Chapter 2. Startup

Starting Container Development Kit requires a valid Red Hat Enterprise Linux license, because Container Development Kit includes an KVM virtual machine image with Red Hat Enterprise Linux installed.

At startup, minishift registers the Red Hat Enterprise Linux license, and holds it until it is released at shutdown. The login information for that Red Hat Enterprise Linux license can be provided either on the command line or as environment variables.

To start Container Development Kit using environment variables, first set MINISHIFT_USERNAME and MINISHIFT_PASSWORD:

export MINISHIFT_USERNAME=<Red_Hat_username>
export MINISHIFT_PASSWORD=<Red_Hat_password>

~]$ export MINISHIFT_USERNAME=<Red_Hat_username>
~]$ export MINISHIFT_PASSWORD=<Red_Hat_password>

Instead of the environment variables MINISHIFT_USERNAME and MINISHIFT_PASSWORD, you may also specify the username and password on the command line:

minishift --username=<Red_Hat_username> --password=<Red_Hat_password>

~]$ minishift --username=<Red_Hat_username> --password=<Red_Hat_password>

The minishift start command downloads any required OpenShift functionality, starts OpenShift services, and prints some helpful information about the command line and web interfaces.

At this point, you should be able to use the tools minishift and oc to manage your Container Development Kit cluster. Start by running the minishift start command.

minishift start

~]$ minishift start
Starting local OpenShift cluster using 'kvm' hypervisor...
...
   OpenShift server started.
   The server is accessible via web console at:
       https://192.168.99.128:8443

   You are logged in as:
       User:     developer
       Password: developer

   To login as administrator:
       oc login -u system:admin

Use minishift oc-env to display the command you need to type into your shell in order to add the oc binary to your PATH. The output of oc-env may differ, depending on OS and shell type.

minishift oc-env

~]$ minishift oc-env
export PATH="/home/<username>/.minishift/cache/oc/v1.5.0:$PATH"
# Run this command to configure your shell:
# eval $(minishift oc-env)

For more information about interacting with OpenShift with the command-line interface and the web console, see the Chapter 7, Interacting with OpenShift section.