How Do You Set the QEMU Driver Flags From Minikube

[Dala0]

What Happened?

I am trying to get Minikube to start up a QEMU based x86 emulator on an ARM CPU under macOS.

It would be useful to access flags such as 'qemu-program', 'qemu-machine', and 'qemu-cpu'. I have been unable to work out how to do this from 'minikube start'.

1. Is 'minikube start' the correct place to set these flags? If so, what is the syntax?
2. If 'minikube start' is not the correct place to set the flags, where do you set them?

@afbjorklund

Attach the log file

log.txt

Operating System

macOS (Default)

Driver

QEMU

[spowelljr]

Hi @Dala0, currently those fields are not configurable in minikube, they are automatically chosen depending on the architecture of the machine. However allowing those field to be configurable on start using flags would be a good feature addition.

[spowelljr]

I created a quick 10 minute implementation: #18906

[nnzv]

Looking forward to seeing this feature in the next release.

[Dala0]

Wow, that was quick! Thank you.

@spowelljr

[afbjorklund]

It would be useful to access flags such as 'qemu-program', 'qemu-machine', and 'qemu-cpu'. I have been unable to work out how to do this from 'minikube start'.

The flags are only available in docker-machine, minikube hardcodes all config in the driver "registry" - no plugins

I am trying to get Minikube to start up a QEMU based x86 emulator on an ARM CPU under macOS.

This is not something that is supported in minikube, since it is too slow to run Kubernetes under emulation

[afbjorklund]

Using the docker driver and qemu-user is faster:

• minikube can't start an amd64 container on Apple Sillicon #16530

But hopefully there will "soon" be a new tutorial:

• Kubernetes 101 tutorial does not mention incompatibility with ARM architecture #18726

[medyagh]

It would be useful to access flags such as 'qemu-program', 'qemu-machine', and 'qemu-cpu'. I have been unable to work out how to do this from 'minikube start'.

The flags are only available in docker-machine, minikube hardcodes all config in the driver "registry" - no plugins

I am trying to get Minikube to start up a QEMU based x86 emulator on an ARM CPU under macOS.

This is not something that is supported in minikube, since it is too slow to run Kubernetes under emulation

@afbjorklund does that mean we need to modify the minikube-machine org code?

[afbjorklund]

does that mean we need to modify the minikube-machine org code?

Not really, minikube has its own fork of all the drivers (e.g. "qemu2")

So there are different ways of setting the Config, whether Flags or not

https://github.com/minikube-machine/machine/blob/main/drivers/qemu/qemu.go#L199

https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/blob/master/pkg/minikube/registry/drvs/qemu2/qemu2.go#L117

[spowelljr]

@Dala0 @nnzv Sorry, just getting back to this now, you can test this out by downloading the following binary, let me know if it works for you.

https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube-builds/18906/minikube-darwin-arm64