Kubernetes in a snap that you can run locally.

You can install MicroK8s with the latest stable upstream Kubernetes release with:

snap install microk8s --classic

For more information on using MicroK8s see the official docs.

To build the snap you need a working LXD installation. To install LXD on Ubuntu first remove any old packages:

sudo apt-get purge lxc*
sudo apt-get purge lxd*

Get the latest LXD and configure it with:

sudo snap install lxd
lxd init --auto

Build MicroK8s with:

git clone https://github.com/ubuntu/microk8s
cd microk8s
snapcraft cleanbuild

To produce a custome build with specific component versions we need to prepare an LXC container with Ubuntu 16:04 and snapcraft:

lxc launch ubuntu:16.04 --ephemeral test-build
lxc exec test-build -- snap install snapcraft --classic
lxc exec test-build -- apt update
lxc exec test-build -- git clone https://github.com/ubuntu/microk8s

We can then set the following environment variables prior to building:

• KUBE_VERSION: kubernetes release to package. Defaults to latest stable.
• ETCD_VERSION: version of etcd. Defaults to v3.3.4.
• CNI_VERSION: version of CNI tools. Defaults to v0.7.1.
• KUBE_TRACK: kubernetes release series (e.g., 1.10) to package. Defaults to latest stable.
• ISTIO_VERSION: istio release. Defaults to v1.0.5.
• KNATIVE_SERVING_VERSION: Knative Serving release. Defaults to v0.6.0.
• KNATIVE_BUILD_VERSION: Knative Build release. Defaults to v0.5.0.
• KNATIVE_EVENTING_VERSION: Knative Eventing release. Defaults to v0.5.0.
• RUNC_COMMIT: the commit hash from which to build runc
• CONTAINERD_COMMIT: the commit hash from which to build containerd

For building we use snapcraft (not snapcraft cleanbuild) and we prepend and variables we need. For example to build the MicroK8s snap for Kubernetes v1.9.6 we:

lxc exec test-build -- sh -c "cd microk8s && KUBE_VERSION=v1.9.6 snapcraft"

The produced snap is inside the ephemeral LXC container, we need to copy it to the host:

lxc file pull test-build/root/microk8s/microk8s_v1.9.6_amd64.snap .

snap install microk8s_latest_amd64.snap --classic --dangerous

Check out the "MicroK8s In The Wild" page to see some interesting use cases.