MOK - Run Kubernetes on your laptop

Current kubernetes version: 1.32.0

Requirements

Fedora 41 Desktop/Server on x86_64 or AMD64

• Podman
• 5 GB of free disk space

MacOS 14.7 (Sonoma) on Apple Silicon

• Podman
• 5 GB of free disk space

Mok may work on other versions of Linux or MacOS but I have only tested it on the above.

Install

Use curl and download mok to /usr/local/bin:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bashtools/mok/refs/heads/master/package/mok
chmod +x mok
sudo mv mok /usr/local/bin/

or use git and make and install to /usr/local/bin:

git clone https://github.com/bashtools/mok.git
cd mok
sudo make install

First use

For linux users: alias mok="sudo /usr/local/bin/mok"

Get the latest prebuilt image, which is about 430 MiB in size:

mok build image --get-prebuilt-image

Create a multi node kuberenetes cluster

mok create cluster myk8s --masters 1 --workers 1

Run some kubectl commands

export KUBECONFIG=/var/tmp/admin-myk8s.conf
kubectl get nodes
kubectl get pods --all-namespaces

# --privileged is required if you want to `ping`
kubectl run --privileged --rm -ti alpine --image alpine /bin/sh

Get help

mok -h
mok create -h

Delete the cluster

mok delete cluster myk8s

Uninstall mok completely

sudo rm /usr/local/bin/mok

# If you used git and make delete the git repo
rm -rf mok/

Then delete the podman images that were built by mok build.

Known Issues

Fedora and MacOS:

• With multiple master nodes only the first master is set up
• Currently only single node clusters can be stopped and restarted

MacOS only:

• A recent version of Bash is required.
  • Use homebrew to install bash and gawk
  • add eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv) to the end of your .zprofile or .bash_profile so that brew installed files are found first.
• To be able to use kubectl from the host machine and to be able to modify nf_conntrack_max the machine needs to be created with:

  podman machine init --rootful --user-mode-networing

  • This allows a kubernetes cluster to be created with the --publish option, for example:

    mok create cluster myk8s 1 0 --publish

    Then the commands in the 'Run some kubectl commands' section above will work without any modification.
• kube-proxy requires a correctly set nf_conntrack_max. If it's incorrect then mok will supply the command to correct it and will also suggest the following commands be run:

  # WARNING - This will delete all your existing pods/containers and anything else in the podman machine:
  podman machine stop
  podman machine rm
  podman machine init --now --rootful --user-mode-networing
  podman machine ssh modprobe nf_conntrack
  podman machine ssh sysctl -w net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_max=163840
  

Some Features

• Builds kubernetes master and worker nodes in containers

• Very simple to use without need for YAML files

• After creating the image a single node cluster builds in under 60 seconds

• For multi-node clusters the 'create cluster' command returns only when kubernetes is completely ready, with all nodes and pods up and ready.

• Can skip setting up kubernetes on the master and/or worker node (good for learning!)

  • In this case the set-up scripts are placed in /root in the containers and can be run by hand
  • Can do kubernetes the hard way (see kthwic)

• mok build and mok create can show extensive logs with --tailf

• Full Documentation

Support

Follow: Mok on BlueSky