Basic Usage - Using Minishift | Minishift

Overview

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

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

The Minishift architecture diagram outlines these components. The minishift binary, placed on the PATH for easy execution, is used to start, stop and delete the Minishift VM. The VM itself is bootstrapping off a pluggable Live ISO.

Some Minishift 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. Minishift 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 Minishift to manage your local OpenShift cluster, see the Interacting with OpenShift section.

: Minishift architecture

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 host machine
 +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 |                      /-------------> Minishift VM                                   |
 |                      |                                                              |
 |                      |         /--->  o boots from pluggable Live ISO               |
 | $PATH                |         |      o runs on VirtualBox, HyperV, xhyve or KVM    |
 | └── minishift -=-----|         |                                                    |
 |                      |         |   /------------------------------------------\     |
 |                      |         |   |c1AB                                      |     |
 |                      |-=-------|=--|-=->  Docker                              |     |
 |                      :         |   |   /-----------------------------\        |     |
 |                      |         |   |   | c1FF                        |        |     |
 |~/.minishift/         \-=-------|=--|-=-|-=---> OpenShift             |        |     |
 | |                              |   |   |  |  /-------------------\   |        |     |
 | +-- cache                      |   |   |  |  |                   |   |        |     |
 |     |                          |   |   |  |  | master   node     |   |        |     |
 |     +-- iso                    |   |   |  |  | +-----+  +-----+  |   |        |     |
 |     |   |                      |   |   |  |  | | {d} |  | {d} |  |   |        |     |
 |     |   +-- minishift_b2d.iso -/   |   |  |  | |     |  |     |  |   |        |     |
 |     |                              |   |  |  | |     |  |     |  |   |        |     |
 |     +-- oc                         |   |  |  | |     |  |     |  |   |        |     |
 |         |                          |   |  |  | |     |  |     |  |   |        |     |
 |         +-- v3.6.0                 |   |  |  | |     |  |     |  |   |        |     |
 |             |                      |   |  |  | |     |  |     |  |   |        |     |
 |             +-- oc  -=-------------|-=-|-=+  | +-----+  +-----+  |   |        |     |
 |                                    |   |     \-------------------/   |        |     |
 |                                    |   \-----------------------------/        |     |
 |                                    \------------------------------------------/     |
 |                                                                                     |
 +-------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Minishift Life-cycle

Minishift start Command

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

Minishift stop Command

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

Starting Minishift 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.

Minishift delete Command

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

Choosing the ISO Image

When you start Minishift, it downloads a live ISO image that the hypervisor uses to provision the Minishift VM.

The following ISO images are available:

Minishift Boot2Docker (Default). This ISO image is based on Boot2Docker, which is a lightweight Linux distribution customized to run Docker containers. The image size is small and optimized for development but not for production.
Minishift CentOS. This ISO image is based on CentOS, which is an enterprise-ready Linux distribution that more closely resembles a production environment. The image size is larger than the Boot2Docker ISO image.
minikube ISO. This ISO image is provided by Minikube project. It is a customized Linux and based on upstream kernel. Minikube ISO image also provides alternate container runtime e.g. cri-o and rkt along with docker. Please check Minikube documentation for details.

Minikube ISO image use is experimental in Minishift. Work is in progress to make it as stable as CentOS and Boot2Docker ISO images.

By default, Minishift uses the Minishift Boot2Docker ISO image. To choose the Minishift CentOS ISO image instead, you can do one of the following:

Use the centos alias to download and use the latest CentOS ISO:
```
$ minishift start --iso-url centos
```

Specify explicitly the download URL of the Minishift CentOS ISO image. For example:

$ minishift start --iso-url https://github.com/minishift/minishift-centos-iso/releases/download/v1.6.1/minishift-centos7.iso

Manually download the Minishift CentSO ISO image from the releases page and enter the file URI to the image:

The path given for a file URI must be an absolute path.

On Linux or macOS, the path must begin with /. For example:
```
$ minishift start --iso-url file:///path/to/image.iso
```
On Windows, the path must begin with a drive letter (C:, D:). For example:
```
C:\> minishift.exe start --iso-url file://c:/path/to/image.iso
```

You cannot run Minishift with both ISO images concurrently. To switch between ISO images, delete the Minishift instance and start a new instance with the ISO image that you want to use.

Runtime Options

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

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

Use command line flags as specified in the Flags section.
Set environment variables as described in the Environment Variables section.
Use persistent configuration options as described in the Persistent Configuration section.
Accept the default value as defined by Minishift.

Flags

You can use command line flags with Minishift 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.

Environment Variables

Minishift 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.

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.
Use uppercase characters for the flag, so MINISHIFT_vm-driver in the above example becomes MINISHIFT_VM-DRIVER.
Replace - with _, so MINISHIFT_VM-DRIVER becomes MINISHIFT_VM_DRIVER.

Environment variables can be used to replace any option of any Minishift 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.

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

Persistent Configuration

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

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

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.

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

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

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 Minishift VM.

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.

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.
Using the proxy options requires that you run OpenShift version 1.5.0 or later. Use the openshift-version option to request a specific version of OpenShift. You can list all Minishift-compatible OpenShift versions with the minishift openshift version list command.

Networking

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

Connecting to the Minishift VM with SSH

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

You can run minishift ssh without a sub-command to open an interactive shell and run commands on the Minishift 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 Minishift 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