How to use local docker images with Minikube?

Question

I have several docker images that I want to use with minikube. I don't want to first have to upload and then download the same image instead of just using the local image directly. How do I do this?

Stuff I tried :
1. I tried running these commands (separately, deleting the instances of minikube both times and starting fresh)

kubectl run hdfs --image=fluxcapacitor/hdfs:latest --port=8989
kubectl run hdfs --image=fluxcapacitor/hdfs:latest --port=8989 imagePullPolicy=Never

Output :

NAME                    READY     STATUS              RESTARTS   AGE
hdfs-2425930030-q0sdl   0/1       ContainerCreating   0          10m

It just gets stuck on some status but never reaches the ready state.

2. I tried creating a registry and then putting images into it but that didn't work either. I might've done that incorrectly but I can't find proper instructions to do this task.

Please provide instructions to use local docker images in local kubernetes instance.
OS: ubuntu 16.04
Docker : Docker version 1.13.1, build 092cba3
Kubernetes :

Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"5", GitVersion:"v1.5.3", GitCommit:"029c3a408176b55c30846f0faedf56aae5992e9b", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2017-02-15T06:40:50Z", GoVersion:"go1.7.4", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}
Server Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"5", GitVersion:"v1.5.2", GitCommit:"08e099554f3c31f6e6f07b448ab3ed78d0520507", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"1970-01-01T00:00:00Z", GoVersion:"go1.7.1", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}

If someone could help me get a solution that uses docker-compose to do this, that'd be awesome. Thanks.

Edit :

Images loaded in eval $(minikube docker-env:

REPOSITORY                                            TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
fluxcapacitor/jupyterhub                              latest              e5175fb26522        4 weeks ago         9.59 GB
fluxcapacitor/zeppelin                                latest              fe4bc823e57d        4 weeks ago         4.12 GB
fluxcapacitor/prediction-pmml                         latest              cae5b2d9835b        4 weeks ago         973 MB
fluxcapacitor/scheduler-airflow                       latest              95adfd56f656        4 weeks ago         8.89 GB
fluxcapacitor/loadtest                                latest              6a777ab6167c        5 weeks ago         899 MB
fluxcapacitor/hdfs                                    latest              00fa0ed0064b        6 weeks ago         1.16 GB
fluxcapacitor/sql-mysql                               latest              804137671a8c        7 weeks ago         679 MB
fluxcapacitor/metastore-1.2.1                         latest              ea7ce8c5048f        7 weeks ago         1.35 GB
fluxcapacitor/cassandra                               latest              3cb5ff117283        7 weeks ago         953 MB
fluxcapacitor/apachespark-worker-2.0.1                latest              14ee3e4e337c        7 weeks ago         3.74 GB
fluxcapacitor/apachespark-master-2.0.1                latest              fe60b42d54e5        7 weeks ago         3.72 GB
fluxcapacitor/package-java-openjdk-1.8                latest              1db08965289d        7 weeks ago         841 MB
gcr.io/google_containers/kubernetes-dashboard-amd64   v1.5.1              1180413103fd        7 weeks ago         104 MB
fluxcapacitor/stream-kafka-0.10                       latest              f67750239f4d        2 months ago        1.14 GB
fluxcapacitor/pipeline                                latest              f6afd6c5745b        2 months ago        11.2 GB
gcr.io/google-containers/kube-addon-manager           v6.1                59e1315aa5ff        3 months ago        59.4 MB
gcr.io/google_containers/kubedns-amd64                1.9                 26cf1ed9b144        3 months ago        47 MB
gcr.io/google_containers/kube-dnsmasq-amd64           1.4                 3ec65756a89b        5 months ago        5.13 MB
gcr.io/google_containers/exechealthz-amd64            1.2                 93a43bfb39bf        5 months ago        8.37 MB
gcr.io/google_containers/pause-amd64           

Answer 1

From the kubernetes docs:

https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/containers/images/#updating-images

The default pull policy is IfNotPresent which causes the Kubelet to skip pulling an image if it already exists. If you would like to always force a pull, you can do one of the following:

• set the imagePullPolicy of the container to Always;
• use :latest as the tag for the image to use;
• enable the AlwaysPullImages admission controller.

Or read the other way: Using the :latest tag forces images to always be pulled. If you use the eval $(minikube docker-env) as mentioned above, then either don't use any tag, or assign a tag to your local image you can avoid Kubernetes trying to forcibly pull it.

Answer 2

As the README describes, you can reuse the Docker daemon from Minikube with eval $(minikube docker-env).

So to use an image without uploading it, you can follow these steps:

1. set the environment variables with eval $(minikube docker-env)
2. build the image with the Docker daemon of Minukube (eg docker build -t my-image .)
3. set the image in the pod spec like the build tag (eg my-image)
4. set the imagePullPolicy to Never, otherwise Kubernetes will try to download the image.

Important note: You have to run eval $(minikube docker-env) on each terminal you want to use, since it only sets the environment variables for the current shell session.

Answer 3

What worked for me, based on the solution by @svenwltr:

# Start minikube
minikube start

# Set docker env
eval $(minikube docker-env)

# Build image
docker build -t foo:0.0.1 .

# Run in minikube
kubectl run hello-foo --image=foo:0.0.1 --image-pull-policy=Never

# Check that it's running
kubectl get pods

Answer 4

One approach is to build the image locally and then do:

docker save imageNameGoesHere | pv | (eval $(minikube docker-env) && docker load)

minikube docker-env might not return the correct info running under a different user / sudo. Instead you can run sudo -u yourUsername minikube docker-env.

It should return something like:

export DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY="1"
export DOCKER_HOST="tcp://192.168.99.100:2376"
export DOCKER_CERT_PATH="/home/chris/.minikube/certs"
export DOCKER_API_VERSION="1.23"
# Run this command to configure your shell:
# eval $(minikube docker-env)

Answer 5

To add to the previous answers, if you have a tarball image, you can simply load it to you local docker set of images docker image load -i /path/image.tar .Please remember to run it after eval $(minikube docker-env), since minikube does not share images with the locally installed docker engine.

Answer 6

This Answer isnt limited to minikube!

Use a local registry:

docker run -d -p 5000:5000 --restart=always --name registry registry:2

Now tag your image properly:

docker tag ubuntu localhost:5000/ubuntu

Note that localhost should be changed to dns name of the machine running registry container.

Now push your image to local registry:

docker push localhost:5000/ubuntu

You should be able to pull it back:

docker pull localhost:5000/ubuntu

Now change your yaml file to use local registry.

Think about mounting volume at appropriate location to persist the images on registry.