Install kubectl on ubuntu (WSL) and use kubectl config from Windows

kubectl_ubuntu_wsl.sh

#!/bin/bash

# Receives your Windows username as only parameter.

curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/v1.16.0/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl
chmod +x ./kubectl
sudo mv ./kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl

windowsUser=$1

mkdir -p ~/.kube
ln -sf "/mnt/c/users/$windowsUser/.kube/config" ~/.kube/config

kubectl version

@xak2000 @S-Effendi @cmendible , How are you guys tricking the windows location of client-certificate & client-key in the config file.

nice work, thx~

This is great, very helpful! Thanks

i did the above steps but it says:
The connection to the server localhost:8080 was refused - did you specify the right host or port?

i did the above steps but it says: The connection to the server localhost:8080 was refused - did you specify the right host or port?

Check your .kube/config

My .kube/config file is empty

create an alias in WSL to reference the kubectl.exe in Windows

alias kubectl=/mnt/c/kubectl.exe

@sivabalan19 excute below commands after minikube start:
kubectl config set-credentials minikube
--client-certificate=/mnt/c/Users/$USER/.minikube/profiles/minikube/client.crt
--client-key=/mnt/c/Users/$USER/.minikube/profiles/minikube/client.key --embed-certs

kubectl config set-cluster minikube
--certificate-authority=/mnt/c/Users/$USER/.minikube/ca.crt --embed-certs

I enjoyed the script very much. As I searched for the latest version, I completed the task in this manner:

curl https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/stable.txt > ./stable.txt
export KUBECTL_VERSION=$(cat stable.txt)
curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/$KUBECTL_VERSION/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl
chmod +x ./kubectl
sudo mv ./kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl
mkdir -p ~/.kube
ln -sf "/mnt/c/users/$USER/.kube/config" ~/.kube/config
rm ./stable.txt

Thanks! cool!

Thank you :)

If you're using devcontainers, you typically mount the WSL ~/.kube folder into the devcontainer for consistent k8s access, as here. Unfortunately, if the config file is a symlink, this does not work, as docker cannot follow the symlink in the mount. This can be corrected if you symlink the entire ~/.kube folder in WSL, rather than just the config file... Do you see any drawbacks to symlinking the whole folder?