minikube: ln: failed to create symbolic link '/var/lib/minikube/etcd/minikube': File exists

Subsequent error on minikube restart:

  minikube v1.4.0 on Darwin 10.14.3
💡  Tip: Use 'minikube start -p <name>' to create a new cluster, or 'minikube delete' to delete this one.
🏃  Using the running virtualbox "minikube" VM ...
⌛  Waiting for the host to be provisioned ...
🐳  Preparing Kubernetes v1.16.0 on Docker 18.09.8 ...
🔄  Relaunching Kubernetes using kubeadm ...
E0920 14:15:18.905571   77264 kubeadm.go:415] failed to create compat symlinks: cmd failed: sudo ln -s /data/minikube /var/lib/minikube/etcd
ln: failed to create symbolic link '/var/lib/minikube/etcd/minikube': File exists

: Process exited with status 1

_Originally posted by @vsethi in https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/issues/5415#issuecomment-533848677_

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 5 years ago
Reactions: 4
Comments: 15 (4 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

Hit this issue today. Let me know if there is information that would be helpful to include.

@seancarroll @dbamaster I am curious, does this issue happen consistently or only happens sometimes ?

if this issue is still happening for you, I wonder if deleting the ISO cache would solve your problem ?

rm ~/.minikube/cache/iso/*

or if minikube delete and starting it fresh would solve the problem ?

medyagh on Oct 2, 2019

rm ~/.minikube/cache/iso/*

This didnt helped in my case. However minikube delete did work. 🎉

Deleting minikube is not an option for me. I have a few deployments there, unfortunately I didn’t save the actual file 😦

@dbamaster what about temporary downgrading and doing: kubectl get deployment FOO -o yaml > my-deployment-foo.yml to save your deployments

WtfJoke on Oct 28, 2019

Interesting. As far as I knew, this issue should only happen on existing VM’s with older ISO’s, so minikube delete should have solved the issue.

tstromberg on Oct 2, 2019