows, and thereby identify all of the packets which make up each flow so they can be handled consistently together.

So this is required If I’m not going to use the driver while starting the minikube. So let me go ahead and do the installation of conntrack.

sudo apt-get install conntrack
Start Minikube

Now I’m going to start the minikube without any driver.

minikube start --vm-driver=none

So the installation of minikube is done. Let me go ahead and check the status of minikube,

$ minikube status
minikube
type: Control Plane
host: Running
kubelet: Running
apiserver: Running
kubeconfig: Configured

The host, kubelet api server is running and kubeconfig is also configured. So with this as the base I’m going to do the installation of Istio in next tutorial.

Summary

So in a quick summary we saw how to do the installation of minikube as a part of Ubuntu. Using this specific system I’m going to go ahead and do the installation of Istio in the next tutorial.

Minikube Installation
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