How to Install Minikube on Ubuntu 22.04 / 20.04 LTS

Minikube is single node Kubernetes (k8s) cluster and can be installed inside a virtual machines. It generally used for test and development environment. Anyone who is new to Kubernetes and want to learn it then minikube is recommended setup. As it can be deployed very easily almost on all the linux distributions likee Ubuntu, RHEL, CentOS and Debian.

In this guide, we will learn how to install Minikube on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish) and Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) LTS. Steps would be identical on the ubuntu version.

Minimum system requirements for Minikube

2GB RAM or more
2 CPU Core or more
20 GB hard disk or more
User with Sudo Privilege
Docker or VirtualBox or KVM
Stable Internet Connection

Let’s deep dive into the installation steps of Minikube,

1 ) Install Minikube Package Dependencies

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install curl wget apt-transport-https -y

Note: In this guide, I am using docker as base for Minikube and assuming is already installed on your system. In case it is not installed the refer below:

How to Install Docker on Ubuntu 22.04 / Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

2 ) Download Minikube binary with wget

Run beneath wget command to download minikube binary,

$ wget https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-linux-amd64

Copy the downloaded minikube binary to /usr/local/bin with cp command and also don’t forget to set executable permissions on it.

$ sudo cp minikube-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/minikube
$ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/minikube

View the minikube version by running,

$ minikube version
minikube version: v1.25.2
commit: 362d5fdc0a3dbee389b3d3f1034e8023e72bd3a7
$

3) Download kubectl Utility

Kubectl is a command line utility which is used to interact with Kubernetes cluster. Using kubectl we deploy different resources in Kubernetes cluster.

To download and install kubectl use following wget command,

$ curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/`curl -s https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/stable.txt`/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl

Output

Move kubectl binary to /usr/local/bin and set execute permissions on it.

$ chmod +x kubectl
$ sudo mv kubectl /usr/local/bin/

Verify the Kubectl version using beneath command,

$ kubectl version

Output

4) Start Minikube with Docker Driver

As we are using docker as a base for minikube, so run following minikube command to start it

$ minikube start --driver=docker

Great, above output confirms that minikube has been started successfully.

Note: In case, you want pass customize resource parameters while starting the minikube, use below

$ minikube start --addons=ingress --cpus=4 --cni=flannel --install-addons=true --kubernetes-version=stable --memory=6g

5) Verify Minikube and Kubernetes Cluster Status

To verify the minikube status, run

$ minikube status

To Verify Kubernetes cluster status, run

$ kubectl cluster-info

Output of above commands would look like below:

5) Enable Addons on Minikube

When we install minikube, only few addons are enabled. To view all the addons and their status, run

$ minikube addons list

To Enable addons, run

$ minikube addons enable ingress
$ minikube addons enable dashboard

6) Test Kubernetes Cluster

To test Kubernetes cluster, let deploy a nginx based deployment using following kubectl command,

$ kubectl create deployment myapp --image=nginx --replicas=2
$ kubectl get deployment myapp
NAME    READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
myapp   2/2     2            2           30s
$

Create a service by exposing the deployment,

$ kubectl expose deployment myapp --type=NodePort --port=80

Get the service url, by running

$ minikube service myapp --url
http://192.168.49.2:31441
$

Now try access the app using the URL,

$ curl http://192.168.49.2:31441

Perfect, above output confirms that we can access nginx web page.

7) Access Kubernetes dashboard

To access Kubernetes dashboard, run following command

$ minikube dashboard --url

Click on the url which is displayed in the output, it will open the Kubernetes dashboard,

8) Manage Minikube Cluster

To stop the minikube, run

$ minikube stop

To start the minikube, run

$ minikube start

To delete the minikube cluster, first stop it and then delete it

$ minikube delete

That’s all from this guide. I hope you have found it informative, please don’t hesitate to share your queries and feedback in below comments section.