Learn how to - How To Install Minikube on Ubuntu 22.04|20.04|18.04

Learn how to – How To Install Minikube on Ubuntu 22.04|20.04|18.04.

In this tutorial, I’ll take you through the steps to install minikube on Ubuntu 22.04|20.04|18.04 Linux system. 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. This is ideal for development tests and POC purposes.

For CentOS, check out: Installing Minikube on CentOS 7/8 with KVM

In a nutshell, Minikube packages and configures a Linux VM, then installs Docker and all Kubernetes components into it.

Minikube supports Kubernetes features such as:

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

Hypervisor choice for Minikube: Minikube supports both VirtualBox and KVM hypervisors. This guide will cover both hypervisors.

Step 1: Update system

Run the following commands to update all system packages to the latest release:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

If a reboot is required after the upgrade then perform the process.

[ -f /var/run/reboot-required ] && sudo reboot -f

Step 2: Install KVM or VirtualBox Hypervisor

For VirtualBox users, install VirtualBox using:

Install VirtualBox on Ubuntu

KVM Hypervisor Users

For those interested in using KVM hypervisor, check our guide on how to Install KVM on CentOS / Ubuntu / Debian

Then follow How to run Minikube on KVM instead.

Step 3: Download minikube on Ubuntu

You need to download the minikube binary. I will put the binary under /usr/local/bin directory since it is inside $PATH.

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

Confirm version installed

$ minikube version
minikube version: v1.30.1
commit: 08896fd1dc362c097c925146c4a0d0dac715ace0

Step 4: Install kubectl on Ubuntu

We need kubectl which is a command line tool used to deploy and manage applications on Kubernetes:

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

Make the kubectl binary executable.

chmod +x ./kubectl

Move the binary in to your PATH:

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

Check version:

$ kubectl version -o json  --client
{
  "clientVersion": {
    "major": "1",
    "minor": "26",
    "gitVersion": "v1.26.1",
    "gitCommit": "8f94681cd294aa8cfd3407b8191f6c70214973a4",
    "gitTreeState": "clean",
    "buildDate": "2023-01-18T15:58:16Z",
    "goVersion": "go1.19.5",
    "compiler": "gc",
    "platform": "linux/amd64"
  },
  "kustomizeVersion": "v4.5.7"
}

Step 5: Starting minikube on Ubuntu

Now that components are installed, you can start minikube. VM image
will be downloaded and configure d for Kubernetes single node cluster.

$ minikube start
...................................
   minikube v1.28.0 on linux (amd64)
   Downloading Minikube ISO ...
129.33 MB / 129.33 MB [============================================] 100.00% 0s
   Creating kvm2 VM (CPUs=2, Memory=2048MB, Disk=20000MB) ...
   minikube v1.28.0 on linux (amd64)
   Configuring environment for Kubernetes v1.25.3
   Downloading kubeadm v1.25.3
   Downloading kubelet v1.25.3
   Pulling images ...
   Launching Kubernetes ... 
⌛  Verifying: apiserver proxy etcd scheduler controller dns
   Done! kubectl is now configured to use "minikube"

Wait for the download and setup to finish then confirm that everything is working fine.

Step 6: Minikube Basic operations

To check cluster status, run:

$ kubectl cluster-info

Kubernetes master is running at https://192.168.39.117:8443
KubeDNS is running at https://192.168.39.117:8443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/kube-dns:dns/proxy

To further debug and diagnose cluster problems, use 'kubectl cluster-info dump'.

Note that Minikube configuration file is located under ~/.minikube/machines/minikube/config.json

To View Config, use:

$ kubectl config view

apiVersion: v1
clusters:
- cluster:
    certificate-authority: /home/jmutai/.minikube/ca.crt
    server: https://192.168.39.117:8443
  name: minikube
contexts:
- context:
    cluster: minikube
    user: minikube
  name: minikube
current-context: minikube
kind: Config
preferences: {}
users:
- name: minikube
  user:
    client-certificate: /home/jmutai/.minikube/client.crt
    client-key: /home/jmutai/.minikube/client.key

To check running nodes:

$ kubectl get nodes
NAME       STATUS   ROLES           AGE    VERSION
minikube   Ready    control-plane   162m   v1.25.3

Access minikube VM using ssh:

$ minikube ssh

                         _             _            
            _         _ ( )           ( )           
  ___ ___  (_)  ___  (_)| |/')  _   _ | |_      __  
/' _ ` _ `| |/' _ `| || , <  ( ) ( )| '_`  /'__`
| ( ) ( ) || || ( ) || || |` | (_) || |_) )(  ___/
(_) (_) (_)(_)(_) (_)(_)(_) (_)`___/'(_,__/'`____)

$ sudo su -

To stop a running local kubernetes cluster, run:

$ minikube stop

To delete a local kubernetes cluster, use:

$ minikube delete

Step 7: Enable Kubernetes Dashboard

Kubernete ships with a web dashboard which
allows you to manage your cluster without interacting with a command
line. The dashboard addon is installed and enabled by default on
minikube.

$ minikube addons list
...
|-----------------------------|----------|--------------|--------------------------------|
|         ADDON NAME          | PROFILE  |    STATUS    |           MAINTAINER           |
|-----------------------------|----------|--------------|--------------------------------|
| ambassador                  | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (Ambassador)         |
| auto-pause                  | minikube | disabled     | Google                         |
| cloud-spanner               | minikube | disabled     | Google                         |
| csi-hostpath-driver         | minikube | disabled     | Kubernetes                     |
| dashboard                   | minikube | enabled ✅   | Kubernetes                     |
| default-storageclass        | minikube | enabled ✅   | Kubernetes                     |
| efk                         | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (Elastic)            |
| freshpod                    | minikube | disabled     | Google                         |
| gcp-auth                    | minikube | disabled     | Google                         |
| gvisor                      | minikube | disabled     | Google                         |
| headlamp                    | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (kinvolk.io)         |
| helm-tiller                 | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (Helm)               |
| inaccel                     | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (InAccel             |
|                             |          |              | [info@inaccel.com])            |
| ingress                     | minikube | disabled     | Kubernetes                     |
| ingress-dns                 | minikube | disabled     | Google                         |
| istio                       | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (Istio)              |
| istio-provisioner           | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (Istio)              |
| kong                        | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (Kong HQ)            |
| kubevirt                    | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (KubeVirt)           |
| logviewer                   | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (unknown)            |
| metallb                     | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (MetalLB)            |
| metrics-server              | minikube | disabled     | Kubernetes                     |
| nvidia-driver-installer     | minikube | disabled     | Google                         |
| nvidia-gpu-device-plugin    | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (Nvidia)             |
| olm                         | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (Operator Framework) |
| pod-security-policy         | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (unknown)            |
| portainer                   | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (Portainer.io)       |
| registry                    | minikube | disabled     | Google                         |
| registry-aliases            | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (unknown)            |
| registry-creds              | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (UPMC Enterprises)   |
| storage-provisioner         | minikube | enabled ✅   | Google                         |
| storage-provisioner-gluster | minikube | disabled     | 3rd party (Gluster)            |
| volumesnapshots             | minikube | disabled     | Kubernetes                     |
|-----------------------------|----------|--------------|--------------------------------|

To enable a module use command:

minikube addons enable <module>

Example:

$ minikube addons enable portainer
! portainer is a 3rd party addon and is not maintained or verified by minikube maintainers, enable at your own risk.
! portainer does not currently have an associated maintainer.
  - Using image docker.io/portainer/portainer-ce:2.15.1
* The 'portainer' addon is enabled

To open directly on your default browser, use:

$ minikube dashboard

To get the URL of the dashboard

$ minikube dashboard --url
http://192.168.39.117:30000

Access Kubernetes Dashboard by opening the URL on your favorite browser. For further reading, check:

Hello Minikube Series: https://kubernetes.io/docs/tutorials/stateless-application/hello-minikube/
Minikube guides for newbies: https://kubernetes.io/docs/getting-started-guides/minikube/

More guides on Kubernetes:

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Learn how to – How To Install Minikube on Ubuntu 22.04|20.04|18.04