Getting started with Minikube: Kubernetes on your laptop

A step-by-step guide for running Minikube.

cubes coming together to create a larger cube

Image by:

Opensource.com

Minikube is advertised on the Hello Minikube tutorial page as a simple way to run Kubernetes for Docker. While that documentation is very informative, it is primarily written for MacOS. You can dig deeper for instructions for Windows or a Linux distribution, but they are not very clear. And much of the documentation—like one on installing drivers for Minikube—is targeted at Debian/Ubuntu users.

This guide aims to make things easier for RHEL/Fedora/CentOS-based operating system users.

Prerequisites

You have installed Docker.
Your computer is an RHEL/CentOS/Fedora-based workstation.
You have installed a working KVM2 hypervisor.

You have a working docker-machine-driver-kvm2. The following commands will install the driver:

curl -Lo docker-machine-driver-kvm2 https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/docker-machine-driver-kvm2 \
chmod +x docker-machine-driver-kvm2 \
&& sudo cp docker-machine-driver-kvm2 /usr/local/bin/ \
&& rm docker-machine-driver-kvm2

Download, install, and start Minikube

Create a directory for the two files you will download: minikube and kubectl.

Open a terminal window and run the following command to install minikube.
```
curl -Lo minikube https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-linux-amd64
```
Note that the minikube version (e.g., minikube-linux-amd64) may differ based on your computer's specs.

chmod to make it executable.
```
chmod +x minikube
```

Move the file to the /usr/local/bin path so you can run it as a command.
```
mv minikube /usr/local/bin
```

Install kubectl using the following command (similar to the minikube installation process).

curl -Lo kubectl https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/$(curl -s https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl

Use the curl command to determine the latest version of Kubernetes.

chmod to make kubectl executable.
```
chmod +x kubectl
```

Move kubectl to the /usr/local/bin path to run it as a command.
```
mv kubectl /usr/local/bin
```

Run minikube start. To do so, you need to have a hypervisor available. I used KVM2, and you can also use Virtualbox. Make sure to run the following command as a user instead of root so the configuration will be stored for the user instead of root.
```
minikube start --vm-driver=kvm2
```
It can take quite a while, so wait for it.

Minikube should download and start. Use the following command to make sure it was successful.
```
cat ~/.kube/config
```

Execute the following command to run Minikube as the context. The context is what determines which cluster kubectl is interacting with. You can see all your available contexts in the ~/.kube/config file.
```
kubectl config use-context minikube
```