How To SSH Into Minikube VM

Minikube is a lightweight implementation of Kubernetes that runs on your local machine. It essentially creates a VM and deploys a cluster consisting of one node only.

While using Minikube, there may come a time when you need to update the kube-apiserver manifest file or perform some other maintenance that requires you to SSH into the VM, itself.

Let’s look at how we can easily SSH into the Minikube VM.

1. First, You’ll Need The Name Of The Node:

Remember, Minikube is a single node.

Run the following command to get the name of the node.

kubectl get nodes

It happens to be, brace yourself, minikube.

2. Now SSH Into The VM

Next, the Minikube CLI gives us a minikube ssh command that takes a --node-string argument (or -n for short).

(More info in the docs.)

So to SSH into the Minikube VM, you’ll simply need to run the following to get a shell:

minikube ssh -n minikube

3. Explore

From there, have at it.

For example, to access the manifest files, head to /etc/kubernetes/manifests and make your changes.

That’s it!