Can you expose your local minikube cluster to be accessible from a browser without editing etc/hosts? - kubernetes

Question

I am following this tutorial for how to expose your local cluster for external access.
I only need to be able to check my application from browser, without exposing the app to the Internet.
> kubectl get service web
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
web NodePort 10.98.217.114 <none> 8080:32718/TCP 10m
> minikube service web --url
http://192.168.49.2:32718
Followed the guide until the etc/hosts part. I set up the ingress:
> kubectl get ingress
NAME CLASS HOSTS ADDRESS PORTS AGE
example-ingress nginx hello-world.info 192.168.49.2 80 96s
For various reasons I cannot edit the etc/hosts file on my Windows machine, it says another process is using it. However, neither 192.168.49.2 nor http://192.168.49.2:32718 in the browser returns anything, as well as curl 192.168.49.2 (and with :32718). I don't think that should be expected, as the hosts file merely forwards hello-world.info to the IP, I should be able to access my app with just the IP. What am I missing here?
Kubectl v1.24.1 (kustomize v4.5.4, server v1.23.3), Minikube v1.25.2, Windows 10, Minikube with the Docker driver.

Answer 1

Okay my solution to the problem was this: port-forward to the ingress-controller pod (not to the ingress itself object, because it doesn't seem to be possible)
Sample ingress file for a service named "web":
# example-ingress.yaml
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
name: example-ingress
annotations:
nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/rewrite-target: /
spec:
rules:
- http:
paths:
- path: /
pathType: Prefix
backend:
service:
name: web
port:
number: 8080
Run it with
kubectl apply -f example-ingress.yaml
Check that it's running
> kubectl get ingress
NAME CLASS HOSTS ADDRESS PORTS AGE
example-ingress nginx * 192.168.49.2 80 23h
If you ssh into minikube (minikube ssh), you can curl 192.168.49.2:80 and it returns the proper output.
Output nginx-controller pods:
> kubectl get pod -n ingress-nginx
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS
AGE
ingress-nginx-admission-create-56gbc 0/1 Completed 0
46h
ingress-nginx-admission-patch-fqf92 0/1 Completed 0
46h
ingress-nginx-controller-cc8496874-7znt5 1/1 Running 4 (39m ago)
46h
Forward port to it:
> kubectl port-forward ingress-nginx-controller-cc8496874-7znt5 8080:80 -n ingress-nginx
Then check out localhost:8080. If it returns nginx 404, then your Ingress.yaml setup is probably wrong. Otherwise works for me.