Using Minikube on osx

Docker compose is making for me wonders when it comes to run some simple components on my workstation.

Spawning and simulating an infrastructure locally is fast and takes no time. Also it is lightweight.
However most teams nowadays use Kubernetes.
If you want to simulate a Kubernetes environment locally the tool to use is Minikube.

With Minikube you need to have a vm running on your workstation. This is normal, after all your workloads in a Kubernetes environment are running on multiple VMs.

So if you use OSX it’s very simple, provided you have a hypervisor installed (my default one is VirtualBox)
I just went for the local library option.

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

Depending on your workstation your installation varies but is still an easy one.

So let’s get started

minikube start

Now you might face a challenge with Minikube on osx.

Progress state: NS_ERROR_FAILURE
VBoxManage: error: Failed to create the host-only adapter
VBoxManage: error: VBoxNetAdpCtl: Error while adding new interface: failed to open /dev/vboxnetctl: No such file or directory
VBoxManage: error: Details: code NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005), component HostNetworkInterfaceWrap, interface IHostNetworkInterface
VBoxManage: error: Context: "RTEXITCODE handleCreate(HandlerArg *)" at line 94 of file VBoxManageHostonly.cpp

As you can understand you need to reinstall VirtualBox. However you might face a challenge with the installation. I was getting the error ‘The installation failed’. As explained here you need to edit your osx security settings and allow ‘System software from Oracle’ to load.

At the end just do.

> minikube status
host: Running
kubelet: Running
apiserver: Running
kubectl: Correctly Configured: pointing to minikube-vm at 192.168.99.100

and you are ready to go.