This project aims to provide single dependency Kubernetes clusters for local testing, experimenting and development purposes.
Moving pictures are worth more than a thousand words, so here is a short demo:
Have you ever heard about Nix, the functional package manager?
In case you haven’t, don’t worry, the important thing is that it provides all the third-party dependencies needed for this project, pinned to a dedicated version. This guarantees stable, reproducible installations.
KuberNix itself is a Rusty helper program, which takes care of bootstrapping the Kubernetes cluster, passing the right configuration parameters around and keeping track of the running processes.
The following technology stack is currently being used:
| Application | Version |
|---|---|
| cni-plugins | v1.9.1 |
| conmon-rs | v1.2.2 |
| conntrack-tools | v1.4.9 |
| containerd | v2.4.1 |
| cri-o-wrapper | v1.37.2 |
| cri-tools | v1.37.0 |
| crun | v1.30.1 |
| etcd | v3.7.3 |
| iproute2 | v7.2.0 |
| iptables | v1.8.13 |
| kmod | v31 |
| kubectl | v1.37.2 |
| kubernetes | v1.37.2 |
| nss-cacert | v3.131.1 |
| podman | v6.1.4 |
| rootlesskit | v2.3.6 |
| runc | v1.5.2 |
| slirp4netns | v1.3.7 |
| socat | v1.8.1.3 |
| util-linux | v2.42.4 |
Some other tools are not explicitly mentioned here, because they are not direct dependencies.
Install Nix, the only real dependency:
$ curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install | shThen download the static binary for your architecture (kubernix-x86_64 or
kubernix-aarch64) from the latest release, install it via
cargo install kubernix or build it via make build-release, and start
KuberNix as a regular user (rootless mode) or as root:
$ kubernix
$ sudo env "PATH=$PATH" kubernixKuberNix sets up the Nix environment, starts the cluster with all its data in
the kubernix-run directory and drops you into a shell where kubectl talks to
the cluster. Exiting the shell stops the cluster. The
requirements list the prerequisites of both modes.
- Requirements: Nix as well as the prerequisites of root and rootless mode.
- Usage: bootstrapping, shells, status, stopping, cleanup and restarts.
- Configuration: options, OCI runtimes, multinode clusters, networking, overlays and additional packages.
- Architecture: the boot phases of the components.
- Troubleshooting: fixes for unmet rootless prerequisites and other common problems.
- Stability: the stable interfaces since 1.0 and upgrading from 0.4.
- Verifying Releases: checksums, signatures, SBOMs, attestations and vulnerability exploitability (VEX) statements.
You want to contribute to this project? Wow, thanks! So please just fork it and
send me a pull request. The build dev shell of the flake provides all tools
needed for development, for example via nix develop .#build.