Replace Docker Desktop with Minikube: Part 2
About a month ago I decided to try replacing docker desktop with minikube based on an article I reposted on here. While this process requires a little more work than docker desktop, which offered a solution that felt like docker on linux, I’ve mostly been able to get by with my day to day work.
The minikube post has follow ups by the other on how to handle mounts and now
I just start a process mounting $HOME:$HOME when I need to run a container
that uses my local file system. And I have to make sure to run the eval
command so docker works.
The biggest issue has been when I use the hyperkit driver, because of its small memory footprint, and need to connect to the work vpn. I believe my work vpn is taking over the CIDR range for the minikube vm and thus I can no longer access it. Docker Desktop uses hyperkit as well and they solve this problem by using vpnkit. The vpnkit binary can be hard to find as it is on circle ci and those artifacts are deleted after 30 days: https://github.com/moby/vpnkit/issues/380
Once I got the vpnkit binary and ran it the minikube start command would fail with not a lot of output. I finally found I needed to install the latest hyperkit binary and then, at least, minikube would start.
First start vpnkit::
Contents/Resources/bin/vpnkit --ethernet /tmp/vpnkit.socket --port /tmp/vpnkit.port.socket --diagnostics /tmp/vpnkit.diag.socket --vsock-path /tmp/connect --debug
Then minikube pointing to the vpnkit socket:
minikube start --profile vpnkit --kubernetes-version=v1.22.1 --driver=hyperkit --container-runtime=docker --hyperkit-vpnkit-sock=/tmp/vpnkit.socket
But even with this setup, I could not connect to the minikube vm when on vpn. So, for now, I have a virtualbox profile I use when I need to be on the vpn, as that driver works fine on the vpn. And then the default profile uses hyperkit with no vpnkit. And lastly, I created a profile for using vpnkit so I can continue to try and figure this out.