Installing Minikube on Ubuntu with Windows Subsystem Linux Backend

minikube is local Kubernetes, focusing on making it easy to learn and develop for Kubernetes.

Why write an article on installing minikube on Ubuntu with Windows Subsystem Linux (WSL) 2 backend? There are two reasons:

the official minikube site has documentation for installing on Windows, Linux, and macOS, but not on Ubuntu with WSL 2 backend.
compared to the macOS or Linux, the installation process on Ubuntu with WSL 2 backend is not a trivial task.

Preparing your Windows 10 machine

What you’ll need:

2 CPUs or more
2Gb of free memory
20Gb of free disk space
Internet connection
Windows Subsystem Linux [“WSL”] 2

You can install WSL 2 by following this article Install WSL on Windows 10

Ubuntu 18.04+

You can install Ubuntu on WSL 2 by following this article Ubuntu on WSL 2 Is Generally Available

Container or virtual machine manager

All you need is Docker (or similarly compatible) container or a Virtual Machine environment, and Kubernetes is a single command away: minikube start. You can install Docker Desktop for Windows by following this article Docker Desktop WSL 2 backend

Installing minikube on Ubuntu 18.04 with Windows Subsystem Linux 2 backend

Download and install the latest minikube package for Ubuntu.

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curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube_latest_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i minikube_latest_amd64.deb

Configuring VM driver

As we’re on a virtual machine, we should set VM driver to none, as we cannot virtualize on virtualization.

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sudo minikube config set vm-driver none

You should see the following output, which you can ignore as we don’t have minikube running yet.

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These changes will take effect upon a minikube delete and then a minikube start

Changing permissions

First, change permissions for your $USER to the .minikube directory.

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sudo chown -R $USER $HOME/.minikube
sudo chmod -R u+wrx $HOME/.minikube

Installing package dependencies

Ensure that the following packages are installed.

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sudo apt-get install -y conntrack

Deleting previous minikube profiles

Check if an existing profile exists using sudo minikube profile list. Delete all existing profiles.

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sudo minikube delete --purge=true --all=true

Starting minikube

Finally, start minikube using the following command without sudo privileges:

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minikube start --driver=docker --delete-on-failure

Warning: The option --driver=none should not be used in Windows.

A successful output should have the following:

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😄  minikube v1.20.0 on Ubuntu 18.04
✨  Using the docker driver based on user configuration
👍  Starting control plane node minikube in cluster minikube
🚜  Pulling base image ...
💾  Downloading Kubernetes v1.20.2 preload ...
    > preloaded-images-k8s-v10-v1...: 491.71 MiB / 491.71 MiB  100.00% 7.71 MiB
    > gcr.io/k8s-minikube/kicbase...: 358.09 MiB / 358.10 MiB  100.00% 5.30 MiB
    > gcr.io/k8s-minikube/kicbase...: 358.10 MiB / 358.10 MiB  100.00% 5.90 MiB
🔥  Creating docker container (CPUs=2, Memory=2200MB) ...
🐳  Preparing Kubernetes v1.20.2 on Docker 20.10.6 ...
    ▪ Generating certificates and keys ...
    ▪ Booting up control plane ...
    ▪ Configuring RBAC rules ...
🔎  Verifying Kubernetes components...
    ▪ Using image gcr.io/k8s-minikube/storage-provisioner:v5
🌟  Enabled addons: storage-provisioner, default-storageclass
🏄  Done! kubectl is now configured to use "minikube" cluster and "default" namespace by default

Troubleshooting

If you get the following error on sudo minikube start:

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Exiting due to GUEST_MISSING_CONNTRACK: Sorry, Kubernetes 1.20.2 requires conntrack to be installed in root's path

The following command should resolve the above issue:

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sudo apt-get install -y conntrack

If you get the following error on sudo minikube start --driver=docker:

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Exiting due to DRV_AS_ROOT: The "docker" driver should not be used with root privileges.

You should perform minikube start --driver=docker without sudo privilege.

If you get the following error on minikube start --driver=docker:

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Exiting due to HOST_HOME_PERMISSION: Failed to save config: open /home/dennislwm/.minikube/profiles/minikube/config.json: permission denied

The following command should resolve the above issue:

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sudo chown -R $USER $HOME/.minikube; chmod -R u+wrx $HOME/.minikube

If you get the following error on sudo minikube start --driver=docker:

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Exiting due to GUEST_DRIVER_MISMATCH: The existing "minikube" cluster was created using the "none" driver, which is incompatible with requested "docker" driver.

Check if an existing profile exists using sudo minikube profile list. The following command should resolve the above issue:

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sudo minikube delete --purge=true --all=true

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