Minikube: Using Helm

Issue the command to start Minikube

sudo minikube start --vm-driver none

Unpack the helm.tar.gz file that is sitting in our home directory:

tar -xvzf ~/helm.tar.gz

Move the helm and tiller executables into the path at /usr/local/bin:

sudo mv ./linux-amd64/helm /usr/local/bin
sudo mv ./linux-amd64/tiller /usr/local/bin

To test, run helm version from our home directory. This means it's in our path and we can run helm commands from anywhere.

Initialize Helm:

sudo helm init

Check that helm and tiller are up and available:

sudo helm version

Helm requires socat in order to run, but it is already installed on your lab server.

Get into the directory containing the Helm chart:

cd ~/robot-shop/K8s/helm

Create the name space:

sudo kubectl create namespace robot-shop

Run the Helm installation:

sudo helm install --name robot-shop --namespace robot-shop .

Verify that the pods are running:

sudo kubectl -n robot-shop get po

It might take a couple of minutes for all the pods to stand up.

Edit the web service:

sudo kubectl -n robot-shop edit service web

Edit the service spec similar to this (changing LoadBalancer to NodePort):

  selector:
    service: web
  sessionAffinity: None
  type: NodePort

Make sure our change took effect:

sudo kubectl -n robot-shop get service web

Get the target port from Minikube:

sudo minikube service list

Pay attention to TARGET PORT on web. We'll need that in a minute.

Configure Nginx to proxy to the target port from service list. Get the file open for editing:

sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Now, down at about line 50, we've got to change something in the location section. We'll paste that TARGET PORT we saw earlier in here, replacing the existing line with what's shown here (the proxy_pass line):

location / {
        # First attempt to serve request as file, then
        # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
        proxy_pass http://<minikube IP>:<svc port>;

Our changes should take effect after an Nginx restart:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Open a browser and point it to our server's public IP address to ensure the application is running.