kubernetes: Getting started: "Running Kubernetes Locally via Docker" doesn't work on Max OS X

Problem description

The “Download kubectl” section mentions the following:

Create configuration:

$ kubectl config set-cluster test-doc --server=http://localhost:8080
$ kubectl config set-context test-doc --cluster=test-doc
$ kubectl config use-context test-doc

For Max OS X users instead of localhost you will have to use IP address of your docker machine, which you can find by running docker-machine env <machinename> (see documentation for details).

The docker run command doesn’t publish any ports though, so the above does not work even if localhost is replaced with the correct IP address of the docker machine.

kubectl get nodes will then fail with:

The connection to the server 192.168.99.100:8080 was refused - did you specify the right host or port?

Note: 192.168.99.100 is the IP of the docker machine that I configured as described

Hypothesis

It looks like the API server (?) port 8080 needs to be published.

Workaround

A workaround is to keep using localhost in the configuration line above and to then set up an SSH tunnel:

docker-machine ssh $MACHINE_NAME -N -L 8080:localhost:8080

(where $MACHINE_NAME is the name of the docker machine being used, docker-machine ls can be used to list all running machines).

This is sufficient to make kubectl get nodes work as described.