6.2 Setting Up NGINX Ingress on Minikube

⏱️ ~5 min read

TL;DR: One command enables the NGINX Ingress Controller on Minikube. After that, you need a way to reach it — either via minikube tunnel or by using Minikube’s built-in IP with the NodePort the controller exposes.

Enable the Minikube Ingress Addon

minikube addons enable ingress

Expected output:

💡  ingress is an addon maintained by Kubernetes. For any concerns contact minikube on GitHub.
You can view the list of minikube maintainers at: https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/blob/master/OWNERS
    ▪ Using image registry.k8s.io/ingress-nginx/controller:v1.10.x
    ▪ Using image registry.k8s.io/ingress-nginx/kube-webhook-certgen:v1.4.x
    ▪ Using image registry.k8s.io/ingress-nginx/kube-webhook-certgen:v1.4.x
🔎  Verifying ingress addon...
🌟  The 'ingress' addon is enabled

Verify It’s Running

# Check the controller pod (takes ~60 seconds to start)
kubectl get pods -n ingress-nginx

# Wait for it to be Ready
kubectl wait --namespace ingress-nginx \
  --for=condition=ready pod \
  --selector=app.kubernetes.io/component=controller \
  --timeout=120s

Expected pod output:

NAME                                        READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
ingress-nginx-controller-xxxxxxxxx-yyyyy    1/1     Running   0          90s

# See what Services the controller exposes
kubectl get svc -n ingress-nginx

Expected:

NAME                                 TYPE        CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)
ingress-nginx-controller             NodePort    10.96.37.205   <none>        80:31xxx/TCP,443:32xxx/TCP
ingress-nginx-controller-admission   ClusterIP   10.96.88.14    <none>        443/TCP

The controller is exposed as a NodePort on Minikube, listening on ports 80 and 443.

The IngressClass

When the addon installs, it creates an IngressClass named nginx:

kubectl get ingressclass

Expected:

NAME    CONTROLLER             PARAMETERS   AGE
nginx   k8s.io/ingress-nginx   <none>       2m

Reference this in your Ingress Resources with ingressClassName: nginx.

Accessing Ingress on Minikube

Ingress on Minikube works best by adding hosts to /etc/hosts pointing to the Minikube IP:

# Get Minikube's IP
minikube ip
# Output: 192.168.49.2

# Add to /etc/hosts (requires sudo)
echo "$(minikube ip) myapp.local api.local" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

# Now these hostnames work:
curl http://myapp.local
curl http://api.local

Alternatively — use --header with curl to fake the Host header:

MINIKUBE_IP=$(minikube ip)

# Fake the host header — useful for testing without /etc/hosts
curl -H "Host: myapp.local" http://$MINIKUBE_IP

Architecture Overview

graph LR
    Browser -->|"myapp.local:80"| HOST["/etc/hosts:\nmyapp.local → 192.168.49.2"]
    HOST -->|"192.168.49.2:80"| NP["Minikube Node\nNodePort :31xxx"]
    NP --> IC["ingress-nginx-controller\npod"]
    IC -->|"Host: myapp.local\nPath: /api"| API[api-svc]
    IC -->|"Host: myapp.local\nPath: /"| WEB[web-svc]

Try It — Quick Smoke Test

# Verify the addon is enabled
minikube addons list | grep ingress

# Deploy a test app
kubectl create deployment smoke-test --image=nginx:1.25
kubectl expose deployment smoke-test --port=80

# Create an Ingress rule
cat <<'EOF' | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: smoke-test-ingress
spec:
  ingressClassName: nginx
  rules:
  - host: smoke.local
    http:
      paths:
      - path: /
        pathType: Prefix
        backend:
          service:
            name: smoke-test
            port:
              number: 80
EOF

# Test with curl (fake host header)
curl -H "Host: smoke.local" http://$(minikube ip)

# Cleanup
kubectl delete deployment smoke-test
kubectl delete svc smoke-test
kubectl delete ingress smoke-test-ingress

Expected: nginx welcome page HTML.

Key Takeaways

✅ Quick Check

Q1: The NGINX Ingress controller pod is in CrashLoopBackOff. What happens to existing Ingress Resources?

Q2: Why does Minikube use NodePort for the Ingress controller instead of LoadBalancer?

Q3: You apply an Ingress with ingressClassName: traefik but only have NGINX Ingress installed. What happens?