Docker Desktop will not show Kubernetes as “installed” until all of the Kubernetes components are running. To see what is happening with its compontents open a new powershell to have the necessary environment variables set and run:
kubectl get all -n kube-system
Check if the followings are true
1 ) all of the pods have “Running” status.
2 ) deamonset.apps/kube-proxy has “1” in the “Ready” column
3 ) deployment.apps/coredns has “2/2” in the “Ready” column
4 ) replicaset.apps/coredns-HASH has “2” in the “Ready” column
If any of the above statements are not true, use “kubectl describe -n kube-system OBJECTNAME” for more details.
There are some event information at the bottom of the output and you can see the container names in the “Containers” section. In the “kube-system” namespace there is only one container in each pod.
If the pods are running but not ready you can use “kubectl logs -n kube-system PODNAME” to see the containers’ log messages
If you cannot make kubectl work try to enable showing system containers: “Show system containers (advance)” so you can use “docker ps” or the Docker Desktop to see containers in “kube-system” namespace and “docker logs CONTAINERNAME” to see log messages. Of course you will not be able to enable system containers while the Kubernetes is in “installing” state so you would probably have to restart Docker Desktop .
An other issues I had when I tested the installation and you can have when you change configurations and reset the cluster:
When I installed Kubernetes on Docker Desktop, I already had “.kube/config” in my home directory but with an incorrect IP address. Probably because I tried VMWare’s Kubernetes test environment before. I had to delete the .kube folder and, disable Kubernetes on Docker Desktop and Enable again and even “Reset Kubernetes Cluster” to regenerate the config file with the correct parameters. Maybe some of the steps were not necessary but this is how it worked for me.
Also sometimes Docker Desktop cannot see containers even if docker ps can. So I also had to restart Docker Desktop to see the system containers from the Desktop.
Thanks for the prompt response, in order to check what is happening with the Kubernetes components, I think I need to have Kubernetes server installed and running. When I run
kubectl version
I get only the client version and not the server version which means that the server is not installed correctly and I see following
Unable to connect to the server: dial tcp: lookup kubernetes.docker.internal: no such host
So running
kubectl get all -n kube-system
is giving me the same error above ^
Docker desktop is just stuck on Starting state, it never shows me any error so I can troubleshoot further.
After I sent the answer I realised you deleted the config file so you knew exactly what I was writing about
You need the API server running, yes. But other components like coredns could be in pending status for example.
This is why I included the section starting with the following:
If you tried that already and could not find any Kubernetes related container then it could be a networking issue or…
this means Windows cannot resolve the internal domain which should be set in the hidden C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
You can try to edit it as an Adminisrator and insert this line:
127.0.0.1 kubernetes.docker.internal
I don’t know why would that be missing but it looks like this is the case. It could mean the installation could not even reach the step where those domains are set or the cluster at least partially installed but you cannot use kubectl to see. Again, I recommend enabling system containers.
