minikube/docs/drivers.md

# Driver plugin installation

Minikube uses Docker Machine to manage the Kubernetes VM so it benefits from the
driver plugin architecture that Docker Machine uses to provide a consistent way to
manage various VM providers. Minikube embeds VirtualBox and VMware Fusion drivers
so there are no additional steps to use them. However, other drivers require an
extra binary to be present in the host PATH.

The following drivers currently require driver plugin binaries to be present in
the host PATH:

* [KVM2](#kvm2-driver)
* [Hyperkit](#hyperkit-driver)
* [HyperV](#hyperv-driver)
* [VMware](#vmware-unified-driver)

#### KVM2 driver

To install the KVM2 driver, first install and configure the prereqs:

* Debian or Ubuntu 18.x: `sudo apt install libvirt-clients libvirt-daemon-system qemu-kvm`
* Ubuntu 16.x or older: `sudo apt install libvirt-bin libvirt-daemon-system qemu-kvm`
* Fedora/CentOS/RHEL: `sudo yum install libvirt-daemon-kvm qemu-kvm`

Then you will need to add yourself to libvirt group (older distributions may use libvirtd instead)

`sudo usermod -a -G libvirt $(whoami)`

Then to join the group with your current user session:

`newgrp libvirt`

Now install the driver:

```shell
curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/docker-machine-driver-kvm2 \
  && sudo install docker-machine-driver-kvm2 /usr/local/bin/
```

NOTE: Ubuntu users on a release older than 18.04, or anyone experiencing [#3206: Error creating new host: dial tcp: missing address.](https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/issues/3206) you will need to build your own driver until [#3689](https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/issues/3689) is resolved. Building this binary will require [Go v1.11](https://golang.org/dl/) or newer to be installed. 

```
sudo apt install libvirt-dev
test -d $HOME/go/src/k8s.io/minikube || \
  git clone https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube.git $HOME/go/src/k8s.io/minikube
cd $HOME/go/src/k8s.io/minikube
git pull
make out/docker-machine-driver-kvm2
sudo install out/docker-machine-driver-kvm2 /usr/local/bin
```

To use the kvm2 driver:

```shell
minikube start --vm-driver kvm2
```

#### Hyperkit driver

The Hyperkit driver will eventually replace the existing xhyve driver.
It is built from the minikube source tree, and uses [moby/hyperkit](http://github.com/moby/hyperkit) as a Go library.

To install the hyperkit driver via brew:


```shell
brew install docker-machine-driver-hyperkit

# docker-machine-driver-hyperkit need root owner and uid 
sudo chown root:wheel /usr/local/opt/docker-machine-driver-hyperkit/bin/docker-machine-driver-hyperkit
sudo chmod u+s /usr/local/opt/docker-machine-driver-hyperkit/bin/docker-machine-driver-hyperkit
```

To install the hyperkit driver manually:

```shell
curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/docker-machine-driver-hyperkit \
&& sudo install -o root -g wheel -m 4755 docker-machine-driver-hyperkit /usr/local/bin/
```

The hyperkit driver currently requires running as root to use the vmnet framework to setup networking.

If you encountered errors like `Could not find hyperkit executable`, you might need to install [Docker for Mac](https://store.docker.com/editions/community/docker-ce-desktop-mac)

If you are using [dnsmasq](http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html) in your setup and cluster creation fails (stuck at kube-dns initialization) you might need to add `listen-address=192.168.64.1` to `dnsmasq.conf`.

*Note: If `dnsmasq.conf` contains `listen-address=127.0.0.1` kubernetes discovers dns at 127.0.0.1:53 and tries to use it using bridge ip address, but dnsmasq replies only to requests from 127.0.0.1*

To use the driver:

```shell
minikube start --vm-driver hyperkit
```

#### HyperV driver

Hyper-v users may need to create a new external network switch as described [here](https://docs.docker.com/machine/drivers/hyper-v/). This step may prevent a problem in which `minikube start` hangs indefinitely, unable to ssh into the minikube virtual machine. In this add, add the `--hyperv-virtual-switch=switch-name` argument to the `minikube start` command.

On some machines, having **dynamic memory management** turned on for the minikube VM can cause problems of unexpected and random restarts which manifests itself in simply losing the connection to the cluster, after which `minikube status` would simply state `stopped`. Machine restarts are caused due to following Hyper-V error: `The dynamic memory balancer could not add memory to the virtual machine 'minikube' because its configured maximum has been reached`. **Solution**: turned the dynamic memory management in hyper-v settings off (and allocate a fixed amount of memory to the machine).

To use the driver:

```shell
minikube start --vm-driver hyperv --hyperv-virtual-switch=switch-name
```

#### VMware unified driver

The VMware unified driver will eventually replace the existing vmwarefusion driver.
The new unified driver supports both VMware Fusion (on macOS) and VMware Workstation (on Linux and Windows)

To install the vmware unified driver, head over at https://github.com/machine-drivers/docker-machine-driver-vmware/releases and download the release for your operating system. 

The driver must be:

1. Stored in `$PATH`
2. Named `docker-machine-driver-vmware`
3. Executable (`chmod +x` on UNIX based platforms)

If you're running on macOS with Fusion, this is an easy way install the driver:

```shell
export LATEST_VERSION=$(curl -L -s -H 'Accept: application/json' https://github.com/machine-drivers/docker-machine-driver-vmware/releases/latest | sed -e 's/.*"tag_name":"\([^"]*\)".*/\1/') \
&& curl -L -o docker-machine-driver-vmware https://github.com/machine-drivers/docker-machine-driver-vmware/releases/download/$LATEST_VERSION/docker-machine-driver-vmware_darwin_amd64 \
&& chmod +x docker-machine-driver-vmware \
&& mv docker-machine-driver-vmware /usr/local/bin/
```

To use the driver:

```shell
minikube start --vm-driver vmware
```