Installing Minikube on macOS
Let’s learn how to install the latest Minikube release on macOS with VirtualBox v6.1 specifically.
NOTE: For other VirtualBox and Minikube versions the installation steps may vary! Check the Minikube installation!
Verify the virtualization support on your macOS in a terminal (VMX in the output indicates enabled virtualization):
$ sysctl -a | grep -E –color ‘machdep.cpu.features|VMX’
Install the VirtualBox hypervisor for ‘OS X hosts’. Download and install the .dmg package.
Install Minikube. We can download and install in a terminal the latest release or a specific release from the Minikube release page:
$ curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-darwin-amd64
$ sudo install minikube-darwin-amd64 /usr/local/bin/minikube
NOTE: Replacing /latest/ with a particular version, such as /v1.24.0/ will download that specified version.
Start Minikube. We can start Minikube with the minikube start command, that bootstraps a single-node cluster with the latest stable Kubernetes version release. For a specific Kubernetes version the –kubernetes-version option can be used as such minikube start –kubernetes-version v1.22.0 (where latest is default and acceptable version value, and stable is also acceptable). More advanced start options will be explored later in this chapter:
$ minikube start
😄 minikube v1.25.2 on Darwin 12.3
✨ Automatically selected the virtualbox driver
💿 Downloading VM boot image …
👍 Starting control plane node minikube in cluster minikube
💾 Downloading Kubernetes v1.23.3 preload …
🔥 Creating virtualbox VM (CPUs=2, Memory=6000MB, Disk=20000MB) …
🐳 Preparing Kubernetes v1.23.3 on Docker 20.10.12 …
🔎 Verifying Kubernetes components…
🌟 Enabled addons: default-storageclass, storage-provisioner
💡 kubectl not found. If you need it, try: ‘minikube kubectl — get pods -A’
🏄 Done! kubectl is now configured to use “minikube” cluster and “default” namespace by default
NOTE: An error message that reads “Unable to pick a default driver…” means that Minikube was not able to locate any one of the supported hypervisors or runtimes. The recommendation is to re-install a desired isolation tool, and ensuring its executable is found in the default PATH of your OS.
Minikube Commands for macOS
Check the status. With the minikube status command, we display the status of the Minikube cluster:
$ minikube status
minikube
type: Control Plane
host: Running
kubelet: Running
apiserver: Running
kubeconfig: Configured
Stop Minikube. With the minikube stop command, we can stop Minikube:
$ minikube stop
✋ Stopping node “minikube” …
🛑 1 nodes stopped.
Installing Minikube on Windows
Let’s learn how to install the latest Minikube release on Windows 10 with VirtualBox v6.1 specifically.
NOTE: For other OS, VirtualBox, and Minikube versions, the installation steps may vary! Check the Minikube installation!
Verify the virtualization support on your Windows system (multiple output lines ending with ‘Yes’ indicate supported virtualization):
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> systeminfo
Install the VirtualBox hypervisor for ‘Windows hosts’. Download and install the .exe package.
NOTE: You may need to disable Hyper-V on your Windows host (if previously installed and used) while running VirtualBox.
Install Minikube. We can download the latest release or a specific release from the Minikube release page. Once downloaded, we need to make sure it is added to our PATH. There are multiple packages available to download for Windows, found under a Minikube release. However, downloading and installing the .exe will automatically add the executable to the PATH. Let’s download and install the latest minikube-installer.exe package.
Start Minikube. We can start Minikube using the minikube start command, that bootstraps a single-node cluster with the latest stable Kubernetes version release. For a specific Kubernetes version the –kubernetes-version option can be used as such minikube start –kubernetes-version v1.22.0 (where latest is default and acceptable version value, and stable is also acceptable). More advanced start options will be explored later in this chapter. Open the PowerShell using the Run as Administrator option and execute the following command:
Minikube Commands in Windows
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> minikube start
😄 minikube v1.25.2 on Windows 10
✨ Automatically selected the virtualbox driver
💿 Downloading VM boot image …
👍 Starting control plane node minikube in cluster minikube
💾 Downloading Kubernetes v1.23.3 preload …
🔥 Creating virtualbox VM (CPUs=2, Memory=6000MB, Disk=20000MB) …
🐳 Preparing Kubernetes v1.23.3 on Docker 20.10.12 …
🔎 Verifying Kubernetes components…
🌟 Enabled addons: default-storageclass, storage-provisioner
💡 kubectl not found. If you need it, try: ‘minikube kubectl — get pods -A’
🏄 Done! kubectl is now configured to use “minikube” cluster and “default” namespace by default
NOTE: An error message that reads “Unable to pick a default driver…” means that Minikube was not able to locate any one of the supported hypervisors or runtimes. The recommendation is to install or re-install a desired isolation tool, and ensuring its executable is found in the default PATH of your OS.
Check the status. With the minikube status command, we display the status of the Minikube cluster. Open the PowerShell using the Run as Administrator option and execute the following command:
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> minikube status
minikube
type: Control Plane
host: Running
kubelet: Running
apiserver: Running
kubeconfig: Configured
Stop Minikube. We can stop Minikube using the minikube stop command. Open the PowerShell using the Run as Administrator option and execute the following command:
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> minikube stop
✋ Stopping node “minikube” …
🛑 1 nodes stopped.