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Getting Started Guide

Red Hat Container Development Kit 3.2

Quick-start guide to using and developing with Red Hat Container Development Kit

Robert Krátký

Red Hat Developer Group Documentation Team

Abstract

This guide shows how to get up to speed using Red Hat Container Development Kit. Included instructions and examples guide through first steps developing containerized applications using Docker, Kubernetes, and OpenShift Container Platform, both from your host workstation (Microsoft Windows, macOS, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and from within the Container Development Environment provided by Red Hat Container Development Kit.

Chapter 1. Getting Started with Container Development Kit

This section contains information about setting up, installing, updating and uninstalling Container Development Kit.

1.1. Introducing Red Hat Container Development Kit

Red Hat Container Development Kit is a platform for developing containerized applications on a single, personal system. It enables developers to quickly and easily set up an environment for developing and testing containerized applications on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform.

CDK:

  • Provides a personal Container Development Environment you can install on your own laptop, desktop, or server system. The Container Development Environment is provided in the form of a Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual machine. The Container Development Environment itself can also be installed in a virtual machine.
  • Includes the same container-development and runtime tools used to create and deploy containers for large data centers.
  • CDK version 3 offers an easy installation method based on the minishift tool.
  • Runs on Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems as a Linux virtual machine, thus allowing developers to use their favorite platform while producing applications ready to be deployed in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux ecosystem.

CDK is a part of the Red Hat Developers program, which provides tools, resources, and support for developers who wish to utilize Red Hat solutions and products to create applications, both locally and in the cloud. For additional information and to register to become a part of the program, visit developers.redhat.com.

1.1.1. Additional Information

Refer to the following documents for further information:

To report issues, refer to the following:

  • For Red Hat Container Development Kit issues or to request new CDK features, refer to the CDK Project.
  • For issues with Red Hat Container Development Kit documentation or to request new documentation, refer to CDK Project Documentation.

1.2. Preparing to Install Container Development Kit

1.2.1. Overview

Container Development Kit 3.2 is based on Minishift 1.7.0. Using a single executable file, the minishift command deploys CDK as a Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual machine, running OpenShift (which includes Kubernetes, the Docker service, and other container development and deployment software).

The CDK setup procedure can, and should, be run as a regular user that has special permission to launch virtual machines. In the procedure, you will see how to assign that permission, along with ways to configure your hypervisor and command shell to start and effectively interact with CDK.

Note

CDK version 2.x was based on Vagrant. Because of the completely different deployment and management methods, there is no upgrade path from CDK 2.x to CDK 3.x versions. You need to do a fresh setup.

The following section describes how to install CDK and the required dependencies.

1.2.2. Prerequisites

CDK requires a hypervisor to start the virtual machine on which the OpenShift cluster is provisioned. Verify that the hypervisor of your choice is installed and enabled on your system before you set up CDK. Once the hypervisor is up and running, additional setup is required for CDK to work with that hypervisor (as described in the coming setup procedure).

Depending on your host operating system, you have the choice of the following hypervisors:

macOS
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Windows

Refer to the documentation for each hypervisor to determine the hardware and operating system versions needed to run that hypervisor.

1.2.3. Understanding CDK Installation

These are the basic steps for setting up CDK on your personal laptop or desktop system:

  1. Set up your virtualization environment
  2. Download CDK software for your operating system from the Red Hat Container Development Kit Download Page
  3. Set up CDK
  4. Start CDK
  5. Configure CDK so you can use it efficiently

1.3. CDK Installation

1.3.1. Installing CDK

The following steps describe how to prepare your virtualization environment (hypervisor) for CDK, download CDK software, set up CDK, and start using it.

1.3.2. Step 1: Set up your virtualization environment

Follow the appropriate procedure to set up virtualization for your particular operating system and hypervisor. CDK uses Docker Machine and its driver plug-in architecture to provide a consistent way to manage the OpenShift VM.

Some hypervisors require manual installation of the driver plug-in. CDK embeds VirtualBox drivers so no additional steps are required to configure the driver. However, a minishift command option (--vm-driver virtualbox) will be required later to identify VirtualBox to CDK.

1.3.2.1. Set up hypervisor on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Choose between KVM (default) and VirtualBox for your hypervisor. Manual driver setup is required for KVM. The driver is automatically configured if you install VirtualBox. However, a minishift command will be required later to identify VirtualBox to CDK.

On Red Hat Enterprise Linux with KVM virtualization: CDK is currently tested against docker-machine-driver-kvm version 0.7.0. Follow these steps to install the KVM driver and configure your user account to use the libvirtd service.

  1. As root, install the KVM binary and make it executable as follows:

    # curl -L https://github.com/dhiltgen/docker-machine-kvm/releases/download/v0.7.0/docker-machine-driver-kvm -o /usr/local/bin/docker-machine-driver-kvm
    # chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-machine-driver-kvm

    For more information, see the GitHub documentation of the Docker Machine KVM driver.

  2. As root, install libvirt and qemu-kvm on your system and add yourself to the libvirt group:

    # yum install libvirt qemu-kvm
    # usermod -a -G libvirt <username>
  3. Update your current user session to apply the group change:

    $ newgrp libvirt
  4. Start the libvirtd service as root:

    # systemctl start libvirtd
    # systemctl enable libvirtd

1.3.2.2. Set up hypervisor on macOS

Choose between xhyve (default) and VirtualBox for your hypervisor. Manual driver setup is required for xhyve. The driver is automatically configured if you install VirtualBox. However, a minishift command option (--vm-driver virtualbox) will be required later to identify VirtualBox to CDK.

On macOS with xhyve virtualization:

CDK on macOS with xhyve virtualization is currently tested against docker-machine-driver-xhyve version 0.3.3. To manually install the xhyve driver, you need to download and install the docker-machine-driver-xhyve binary and place it in a directory which is on your PATH environment variable. The directory /usr/local/bin is most likely a good choice, since it is the default installation directory for Docker Machine binaries.

The following steps explain the installation of the docker-machine-driver-xhyve binary to the /usr/local/bin/ directory:

  1. Download the docker-machine-driver-xhyve binary using:

    $ sudo curl -L  https://github.com/zchee/docker-machine-driver-xhyve/releases/download/v0.3.3/docker-machine-driver-xhyve -o /usr/local/bin/docker-machine-driver-xhyve
  2. Enable root access for the docker-machine-driver-xhyve binary and add it to the default wheel group:

    $ sudo chown root:wheel /usr/local/bin/docker-machine-driver-xhyve
  3. Set owner User ID (SUID) for the binary as follows:

    $ sudo chmod u+s,+x /usr/local/bin/docker-machine-driver-xhyve
Note

The downloaded docker-machine-driver-xhyve binary is compiled against a specific version of macOS. It is possible that the driver fails to work after a macOS version upgrade. In this case you can try to compile the driver from source:

$ go get -u -d github.com/zchee/docker-machine-driver-xhyve
$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/zchee/docker-machine-driver-xhyve

# Install docker-machine-driver-xhyve binary into /usr/local/bin
$ make install

# docker-machine-driver-xhyve needs root owner and uid
$ sudo chown root:wheel /usr/local/bin/docker-machine-driver-xhyve
$ sudo chmod u+s /usr/local/bin/docker-machine-driver-xhyve

For more information, see the xhyve driver documentation on GitHub.

1.3.2.3. Set up hypervisor on Windows

Choose between Hyper-V (default on Windows 10) and VirtualBox (Windows 7 or Windows 10) for your hypervisor. Manual driver setup is required for Hyper-V. The driver is automatically configured if you install VirtualBox. However, a minishift command option (--vm-driver virtualbox) will be required later to identify VirtualBox to CDK.

On Windows with Hyper-V virtualization:

  1. Install Hyper-V.
  2. Add an External Virtual Switch. Verify that you pair the virtual switch with a network card (wired or wireless) that is connected to the network.
  3. Set the environment variable HYPERV_VIRTUAL_SWITCH to the name of the external virtual switch you want to use for CDK. For more information, see driver-specific environment variables.

    For example, on Command Prompt use:

    C:\> set HYPERV_VIRTUAL_SWITCH=External (Wireless)

    Note that using quotes in Command Prompt results in the following error:

    C:\> set HYPERV_VIRTUAL_SWITCH="External (Wireless)"
    Error creating the VM. Error with pre-create check: "vswitch \"\\\"External (Wireless)\\\"\" not found"

    However, on PowerShell you need to use the quotes:

    PS C:\> $env:HYPERV_VIRTUAL_SWITCH="External (Wireless)"

1.3.3. Step 2: Download CDK Software

Before you can download CDK software, you need to either register with the Red Hat Developer Program site or login to the Red Hat customer portal with Red Hat subscription credentials. Then go to one of the following two sites and download the software associated with your operating system:

Copy the downloaded minishift file to a directory in your PATH and make it executable. The downloaded executable is named cdk-3.2.0-1-minishift-darwin-amd64 (for macOS), cdk-3.2.0-1-minishift-linux-amd64 (for Linux) or cdk-3.2.0-1-minishift-windows-amd64.exe (for Windows). Assuming the executable is in the ~/Downloads directory, follow the procedure for your operating system:

For Red Hat Enterprise Linux:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ cp ~/Downloads/cdk-3.2.0-1-minishift* ~/bin/minishift
$ chmod +x ~/bin/minishift
$ export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
$ echo ‘export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin’ >> ~/.bashrc

For macOS:

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ cp ~/Downloads/cdk-3.2.0-1-minishift* ~/bin/minishift
$ chmod +x ~/bin/minishift
$ export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
$ echo export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin >> ~/.bash_profile

For Windows:

Create the desired directory and copy the downloaded CDK binary to the directory, renaming the binary to minishift.exe. Add the directory path to the Windows PATH variable.

Important

This directory must be on the C:\ drive!

If it’s difficult to get minishift.exe in your PATH, you can simply run it from the current directory as ./minishift.exe (or .\minishift.exe in some Windows shells).

1.3.4. Step 3: Set up CDK

The minishift setup-cdk command gets and configures the components needed to run CDK on your system. By default, minishift setup-cdk places CDK content in your ~/.minishift directory (%USERPROFILE%/.minishift on Windows).

Important

To use a directory other than ~/.minishift, you must set the --minishift-home flag and MINISHIFT_HOME environment variable, as described in Environment Variables.

Run the following command to set up CDK for Red Hat Enterprise Linux:

$ minishift setup-cdk
Setting up CDK 3 on host using '/home/joe/.minishift' as Minishift's home directory
Copying minishift-rhel7.iso to '/home/joe/.minishift/cache/iso/minishift-rhel7.iso'
Copying oc to '/home/joe/.minishift/cache/oc/v3.6.173.0.21/oc'
Creating configuration file '/home/joe/.minishift/config/config.json'
Creating marker file '/home/joe/.minishift/cdk'
Default add-ons anyuid, admin-user, xpaas installed
Default add-ons anyuid, admin-user, xpaas enabled
CDK 3 setup complete.

As you can see from the output, a .minishift directory is created in the user’s home directory to hold various CDK components, and appropriate files and settings are stored there.

For Windows or macOS: Running the same minishift setup-cdk command on Windows and macOS results in slightly different output, based on some different components and pathnames.

1.3.5. Optional: Use OpenShift Container Platform 3.7

Currently, CDK cannot automatically download the oc binary for OpenShift Container Platform 3.7. However, you may manually download the oc 3.7 binary to use it. To do so, follow these steps:

  • Ensure that you have run minishift setup-cdk.
  • Manually download the oc binary for OpenShift Container Platform 3.7 from https://mirror.openshift.com/pub/openshift-v3/clients/.
  • Place the downloaded oc binary in the existing directory for oc in MINISHIFT_HOME/cache/oc/v3.6.173.0.21/.
  • Run CDK with the --ocp-tag flag with the exact version of the oc 3.7 binary. Example:

    $ minishift setup-cdk
    $ curl -O https://mirror.openshift.com/pub/openshift-v3/clients/3.7.9/linux/oc.tar.gz
    $ tar -zxvf oc.tar.gz
    $ cp oc ~/.minishift/cache/oc/v3.6.173.0.21
    $ minishift start --ocp-tag v3.7.9
Note

When creating new profiles, CDK extracts the v3.6.173.0.21 oc binary from minishift rather than copying the oc binary placed in the cache. You must manually add the oc 3.7 binary to the cache for each profile to use OpenShift Container Platform 3.7. Use the following for each profile making use of the oc 3.7 binary:

  • Set the active profile via minishift profile set <profile-name>.
  • Follow the previous procedure using MINISHIFT_HOME/profiles/<profile-name>/cache/oc/v3.6.173.0.21/ as the cached oc location. Example:

    $ minishift profile set example
    $ minishift setup-cdk
    $ cp oc ~/.minishift/profiles/example/cache/oc/v3.6.173.0.21
    $ minishift start --ocp-tag v3.7.9
Important

The --ocp-tag flag for minishift start expects version information in a specific format. Ensure that you prepend the oc version with "v" and replace any dashes with periods for use with the --ocp-tag flag. For example, if your oc version is 3.7.0-0.198.0, use the following:

$ minishift start --ocp-tag v3.7.0.0.198.0

1.3.6. Step 4: Start CDK

The minishift start command launches CDK, which consists of a Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual machine running OpenShift Container Platform. Follow these steps to launch CDK.

  1. If you are using the default hypervisor for your operating system (KVM for Linux, xhyve for macOS, or Hyper-V for Windows), you can skip this step. If you have set up VirtualBox as your hypervisor, you need to configure the VirtualBox Driver. To switch the hypervisor used by CDK to VirtualBox, you have two choices:

    • Temporary: Add the --vm-driver virtualbox option to the minishift start command line to use VirtualBox immediately.
    • Persistent: To persistently change the hypervisor, run the minishift config set vm-driver virtualbox command. See the Persistent Configuration section for examples.
  2. By default, minishift start prompts you for your Red Hat account username and password. You can enter that information or choose instead to:

    • Skip registration: Add the --skip-registration option to minishift start to not register the CDK VM.
    • Register permanently: You can export registration information to environment variables so that minishift picks it up automatically each time it starts as shown here:

      For Red Hat Enterprise Linux:

      $ export MINISHIFT_USERNAME=<RED_HAT_USERNAME>
      $ export MINISHIFT_PASSWORD='<RED_HAT_PASSWORD>'
      $ echo export MINISHIFT_USERNAME=$MINISHIFT_USERNAME >> ~/.bashrc
      $ echo export MINISHIFT_PASSWORD=$MINISHIFT_PASSWORD >> ~/.bashrc

      For macOS:

      export MINISHIFT_USERNAME='<RED_HAT_USERNAME>'
      export MINISHIFT_PASSWORD='<RED_HAT_PASSWORD>'
      echo export MINISHIFT_USERNAME=$MINISHIFT_USERNAME >> ~/.bash_profile
      echo export MINISHIFT_PASSWORD=$MINISHIFT_PASSWORD >> ~/.bash_profile

      For Windows:

      Using Command Prompt:

      C:\> setx MINISHIFT_USERNAME <RED_HAT_USERNAME>
      C:\> setx MINISHIFT_PASSWORD <RED_HAT_PASSWORD>

      Using PowerShell:

      PS> $env:MINISHIFT_USERNAME = '<RED_HAT_USERNAME>'
      PS> $env:MINISHIFT_PASSWORD = '<RED_HAT_PASSWORD>'
  3. Run minishift start to set up and start the virtual machine with the default configuration. See the minishift start command reference to see other options for modifying minishift start. Here is an example of how that would look run from a Red Hat Enterprise Linux system:

    ...
    -- Minishift VM will be configured with ...
       Memory:    4 GB
       vCPUs :    2
       Disk size: 20 GB
    -- Starting Minishift VM .......................... OK
    -- Registering machine using subscription-manager
       Registration in progress ..................... OK [42s]
    -- Checking for IP address ... OK
    -- Checking if external host is reachable from the Minishift VM ...
    ...
    Extracting
    Image pull complete
    OpenShift server started.
    The server is accessible via web console at:
        https://192.168.42.60:8443
    You are logged in as:
        User:     developer
        Password: developer
    To login as administrator:
        oc login -u system:admin
    ...
  4. Run this command to see if the virtual machine is running:

    $ minishift status
    Running

You will see similar output from minishift start when run in a macOS terminal or Windows command prompt or PowerShell.

1.3.7. Step 5: Configure CDK

With the CDK virtual machine running, you can configure and start using CDK through two primary interfaces: oc (OpenShift client binary command) or the OpenShift web console.

  • oc: Use minishift oc-env to display the command you need to type into your shell in order to add the oc binary to your PATH environment variable. The output of minishift oc-env will differ depending on your user directory, operating system and shell type.

    For Red Hat Enterprise Linux:

    $ minishift oc-env
    export PATH="/home/joe/.minishift/cache/oc/v3.6.173.0.21:$PATH"
    # Run this command to configure your shell:
    # eval $(minishift oc-env)

    Use the following to add the oc command to your PATH via the ~/.bashrc file:

    $ echo export PATH=\"/home/joe/.minishift/cache/oc/v3.6.173.0.21:\$PATH\" >> ~/.bashrc
    $ source ~/.bashrc

    For macOS:

    $ minishift oc-env
    export PATH="/home/joe/.minishift/cache/oc/v3.6.173.0.21:$PATH"
    # Run this command to configure your shell:
    # eval $(minishift oc-env)
    $ echo export PATH=/Users/joe/.minishift/cache/oc/v3.6.173.0.21:\$PATH >> ~/.bash_profile
    $ source ~/.bash_profile

    For Windows:

    Add the path to the oc binary to your PATH environment variable.

For more information about interacting with OpenShift from the command-line interface, see the OpenShift Client Binary section.

  • OpenShift web console: To access OpenShift from the web console, you can either:

    • Run minishift console to open the OpenShift web console from your default browser or
    • Open a browser to the URL output from the minishift start command (for example, https://192.168.42.60:8443).

    From the web console screen, enter the user name (developer) and password (developer) displayed from the output.

You are now ready to start using OpenShift using either of those two interfaces.

1.3.8. Deploying a Sample Application

OpenShift provides various sample applications, such as templates, builder applications, and quickstarts. To begin creating an application, see:

The following steps describe how to deploy a sample Node.js application from the command-line.

  1. Create a Node.js example app:

    $ oc new-app https://github.com/openshift/nodejs-ex -l name=myapp
  2. Track the build log until the app is built and deployed:

    $ oc logs -f bc/nodejs-ex
  3. Expose a route to the service:

    $ oc expose svc/nodejs-ex
  4. Access the application:

    $ minishift openshift service nodejs-ex --in-browser
  5. If you are done with the VM, use minishift stop to stop the VM temporarily. You can return to the same state later with minishift start.

    $ minishift stop
    Stopping local OpenShift cluster...
    Stopping "minishift"...

See minishift stop for details on managing subscriptions as you stop and start the VM.

For more information about creating applications in OpenShift, see Creating New Applications in the OpenShift documentation.

1.4. Uninstalling CDK

1.4.1. Overview

This section describes how you can uninstall the minishift binary and delete associated files.

1.4.2. Uninstalling CDK

  1. Delete the CDK VM and any VM-specific files:

    $ minishift delete

    This command deletes everything in the MINISHIFT_HOME/.minishift/machines/minishift directory. Other cached data and the persistent configuration are not removed.

  2. To completely uninstall CDK, delete everything in the MINISHIFT_HOME directory (default ~/.minishift) and ~/.kube:

    For Red Hat Enterprise Linux and macOS:

    $ rm -rf ~/.minishift
    $ rm -rf ~/.kube

    For Windows PowerShell:

    Replace <MINISHIFT_HOME> with the location of your home directory.

    PS C:\> Remove-Item -Recurse -Force C:\<MINISHIFT_HOME>\.minishift\
    PS C:\> Remove-Item -Recurse -Force C:\<MINISHIFT_HOME>\.kube\

    For Windows command prompt:

    Replace <MINISHIFT_HOME> with the location of your home directory. (You may need to use the del /s command instead.)

    c:\> rm -r c:\<MINISHIFT_HOME>\.minishift
    c:\> rm -r c:\<MINISHIFT_HOME>\.kube
  3. With your hypervisor management tool, confirm that there are no remaining artifacts related to the CDK VM. For example, if you use KVM, you need to run the virsh command.

Chapter 2. Interacting with OpenShift

CDK creates a virtual machine and provisions a local, single-node OpenShift cluster in this VM. The following sections describe how CDK can assist you in interacting and configuring your local OpenShift cluster.

For details about managing the CDK VM, see the Basic Usage section.

2.1. Using the OpenShift Client Binary (oc)

2.1.1. Overview

The minishift start command creates an OpenShift cluster using the cluster up approach. For this purpose it copies the oc binary onto your host.

The oc binary is located in the $MINISHIFT_HOME/cache/oc/v3.6.173.0.21 directory, assuming that you use CDK’s default version of OpenShift. You can add this binary to your PATH using minishift oc-env, which displays the command you need to type into your shell.

The output of minishift oc-env differs depending on the operating system and the shell type.

$ minishift oc-env
export PATH="/Users/john/.minishift/cache/oc/v3.6.173.0.21:$PATH"
# Run this command to configure your shell:
# eval $(minishift oc-env)

2.1.2. CDK CLI Profile

As a part of the minishift start command, a 'minishift' CLI profile is also created. This profile, also known as a context, contains the configuration to communicate with your OpenShift cluster.

CDK activates this context automatically, but if you need to switch back to it after, for example, logging into another OpenShift instance, you can run:

$ oc config use-context minishift

For an introduction to oc usage, see the Get Started with the CLI topic in the OpenShift documentation.

2.1.3. Logging Into the Cluster

By default, cluster up uses AllowAllPasswordIdentityProvider to authenticate against the local cluster. This means any non-empty user name and password can be used to login to the local cluster.

The recommended user name and password is developer and developer, respectively. This is because they are already assigned to the default project myproject and also can impersonate the administrator. This allows you to run administrator commands using the --as system:admin parameter.

To login as administrator, use the system account:

$ oc login -u system:admin

In this case, client certificates are used. The certificates are stored in ~/.kube/config. The cluster up command installs the appropriate certificates as a part of the bootstrap.

Note

If you run the command oc login -u system -p admin, you will log in but not as an administrator. Instead, you will be logged in as an unprivileged user with no particular rights.

To view the available login contexts, run:

$ oc config view

2.1.4. Accessing the Web Console

To access the OpenShift Web console, you can run this command in a shell after running the minishift command to get the URL of the Web console:

$ minishift console --url

Alternatively, after starting CDK, you can use the following command to directly open the console in a browser:

$ minishift console

2.1.5. Accessing OpenShift Services

To access a service that is exposed with a route, run this command in a shell:

$ minishift openshift service [-n NAMESPACE] [--url] NAME

To list all the services in the OpenShift instance, run this command in a shell:

$ minishift openshift service list

For more information on exposing services refer also to Exposing Services.

2.1.6. Viewing OpenShift Logs

To access OpenShift logs, run the logs command after starting CDK:

$ minishift logs

2.1.7. Updating OpenShift Configuration

While OpenShift is running, you can view and change the master or the node configuration of your cluster.

To view the OpenShift master configuration file master-config.yaml, run the following command:

$ minishift openshift config view

To show the node configuration instead of the master configuration, specify the target flag.

Note

After you update the OpenShift configuration, OpenShift will transparently restart.

2.1.7.1. Example: Configuring cross-origin resource sharing

In this example, you configure cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) by updating the OpenShift master configuration to allow additional IP addresses to request resources.

By default, OpenShift only allows cross-origin resource requests from the IP address of the cluster or from localhost. This setting is stored in the corsAllowedOrigins property of the master configuration file master-config.yaml.

To change the property value and allow cross-origin requests from all domains, run the following command:

$  minishift openshift config set --patch '{"corsAllowedOrigins": [".*"]}'
Note

If you get the error The specified patch need to be a valid JSON. when you run the above command, you need to modify the above command depending on your Operating System, your shell environment and its interpolation behavior.

For example, if you use PowerShell on Windows 7 or 10, modify the above command to:

$ minishift openshift config set --patch '{\"corsAllowedOrigins\": [\".*\"]}'

If you use Command Prompt you might need to use:

$ minishift openshift config set --patch "{\"corsAllowedOrigins\": [\".*\"]}"

2.1.7.2. Example: Changing the OpenShift routing suffix

In this example, you change the OpenShift routing suffix in the master configuration.

If you use a static routing suffix, you can set the routing-suffix flag as part of the minishift start command. By default, The minishift command uses a dynamic routing prefix based on nip.io, in which the IP address of the VM is a part of the routing suffix, for example 192.168.99.103.nip.io.

If you experience issues with nip.io, you can use xip.io, which is based on the same principles.

To set the routing suffix to xip.io, run the following command:

$ minishift openshift config set --patch '{"routingConfig": {"subdomain": "<IP-ADDRESS>.xip.io"}}'

Make sure to replace IP-ADDRESS in the above example with the IP address of your CDK VM. You can retrieve the IP address by running the minishift ip command.

2.2. Exposing Services

2.2.1. Overview

There are several ways you can expose your service after you deploy it on OpenShift. The following sections describes the various methods and when to use them.

2.2.2. Routes

If you are deploying a Web application, the most common way to expose it is by a route. A route exposes the service as a host name. You can create a route using the Web console or the CLI:

oc expose svc/frontend --hostname=www.example.com

To see a full example of creating an application and exposing it with a route, see the Deploying a Sample Application section.

2.2.3. NodePort Services

In case the service you want to expose is not HTTP based, you can create a NodePort service. In this case, each OpenShift node will proxy that port into your service. To access this port on your CDK VM, you need to configure an Ingress IP using oc expose with the parameter type=LoadBalancer.

A common use-case for Ingress IP Self-Service is the ability to expose a database service. The following example shows the complete workflow to create and expose a MariaDB instance using the minishift and oc commands:

$ minishift start
$ eval $(minishift oc-env)
$ oc new-app -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=admin https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openshift/origin/master/examples/db-templates/mariadb-persistent-template.json
$ oc rollout status -w dc/mariadb
$ oc expose dc mariadb --type=LoadBalancer --name=mariadb-ingress
$ oc export svc mariadb-ingress
 ....
ports:
    - nodePort: 30907
 ....

After the service is exposed, you can access MariaDB with the mysql CLI using CDK VM IP and the exposed NodePort service.

$ mysql --user=root --password=foo --host=$(minishift ip) --port=30907

2.2.4. Port Forwarding

If you want to quickly access a port of a specific pod of your cluster, you can also use the oc port-forward command of the OpenShift CLI.

$ oc port-forward POD [LOCAL_PORT:]REMOTE_PORT

2.3. Accessing the OpenShift Docker Registry

2.3.1. Overview

OpenShift provides an integrated Docker registry which can be used for development as well. Images present in the registry can directly be used for applications, speeding up the local development workflow.

2.3.2. Logging Into the Registry

  1. Run the minishift start command and add the oc binary to the PATH (based on output from the minishift oc-env command)
  2. Make sure your shell is configured to reuse the CDK docker daemon.
  3. Log into the OpenShift Docker registry.

     $ docker login -u developer -p $(oc whoami -t) $(minishift openshift registry)

2.3.3. Deploying Applications

The following example shows how to deploy an OpenShift application directly from a locally-built docker image. This example uses the OpenShift project myproject. This project is automatically created by minishift start.

  1. Make sure your shell is configured to reuse the CDK docker daemon.
  2. Build the docker image as usual.
  3. Tag the image against the OpenShift registry.

     $ docker tag my-app $(minishift openshift registry)/myproject/my-app
  4. Push the image to the registry to create an image stream with the same name as the application.

     $ docker push $(minishift openshift registry)/myproject/my-app
  5. Create an application from the image stream and expose the service.

     $ oc new-app --image-stream=my-app --name=my-app
     $ oc expose service my-app

Chapter 3. Using CDK

This section describes how to use the minishift CLI. It covers the basic commands as well as advanced features like profiles, image caching, add-ons and host folders.

For details about using the minishift and oc commands to manage your local OpenShift cluster, see the Interacting with OpenShift section.

3.1. Basic Usage

3.1.1. Overview

When you use CDK, you interact with the following components:

  • the CDK virtual machine (VM)
  • the Docker daemon running on the VM
  • the OpenShift cluster running on the Docker daemon

The CDK architecture diagram outlines these components. The minishift binary, placed on the PATH for easy execution, is used to start, stop, and delete the CDK VM. The VM itself is bootstrapped off of a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Live ISO.

Some CDK commands, for example docker-env, interact with the Docker daemon, whilst others communicate with the OpenShift cluster, for example the openshift command.

Once the OpenShift cluster is up and running, you interact with it using the oc binary. CDK caches this binary under MINISHIFT_HOME (per default ~/.minishift). minishift oc-env is an easy way to add the oc binary to your PATH.

For more details about using CDK to manage your local OpenShift cluster, see the Interacting with OpenShift section.

Figure 3.1. : Minishift architecture

: Minishift architecture

3.1.2. CDK Life-cycle

3.1.2.1. The minishift setup-cdk Command

The minishift setup-cdk command creates and configures the CDK VM and provisions a local, single-node OpenShift cluster within the CDK VM.

The command also copies the oc binary to your host so that you can interact with OpenShift through the oc command-line tool or through the Web console, which can be accessed through the URL provided in the output of the minishift start command.

3.1.2.2. CDK start Command

The minishift start command creates and configures the CDK VM and provisions a local, single-node OpenShift cluster within the CDK VM.

The command also copies the oc binary to your host so that you can interact with OpenShift through the oc command-line tool or through the Web console, which can be accessed through the URL provided in the output of the minishift start command.

3.1.2.3. CDK stop Command

The minishift stop command stops your OpenShift cluster and shuts down the CDK VM, but preserves the OpenShift cluster state.

Starting CDK again will restore the OpenShift cluster, allowing you to continue working from the last session. However, you must enter the same parameters that you used in the original start command.

Efforts to further refine this experience are in progress. For details, see the GitHub issue #179.

3.1.2.4. CDK delete Command

The minishift delete command deletes the OpenShift cluster, and also shuts down and deletes the CDK VM. No data or state are preserved.

3.1.3. Runtime Options

The runtime behavior of CDK can be controlled through flags, environment variables, and persistent configuration options.

The following precedence order is applied to control the behavior of CDK. Each action in the following list takes precedence over the action below it:

  1. Use command-line flags as specified in the Flags section.
  2. Set environment variables as described in the Environment Variables section.
  3. Use persistent configuration options as described in the Persistent Configuration section.
  4. Accept the default value as defined by CDK.

3.1.3.1. Flags

You can use command line flags with CDK to specify options and direct its behavior. This has the highest precedence. Almost all commands have flags, although different commands might have different flags. Some of the commonly-used command line flags of the minishift start command are cpus, memory or vm-driver.

3.1.3.2. Environment Variables

CDK allows you to specify command-line flags you commonly use through environment variables. To do so, apply the following rules to the flag you want to set as an environment variable.

  1. Apply MINISHIFT_ as a prefix to the flag you want to set as an environment variable. For example, the vm-driver flag of the minishift start command becomes MINISHIFT_vm-driver.
  2. Use uppercase characters for the flag, so MINISHIFT_vm-driver in the above example becomes MINISHIFT_VM-DRIVER.
  3. Replace - with _, so MINISHIFT_VM-DRIVER becomes MINISHIFT_VM_DRIVER.

Environment variables can be used to replace any option of any CDK command. A common example is the URL of the ISO to be used. Usually, you specify it with the iso-url flag of the minishift start command. Applying the above rules, you can also specify this URL by setting the environment variable as MINISHIFT_ISO_URL.

Note

You can also use the MINISHIFT_HOME environment variable, to choose a different home directory for CDK. By default, the minishift command places all runtime state into ~/.minishift. This environment variable is currently experimental and semantics might change in future releases.

To use MINISHIFT_HOME, you should set the new home directory when you first set up CDK. For example, this sets the minishift home directory to ~/.mynewdir on a Linux system:

$ minishift setup-cdk --minishift-home ~/.mynewdir
$ export MINISHIFT_HOME=~/.mynewdir
$ echo 'export MINISHIFT_HOME=~/.mynewdir' >> ~/.bashrc

3.1.3.3. Persistent Configuration

Using persistent configuration allows you to control the CDK behavior without specifying actual command line flags, similar to the way you use environment variables.

CDK maintains a configuration file in $MINISHIFT_HOME/config/config.json. This file can be used to set commonly-used command-line flags persistently.

Note

Persistent configuration can only be applied to the set of supported configuration options that are listed in the synopsis of the minishift config sub-command. This is different from environment variables, which can be used to replace any option of any command.

3.1.3.3.1. Setting Persistent Configuration Values

The easiest way to change a persistent configuration option is with the minishift config set sub-command. For example:

# Set default memory 4096 MB
$ minishift config set memory 4096

Flags which can be used multiple times per command invocation, like docker-env or insecure-registry, need to be comma-separated when used with the config set command. For example, from the CLI, you can use insecure-registry like this:

$ minishift start --insecure-registry hub.foo.com --insecure-registry hub.bar.com

If you want to configure the same registries in the persistent configuration, you would run:

$ minishift config set insecure-registry hub.foo.com,hub.bar.com

To view all persistent configuration values, you can use the minishift config view sub-command:

$ minishift config view
- memory: 4096

Alternatively, you can display a single value with the minishift config get sub-command:

$ minishift config get memory
4096
3.1.3.3.2. Unsetting Persistent Configuration Values

To remove a persistent configuration option, you can use the minishift config unset sub-command. For example:

$ minishift config unset memory

3.1.3.4. Driver-Specific Environment Variables

You can also set driver-specific environment variables. Each docker-machine driver supports its own set of options and variables. A good starting point is the official docker-machine driver documentation.

xhyve and KVM documentation is available under their respective GitHub repository docker-machine-driver-xhyve and docker-machine-kvm.

To use driver-specific options, make sure to export the variable as defined in its driver documentation before running minishift start. For example, the xhyve experimental NFS sharing can be enabled by executing:

$ export XHYVE_EXPERIMENTAL_NFS_SHARE=true
$ minishift start --vm-driver xhyve
Important

Driver-specific options might overlap with values specified using CDK-specific flags and environment variables. Examples are boot2docker URL, memory size, cpu count, and so on. In this case, driver-specific environment variables will override CDK-specific settings.

3.1.4. Persistent Volumes

As part of the OpenShift cluster provisioning, 100 persistent volumes are created for your OpenShift cluster. This allows applications to make persistent volumes claims. The location of the persistent data is determined in the host-pv-dir flag of the minishift start command and defaults to /var/lib/minishift/openshift.local.pv on the CDK VM.

3.1.5. HTTP/HTTPS Proxies

If you are behind an HTTP/HTTPS proxy, you need to supply proxy options to allow Docker and OpenShift to work properly. To do this, pass the required flags during minishift start.

For example:

$ minishift start --http-proxy http://YOURPROXY:PORT --https-proxy https://YOURPROXY:PORT

In an authenticated proxy environment, the proxy_user and proxy_password must be a part of proxy URI.

 $ minishift start --http-proxy http://<proxy_username>:<proxy_password>@YOURPROXY:PORT \
                   --https-proxy https://<proxy_username>:<proxy_password>@YOURPROXY:PORT

You can also use the --no-proxy flag to specify a comma-separated list of hosts that should not be proxied.

Using the proxy options will transparently configure the Docker daemon as well as OpenShift to use the specified proxies.

Note
  • minishift start honors the environment variables HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY and NO_PROXY. If these variables are set, they are implicitly used during minishift start unless explicitly overridden by the corresponding command line flags.
  • Use the minishift start --ocp-tag flag to request a specific version of OpenShift Container Platform. You can list all CDK-compatible OpenShift Container Platform versions with the minishift openshift version list command.

3.1.6. Networking

The CDK VM is exposed to the host system with a host-only IP address that can be obtained with the minishift ip command.

3.1.7. Connecting to the CDK VM with SSH

You can use the minishift ssh command to interact with the CDK VM.

You can run minishift ssh without a sub-command to open an interactive shell and run commands on the CDK VM in the same way that you run commands interactively on any remote machine using SSH.

You can also run minishift ssh with a sub-command to send the sub-command directly to the CDK VM and return the result to your local shell. For example:

$ minishift ssh -- docker ps
CONTAINER    IMAGE                   COMMAND                CREATED        STATUS        NAMES
71fe8ff16548 openshift/origin:v1.5.1 "/usr/bin/openshift s" 4 minutes ago  Up 4 minutes  origin

3.2. CDK Profiles

3.2.1. Overview

Important

You must run minishift setup-cdk before using profiles.

A profile is an instance of the Minishift VM along with all of its configuration and state. The profile feature allows you to create and manage these isolated instances of Minishift.

Each CDK profile is created with its own configuration (memory, CPU, disk size, add-ons, and so on) and completely independent of other profiles. Refer to the use of environment variables if you want to make sure that certain configuration settings, for example cpus or memory, get applied to all profiles.

The active profile is the profile against which all commands are executed, unless the global --profile flag is used. You can determine the active profile by using the minishift profile list command. You can execute single commands against a non-active profile by using the --profile flag, for example minishift --profile profile-demo console to open the OpenShift console for the specified profile-demo profile.

On top of the --profile flag, there are commands for listing, deleting and setting the active profile. These commands are described in the following sections.

3.2.2. Creating Profiles

There are two ways to create a new profile.

3.2.2.1. Using the --profile Flag

When you run any CDK command with the --profile flag the profile gets created if it does not exist, for example:

$ minishift --profile profile-demo start
-- Checking if requested hypervisor 'xhyve' is supported on this platform ... OK
-- Checking if xhyve driver is installed ...
   Driver is available at /usr/local/bin/docker-machine-driver-xhyve
   Checking for setuid bit ... OK
-- Checking the ISO URL ... OK
-- Starting local OpenShift cluster using 'xhyve' hypervisor ...
-- Minishift VM will be configured with ...
   Memory:    2 GB
   vCPUs :    2
   Disk size: 20 GB
...

See also workflow for profile configuration.

Note

A profile automatically becomes the active profile when a CDK instance is started successfully via minishift start.

3.2.2.2. Using the profile set Command

The other option to create a profile is to use the profile set command. If the specified profile does not exist, it is implicitly created:

$ minishift profile set demo
Profile 'demo' set as active profile
Note

The default profile is minishift. It will be present by default and it does not need to be created.

3.2.3. Listing Profiles

You can list all existing profiles with the minishift profile list command. You can also see the active profile highlighted in the output.

$ minishift profile list
- minishift     Running     	(Active)
- profile-demo  Does Not Exist

3.2.4. Switching Profiles

To switch between profiles use the minishift profile set command:

$ minishift profile set profile-demo
Profile 'profile-demo' set as active profile
Note

Only one profile can be active at any time.

3.2.5. Deleting Profiles

To delete a profile, run:

$ minishift profile delete profile-demo
You are deleting the active profile. It will remove the VM and all related artifacts. Do you want to continue [y/N]?: y
Deleted:  /Users/john/.minishift/profiles/profile-demo
Profile 'profile-demo' deleted successfully
Switching to default profile 'minishift' as the active profile.
Note

The default profile minishift cannot be deleted.

3.2.6. Example Workflow for Profile Configuration

You have two options to create a new profile and configure its persistent configuration. The first option is to implicitly create the new profile by making it the active profile using the profile set command. Once the profile is active you can run any minishift config command. Lastly, start the instance:

$ minishift profile set profile-demo
$ minishift config set memory 8GB
$ minishift config set cpus 4
$ minishift addon enable anyuid
$ minishift start

The alternative is to execute a series of commands each specifying the targeted profile explicitly using the --profile flag:

$ minishift --profile profile-demo config set memory 8GB
$ minishift --profile profile-demo config set cpus 4
$ minishift --profile profile-demo addon enable anyuid
$ minishift --profile profile-demo minishift start

3.3. Image Caching

3.3.1. Overview

To speed up provisioning of the OpenShift cluster and to minimize network traffic, the core OpenShift images can be cached on the host. This feature is considered experimental and needs to be explicitly enabled.

3.3.2. Image Caching Configuration

To enable image caching you use the minishift config set command:

$ minishift config set image-caching true

Once enabled, caching occurs transparently, in a background process, the first time you use the minishift start command. Once the images are cached under $MINISHIFT_HOME/cache/images, successive CDK VM creations will use these cached images.

Each time an image exporting background process runs, a log file is generated under $MINISHIFT_HOME/logs which can be used to verify the progress of the export.

You can disable the caching of the OpenShift images by setting image-caching to false or removing the setting altogether using minishift config unset:

$ minishift config unset image-caching
Note

Image caching is considered experimental and its semantics and API is subject to change. The aim is to allow caching of arbitrary images, as well as using a better format for storing the images on the host. You can track the progress on this feature on the GitHub issue #952.

3.4. Add-ons

3.4.1. Overview

Note

This feature is still considered experimental and might change in future releases.

CDK allows you to extend the vanilla OpenShift setup provided by cluster up with an add-on mechanism.

Add-ons are directories that contain a text file with the .addon extension. The directory can also contain other resource files such as JSON template files. However, only one .addon file is allowed per add-on.

The following example shows the contents of an add-on file, including the name and description of the add-on, additional metadata, and the actual add-on commands to apply.

Example: anyuid add-on definition file

# Name: anyuid                                                                          1
# Description: Allows authenticated users to run images under a non pre-allocated UID   2
# Required-Vars: ACME_TOKEN                                                             3
# OpenShift-Version: >3.6.0                                                             4

oc adm policy add-scc-to-group anyuid system:authenticated                              5

1
(Required) Name of the add-on.
2
(Required) Description of the add-on.
3
(Optional) Comma separated list of required interpolation variables. See Variable Interpolation.
4
(Optional) OpenShift version required to run a specific add-on. See OpenShift Version Semantics.
5
Actual add-on command. In this case, the command executes the oc binary.
Note

Comment lines, starting with the '#' character, can be inserted at anywhere in the file.

Enabled add-ons are applied during minishift start, immediately after the initial cluster provisioning is successfully completed.

3.4.2. OpenShift-Version Semantics

As part of the add-on metadata you can specify the OpenShift version which needs to be running in order to apply the add-on. To do so you can specify the optional OpenShift-Version metadata field. The semantics are as follow:

>3.6.0

OpenShift version higher than 3.6.0 needs to be running in order to apply the add-on.

>=3.6.0

OpenShift version 3.6.0 or higher needs to be running in order to apply the add-on.

3.6.0

OpenShift version 3.6.0 needs to be running in order to apply the add-on.

>=3.5.0, <3.8.0

OpenShift version should higher or equal to 3.5.0 but lower than 3.8.0.

>=3.5.0, <=3.8.0

OpenShift version should higher or equal to 3.5.0 but lower or equal to 3.8.0.

Note

If the metadata field OpenShift-Version is not specified in the add-on header, the add-on is applied against any version of OpenShift.

Note

OpenShift-Version supports only versions in the form of <major>.<minor>.<patch>.

3.4.3. Add-on Commands

This section describes the commands that an add-on file can contain. They are forming a mini-DSL for CDK add-ons:

ssh
If the add-on command starts with ssh, you can run any command within the minishift-managed VM. This is similar to running minishift ssh and then executing any command on the VM. For more information about minishift ssh command usage, see Connecting to the CDK VM with SSH.
oc

If the add-on command starts with oc, it uses the oc binary that is cached on your host to execute the specified oc command. This is similar to running oc --as system:admin …​ from the command-line.

Note

The oc command is executed as system:admin.

openshift
If the add-on command starts with openshift, you can run the openshift binary within the container that runs OpenShift. This means that any file parameters or other system-specific parameters must match the environment of the container instead of your host.
docker
If the add-on command starts with docker, it executes a docker command against the docker daemon within the CDK VM. This is the same daemon on which the single-node OpenShift cluster is running as well. This is similar to running eval $(minishift docker-env) on your host and then executing any docker command. See also minishift docker-env.
echo
If the add-on command starts with echo, the arguments following the echo command are printed to the console. This can be used to provide additional feedback during add-on execution.
sleep
If the add-on command starts with sleep, it waits for the specified number of seconds. This can be useful in cases where you know that a command such as oc might take a few seconds before a certain resource can be queried.
Note

Trying to use an undefined command will cause an error when the add-on gets parsed.

3.4.4. Variable Interpolation

CDK allows the use of variables within the add-on commands. Variables have the format #{<variable-name>}. The following example shows how the OpenShift routing suffix can be interpolated into an openshift command to create a new certificate as part of securing the OpenShift registry. The used variable #{routing-suffix} is part of the built-in add-on variables.

Example: Usage of the routing-suffix variable

$ openshift admin ca create-server-cert \
  --signer-cert=/var/lib/origin/openshift.local.config/master/ca.crt \
  --signer-key=/var/lib/origin/openshift.local.config/master/ca.key \
  --signer-serial=/var/lib/origin/openshift.local.config/master/ca.serial.txt \
  --hostnames='docker-registry-default.#{routing-suffix},docker-registry.default.svc.cluster.local,172.30.1.1' \
  --cert=/etc/secrets/registry.crt \
  --key=/etc/secrets/registry.key

3.4.4.1. Built-in Variables

There exist several built-in variables which are available for interpolation at all times. The following table shows these variables.

Table 3.1. Supported built-in add-on variables

VariableDescription

ip

IP of the CDK VM.

routing-suffix

OpenShift routing suffix for the application.

addon-name

Name of the current add-on.

3.4.4.2. Dynamic Variables

The commands minishift start as well as minishift addons apply also provide an --addon-env flag which allows to dynamically pass variables for interpolation, for example:

$ minishift addons apply --addon-env PROJECT_USER=john acme

The --addon-env flag can be specified multiple times to define more than one variables for interpolation.

Specifying dynamic variables also works in conjunction with setting persistent configuration values.

$ minishift config set addon-env PROJECT_USER=john
$ minishift addons apply acme
Tip

Multiple variables need to be comma separated when the minishift config set is used.

There is also the possibility to dynamically interpolate a variable with the value of an environment variable at the time the add-on gets applied. For this the variable value needs to be prefixed with env.

$ minishift config set addon-env PROJECT_USER=env.USER        1
$ minishift addons apply acme                                 2
1
Using the env prefix ensures that instead of literally replacing '#{PROJECT_USER}' with 'env.USER', the value of the environment variable USER is used. If the environment variable is not set not, interpolation does not occur.
2
When the add-on is applied, each occurrence of #{PROJECT_USER} within an add-on command gets replaced with the value of the environment variable USER.

As an add-on developer, you can enforce that a variable value is provided when the add-on gets applied by adding the variable name to the Required-Vars metadata header. Multiple variables need to be comma separated.

# Name: acme
# Description: ACME add-on
# Required-Vars: PROJECT_USER

3.4.5. Default Add-ons

CDK provides a set of built-in add-ons that offer some common OpenShift customization to assist with development. During minishift setup-cdk, minishift automatically installs and enables the xpaas, anyuid, and admin-user add-ons. To install the default add-ons, run:

$ minishift addons install --defaults

This command extracts the default add-ons to the add-on installation directory $MINISHIFT_HOME/addons. To view the list of installed add-ons, you can then run:

$ minishift addons list --verbose=true

This command prints a list of installed add-ons. You should at least see the anyuid add-on listed. This is an important add-on that allows you to run images that do not use a pre-allocated UID. By default, this is not allowed in OpenShift.

3.4.6. Enabling and Disabling Add-ons

Add-ons are enabled with the minishift addons enable command and disabled with the minishift addons disable command. Enabled add-ons automatically get executed during minishift start.

The following examples show how to enable and disable the anyuid add-on.

Example: Enabling the anyuid add-on

$ minishift addons enable anyuid

Example: Disabling the anyuid add-on

$ minishift addons disable anyuid

3.4.6.1. Add-on Priorities

When you enable an add-on, you can also specify a priority, which determines the order that the add-ons are applied.

The following example shows how to enable the registry add-on with a higher priority value.

Example: Enabling the registry add-on with priority

$ minishift addons enable registry --priority=5

The add-on priority attribute determines the order in which add-ons are applied. By default, an add-on has the priority 0. Add-ons with a lower priority value are applied first.

In the following example, the anyuid, registry, and eap add-ons are enabled with the respective priorities of 0, 5 and 10. This means that anyuid is applied first, followed by registry, and lastly the eap add-on.

Example: List command output with explicit priorities

$ minishift addons list
- anyuid         : enabled    P(0)
- registry       : enabled    P(5)
- eap            : enabled    P(10)

Note

If two add-ons have the same priority the order in which they are getting applied is not determined.

3.4.7. Applying Add-ons

Add-ons can be explicitly executed with the minishift addons apply command. You can use the apply command for both enabled and disabled add-ons. To apply multiple add-ons with a single command, specify add-on names separated by space.

The following example shows how to explicitly apply the anyuid and the admin-user add-ons.

Example: Applying anyuid and admin-user add-ons

$ minishift addons apply anyuid admin-user

3.4.8. Removing Add-ons

Add-ons can be removed with the minishift addons remove command. It is the mirror command to minishift addons apply and similarly can be used regardless of whether the add-on is enabled or not. Provided the specified add-on is installed and has a <addon_name>.addon.remove file, minishift addons remove will execute the commands specified in this file.

To remove multiple add-ons with a single command, specify the add-on names separated by a space. The following example shows how to explicitly remove the admin-user add-on.

Example: Removing admin-user add-on

$ minishift addons remove admin-user
-- Removing addon 'admin-user':.
admin user deleted

3.4.9. Uninstalling Add-ons

Add-ons can be uninstalled with the minishift addons uninstall command. It is the mirror command to minishift addons install and can be used regardless of whether the add-on is enabled or not. Provided the specified add-on is installed, minishift addons uninstall will delete the corresponding add-on directory from $MINISHIFT_HOME/addons.

The following example shows how to explicitly uninstall the admin-user add-on:

Example: Uninstalling admin-user add-on

$ minishift addons uninstall admin-user
Add-on 'admin-user' uninstalled

3.4.10. Writing Custom Add-ons

To write a custom add-on, you should create a directory and in it create one (and only one) text file with the extension .addon, for example admin-role.addon.

This file needs to contain the Name and Description metadata fields, as well as the commands that you want to execute as a part of the add-on.

The following example shows the definition of an add-on that gives the developer user cluster-admin privileges.

Example: Add-on definition for admin-role

# Name: admin-role
# Description: Gives the developer user cluster-admin privileges

oc adm policy add-role-to-user cluster-admin developer

After you define the add-on, you can install it by running:

$ minishift addons install <ADDON_DIR_PATH>
Note

You can also edit your add-on directly in the minishift add-on install directory $MINISHIFT_HOME/addons. Be aware that if there is an error in the add-on, it will not show when you run any addons commands, and it will not be applied during the minishift start process.

3.5. Host Folders

3.5.1. Overview

Host folders are directories on the host which are shared between the host and the CDK VM. This allows for two way file synchronization between the host and the VM. The following sections discuss usage of the minishift hostfolder command.

3.5.2. The minishift hostfolder Command

CDK provides the minishift hostfolder command to list, add, mount, unmount and remove host folders. You can use the hostfolder command to mount multiple shared folders onto custom specified mount points.

Note

Currently only CIFS is supported as a host folder type. Support for SSHFS-based host folders is in progress, as described in GitHub issue #317. If you want to manually set up SSHFS, see SSHFS Host Folders.

3.5.2.1. Prerequisites

To use the minishift hostfolder command, you need to be able to share directories using CIFS. On Windows, CIFS is the default technology for sharing directories. For example, on Windows 10 the C:\Users directory is shared by default and can be accessed by locally-authenticated users.

It is also possible to use CIFS on macOS and Linux. On macOS, you can enable CIFS-based shares under System Preferences > Sharing. See How to connect with File Sharing on your Mac for detailed setup instructions.

On Linux, follow your distribution-specific instructions to install Samba. Refer to Samba File and Print Server in RHEL to learn how to configure the Samba implementation of CIFS in Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

3.5.2.2. Displaying Host Folders

The minishift hostfolder list command gives you an overview of the defined host folders, their names, mount points, remote paths and whether they are currently mounted.

An example output could look like:

$ minishift hostfolder list
Name        Mountpoint            Remote path              Mounted
myshare     /mnt/sda1/myshare     //192.168.1.82/MYSHARE   N

In this example, there is a host folder with the name myshare which mounts //192.168.1.82/MYSHARE onto /mnt/sda1/myshare in the CDK VM. The share is currently not mounted.

Note

The remote path must be reachable from within the VM. In the example above, 192.168.1.82 is the IP of the host within the LAN, which is one option you can use. You can use ifconfig (or Get-NetIPAddress | Format-Table on Windows) to determine a routable IP address.

3.5.2.3. Adding Host Folders

The minishift hostfolder add command allows you to define a new host folder. This is an interactive process that queries the relevant details for a host folder based on CIFS.

Adding a CIFS based hostfolder

$ minishift hostfolder add myshare 1
UNC path: //192.168.99.1/MYSHARE   2
Mountpoint [/mnt/sda1/myshare]:    3
Username: john                     4
Password: [HIDDEN]                 5
Domain:                            6
Added: myshare

1
(Required) Actual minishift hostfolder add command that specifies a host folder with the name of myshare.
2
(Required) The UNC path for the share.
3
The mount point within the VM. The default is /mnt/sda1/<host folder name>.
4
(Required) The user name for the CIFS share.
5
(Required) The password for the CIFS share.
6
The domain of the share. Often this can be left blank, but for example on Windows, when your account is linked to a Microsoft account, you must use the Microsoft account email address as user name as well as your machine name as displayed by $env:COMPUTERNAME as a domain.
Tip

On Windows hosts, the minishift hostfolder add command also provides a users-share option. When this option is specified, no UNC path needs to be specified and C:\Users is assumed.

3.5.2.3.1. Instance-Specific Host Folders

By default, host folder definitions are persistent, similar to other persistent configuration options. This means that these host folder definitions will survive the deletion and subsequent re-creation of a CDK VM.

In some cases you might want to define a host folder just for a specific CDK instance. To do so, you can use the --instance-only flag of the minishift hostfolder add command. Host folder definitions that are created with the --instance-only flag will be removed together with any other instance-specific state during minishift delete.

3.5.2.4. Mounting Host Folders

After you add host folders, you use the minishift hostfolder mount command to mount a host folder by its name:

$ minishift hostfolder mount myshare
Mounting 'myshare': '//192.168.99.1/MYSHARE' as '/mnt/sda1/myshare' ... OK

You can verify that the host folder is mounted by running:

$ minishift hostfolder list
Name       Mountpoint          Remote path              Mounted
myshare    /mnt/sda1/myshare   //192.168.99.1/MYSHARE   Y

Alternatively, you can list the actual content of the mounted host folder:

$ minishift ssh "ls -al /mnt/sda1/myshare"
3.5.2.4.1. Auto-Mounting Host Folders

Host folders can also be mounted automatically each time you run minishift start. To set auto-mounting, you need to set the hostfolders-automount option in the CDK configuration file.

$ minishift config set hostfolders-automount true

After the hostfolders-automount option is set, CDK will attempt to mount all defined host folders during minishift start.

3.5.2.5. Unmounting Host Folders

You use the minishift hostfolder umount command to unmount a host folder.

$ minishift hostfolder umount myshare
Unmounting 'myshare' ... OK

$ minishift hostfolder list
Name       Mountpoint          Remote path              Mounted
myshare    /mnt/sda1/myshare   //192.168.99.1/MYSHARE   N

3.5.2.6. Deleting Host Folders

You use the minishift hostfolder remove command to remove a host folder definition.

$ minishift hostfolder list
Name        Mountpoint            Remote path              Mounted
myshare     /mnt/sda1/myshare     //192.168.1.82/MYSHARE   N

$ minishift hostfolder remove myshare
Removed: myshare

$ minishift hostfolder list
No host folders defined

3.5.2.7. SSHFS Host Folders

Note

This host folder type is not supported by the minishift hostfolder command and requires manual configuration.

You can use SSHFS-based host folders if you have an SSH daemon running on your host. Normally, this prerequisite is met by default on Linux and macOS.

Most Linux distributions have an SSH daemon installed. If not, follow the instructions for your specific distribution to install an SSH daemon.

macOS also has a built-in SSH server. To use it, make sure that Remote Login is enabled in System Preferences > Sharing.

On Windows, you can install OpenSSH for Windows.

The following steps demonstrate how to mount host folders with SSHFS.

  1. Run ifconfig (or Get-NetIPAddress on Windows) to determine the local IP address from the same network segment as your CDK instance.
  2. Create a mountpoint and mount the shared folder.

    $ minishift ssh "sudo mkdir -p /Users/<username>"
    $ minishift ssh "sudo chown -R docker /Users"
    $ minishift ssh
    $ sshfs <username>@<IP>:/Users/<username>/ /Users
  3. Verify the share mount.

    $ minishift ssh "ls -al /Users/<username>"

3.6. CDK docker daemon

3.6.1. Reusing the docker Daemon

When running OpenShift in a single VM, you can reuse the docker daemon managed by CDK for other docker use-cases as well. By using the same docker daemon as the one used in CDK, you can speed up your local development.

In order to configure your console to reuse CDK docker daemon, follow these steps:

  1. Make sure that you have the docker client binary installed on your machine. For information about specific binary installations for your operating system, see the docker installation site. For a Red Hat Enterprise Linux system, install the docker package as described in Get Started with Docker-Formatted Container Images, but don’t start the docker service on the host.
  2. Start CDK with the minishift start command.
  3. Run the minishift docker-env command to display the command you need to type into your shell in order to configure your Docker client. The command output will differ depending on OS and shell type.

    $ minishift docker-env
    export DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY="1"
    export DOCKER_HOST="tcp://192.168.99.101:2376"
    export DOCKER_CERT_PATH="/Users/john/.minishift/certs"
    export DOCKER_API_VERSION="1.24"
    # Run this command to configure your shell:
    # eval $(minishift docker-env)
  4. Test the connection by running the following command:

    $ docker ps

    If successful, the shell will print a list of running containers.

3.7. Experimental Features

3.7.1. Overview

If you want to get early access to some upcoming features and experiment, you can set the environment variable MINISHIFT_ENABLE_EXPERIMENTAL, which makes additional features flags available:

$ export MINISHIFT_ENABLE_EXPERIMENTAL=y
Important

Experimental features are not officially supported, and might break or result in unexpected behavior. To share your feedback on these features, you are welcome to contact the CDK community.

3.7.2. Enabling experimental oc cluster up flags

By default, CDK does not expose all oc cluster up flags in the CDK CLI.

You can set the MINISHIFT_ENABLE_EXPERIMENTAL environment variable to enable the following options for the minishift start command:

service-catalog
Enables provisioning the OpenShift service catalog.
extra-clusterup-flags
Enables passing flags that are not directly exposed in the CDK CLI directly to oc cluster up.

3.7.3. Assign IP address to Hyper-V

Since the Internal Virtual Switch for Hyper-V does not provide a DHCP offer option, an IP address needs to be provided in a different way. For Hyper-V a functionality is provided to assign an IP address on startup using the Data Exchange Service.

To make this work you need to create a Virtual Switch using NAT

Note

WinNAT is limited to one NAT network per host. For more details about capabilities, and limitations, please see the WinNAT capabilities and limitations blog.

The following command will attempt to assign an IP address for use on the Internal Virtual Switch 'MyInternal':

PS> $env:MINISHIFT_ENABLE_EXPERIMENTAL="y"
PS> $env:HYPERV_VIRTUAL_SWITCH="MyInternal"
PS> minishift.exe start `
  --network-ipaddress 192.168.1.10 `
  --network-gateway 192.168.1.1 `
  --network-nameserver 8.8.8.8

If you want to use the 'DockerNAT' network, the following commands are needed to setup the correct NAT networking and assigning an IP in the range expected:

PS> New-NetNat -Name SharedNAT -InternalIPInterfaceAddressPrefix 10.0.75.1/24
PS> $env:MINISHIFT_ENABLE_EXPERIMENTAL="y"
PS> $env:HYPERV_VIRTUAL_SWITCH="DockerNAT"
PS> minishift.exe start `
  --network-ipaddress 10.0.75.128 `
  --network-gateway 10.0.75.1 `
  --network-nameserver 8.8.8.8
Note
  • Be sure to specify a valid gateway and nameserver. Failing to do so will result in connectivity issues

Chapter 4. Troubleshooting CDK

4.1. Overview

This section contains solutions to common problems that you might encounter while setting up and using CDK.

4.2. Troubleshooting Getting Started

4.2.1. Overview

This section contains solutions to common problems that you might encounter while installing and configuring CDK.

4.2.2. CDK startup check failed

While CDK starts, it runs several startup checks to make sure that the CDK VM and the OpenShift Cluster are able to start without any issues. If any configuration is incorrect or missing, the startup checks fail and CDK does not start.

The following sections describe the different startup checks.

4.2.2.1. Driver plug-in configuration

One of the startup checks verifies that the relevant driver plug-in is configured correctly. If this startup check fails, review the set up your virtualization environment topic and configure the driver.

If you want to force CDK to start despite a failing driver plugin-in check, you can instruct CDK to treat these errors as warnings:

  • For KVM/libvirt on Linux, run the following command:

    $ minishift config set warn-check-kvm-driver true
  • For xhyve on macOS, run the following command:

    $ minishift config set warn-check-xhyve-driver true
  • For Hyper-V on Windows, run the following command:

    $ minishift config set warn-check-hyperv-driver true

4.2.2.2. Persistent storage volume configuration and usage

CDK checks whether the persistent storage volume is mounted and that enough disk space is available. If the persistent storage volume, for example, uses more than 95% of the available disk space, CDK will not start.

If you want to recover the data, you can skip this test and start CDK to access the persistent volume:

$ minishift config set skip-check-storage-usage true

4.2.2.3. External network connectivity

After the CDK VM starts, it runs several network checks to verify whether external connectivity is possible from within the CDK VM.

By default, network checks are configured to treat any errors as warnings, because of the diversity of the development environments. You can configure the network checks to optimize them for your environment.

For example, one of the network checks pings an external host. You can change the host by running the following command:

$ minishift config set check-network-ping-host <host-IP-address>

Replace <host-IP-address> with the address of your internal DNS server, proxy host, or an external host that you can reach from your machine.

Because proxy connectivity might be problematic, you can run a check that tries to retrieve an external URL. You can configure the URL by running:

$ minishift config set check-network-http-host <URL>

4.3. Troubleshooting Driver Plug-ins

4.3.1. Overview

This section contains solutions to common problems that you might encounter while configuring the driver plug-ins for CDK.

4.3.2. KVM/libvirt

4.3.2.1. Undefining virsh snapshots fail

If you use virsh on KVM/libvirt to create snapshots in your development workflow, and then use minishift delete to delete the snapshots along with the VM, you might encounter the following error:

$ minishift delete
Deleting the {project} VM...
Error deleting the VM:  [Code-55] [Domain-10] Requested operation is not valid: cannot delete inactive domain with 4 snapshots

Cause: The snapshots are stored in ~/.minishift/machines, but the definitions are stored in /var/lib/libvirt/qemu/snapshot/minishift.

Workaround: To delete the snapshots, you need to perform the following steps as root.

  1. Delete the definitions.

    # virsh snapshot-delete --metadata minishift <snapshot-name>
  2. Undefine the CDK domain.

    # virsh undefine minishift

    You can now run minishift delete to delete the VM and restart CDK.

Note

If these steps do not resolve the issue, you can also use the following command to delete the snapshots:

$ rm -rf ~/.minishift/machines

It is recommended to avoid using metadata when you create snapshots. To ensure this, you can specify the --no-metadata flag. For example:

# virsh snapshot-create-as --domain vm1 overlay1 --diskspec vda,file=/export/overlay1.qcow2 --disk-only --atomic --no-metadata

4.3.2.2. Error creating new host: dial tcp: missing address

The problem is likely that the libvirtd service is not running. You can check this with the following command:

$ systemctl status libvirtd

If libvirtd is not running, start it and enable it to start on boot:

$ systemctl start libvirtd
$ systemctl enable libvirtd

4.3.2.3. Failed to connect socket to '/var/run/libvirt/virtlogd-sock'

The problem is likely that the virtlogd service is not running. You can check this with the following command:

$ systemctl status virtlogd

If virtlogd is not running, start it and enable it to start on boot:

$ systemctl start virtlogd
$ systemctl enable virtlogd

4.3.2.4. Domain 'minishift' already exists…​

If you try minishift start and this error appears, ensure that you use minishift delete to delete the VMs that you created earlier. However, if this fails and you want to completely clean up CDK and start fresh, do the following:

  1. As root, check if any existing CDK VMs are running:

    # virsh list --all
  2. If any CDK VM is running, stop it:

    # virsh destroy minishift
  3. Delete the VM:

    # virsh undefine minishift
  4. As your regular user, delete the ~/.minishift/machines directory:

    $ rm -rf ~/.minishift/machines

In case all of this fails, you might want to uninstall CDK and do a fresh install of CDK.

4.3.3. xhyve

4.3.3.1. Could not create vmnet interface

The problem is likely that the xhyve driver is not able to clean up vmnet when a VM is removed. vmnet.framework determines the IP address based on the following files:

  • /var/db/dhcpd_leases
  • /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.vmnet.plist

Reset the CDK-specific IP database, ensure that you remove the minishift entry section from the dhcpd_leases file, and reboot your system.

{
  ip_address=192.168.64.2
  hw_address=1,2:51:8:22:87:a6
  identifier=1,2:51:8:22:87:a6
  lease=0x585e6e70
  name=minishift
}
Note

You can completely reset the IP database by removing the files manually, but this is very risky.

4.3.4. VirtualBox

4.3.4.1. Error machine does not exist

If you use Windows, ensure that you set the --vm-driver virtualbox flag in the minishift start command. Alternatively, the problem might be an outdated version of VirtualBox.

To avoid this issue, it is recommended to use VirtualBox 5.1.12 or later.

4.3.5. Hyper-V

4.3.5.1. Hyper-V commands must be run as an Administrator

If you run CDK with Hyper-V on Windows as a normal user or as a user with Administrator privileges, you might encounter the following error:

Error starting the VM: Error creating the VM. Error with pre-create check: "Hyper-V commands must be run as an Administrator".

Workaround: You can either add yourself to the Hyper-V Administrators group, which is recommended, or run the shell in an elevated mode.

If you are using PowerShell, you can add yourself to the Hyper-V Administrators group as follows:

  1. As an administrator, run the following command:

    ([adsi]”WinNT://./Hyper-V Administrators,group”).Add(“WinNT://$env:UserDomain/$env:Username,user”)
  2. Log out and log back in for the change to take effect.

You can also use the GUI to add yourself to the Hyper-V Administrators group as follows:

  1. Click the Start button and choose Computer Management.
  2. In the Computer Management window, select Local Users And Groups and then double click on Groups.
  3. Double click on the Hyper-V Administrators group, the Hyper-V Administrators Properties dialog box is displayed.
  4. Add your account to the Hyper-V Administrators group and log off and log in for the change to take effect.

Now you can run the Hyper-V commands as a normal user.

For more options for Hyper-V see creating Hyper-V administrators local group.

4.3.5.2. CDK running with Hyper-V fails when connected to OpenVPN

If you try to use CDK with Hyper-V using an external virtual switch while you are connected to a VPN such as OpenVPN, CDK might fail to provision the VM.

Cause: Hyper-V networking might not route the network traffic in both directions properly when connected to a VPN.

Workaround: Disconnect from the VPN and try again after stopping the VM from the Hyper-V manager.

4.4. Troubleshooting Miscellaneous

4.4.1. Overview

This section contains solutions to common problems that you might encounter while using various components of CDK.

4.4.2. The root filesystem of the CDK VM exceeds overlay size

Installing additional packages or copying large files to the root filesystem of the CDK VM might exceed the allocated overlay size and lock the CDK VM.

Cause: The CDK VM root filesystem contains core packages that are configured to optimize running the CDK VM and containers. The available storage on the root filesystem is determined by the overlay size, which is smaller than the total available storage.

Workaround: Avoid installing packages or storing large files in the root filesystem of the CDK VM. Instead, you can create a sub-directory in the mnt/sda1/ persistent storage volume or define and mount host folders that can share storage space between the host and the CDK VM.

If you want to perform development tasks inside the CDK VM, it is recommended that you use containers, which are stored in persistent storage volumes, and reuse the CDK Docker daemon.

4.4.3. Special characters cause passwords to fail

Depending on your operating system and shell environment, certain special characters can trigger variable interpolation and therefore cause passwords to fail.

Workaround: When creating and entering passwords, wrap the string with single quotes in the following format: '<password>'

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