Istio ingress gateway on wsl2 docker desktop - kubernetes

Question

I am trying to run the bookinfo example on my local with wsl2 and docker desk. I am having issues when trying to access the productpage service via the gateway as I got the connection refused. I am not sure whether I missed anything. Here is what I have done after googled a lot on the internet
Deployed all services from bookinfo example and all up running, I can curl productpage from other service using kubectl exec
Deployed bookinfo-gateway using the file from the example without any change under the default namespace
Name: bookinfo-gateway
Namespace: default
Labels: <none>
Annotations: <none>
API Version: networking.istio.io/v1beta1
Kind: Gateway
Metadata:
Creation Timestamp: 2021-06-06T20:47:18Z
Generation: 1
Managed Fields:
API Version: networking.istio.io/v1alpha3
Fields Type: FieldsV1
fieldsV1:
f:metadata:
f:annotations:
.:
f:kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration:
f:spec:
.:
f:selector:
.:
f:istio:
f:servers:
Manager: kubectl-client-side-apply
Operation: Update
Time: 2021-06-06T20:47:18Z
Resource Version: 2053564
Self Link: /apis/networking.istio.io/v1beta1/namespaces/default/gateways/bookinfo-gateway
UID: aa390a1d-2e34-4599-a1ec-50ad7aa9bdc6
Spec:
Selector:
Istio: ingressgateway
Servers:
Hosts:
*
Port:
Name: http
Number: 80
Protocol: HTTP
Events: <none>
The istio-ingressgateway can expose to the outside via localhost (not sure how this can be configured as it is deployed during istio installation) on 80, which I as understand will be used by bookinfo-gateway
kubectl get svc istio-ingressgateway -n istio-system
following Determining the ingress IP and ports section in the instruction.
My INGRESS_HOST=127.0.0.1 and INGRESS_PORT is 80
curl -v -s http://127.0.0.1:80/productpage | grep -o ".*"
* Trying 127.0.0.1:80...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* connect to 127.0.0.1 port 80 failed: Connection refused
* Failed to connect to 127.0.0.1 port 80: Connection refused
* Closing connection 0
trying this http://127.0.0.1/productpage on browser, return 404. Does this 404 mean the gateway is kind of up but virtual service is not working??
further question if it is relevant. I am a bit confusing how wsl2 works now. It looks like localhost on windows browser and wsl2 terminal are not the same thing, though I know there is kind of forwarding from windows to wsl2 server (which I can get its IP from /etc/resolv.conf). if it is the same, why one return connection refused and the other return 404
On windows I have tried to disable IIS or anything running on port 80 (net stop http). Somehow, I still can see something listen to port 80
netstat -aon | findstr :80
TCP 0.0.0.0:80 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING 4
tasklist /svc /FI "PID eq 4"
Image Name PID Services
========================= ======== ============================================
System 4 N/A
I am wondering whether this is what causes the difference in point 7? As windows is running on another http server on port 80?
I know this a lot of questions asked. I believe many of us that new to istio and wsl2 may have similar questions. Hopefully, this helps others as well. Please advise.

Answer 1

There seems to be a problem with WSL2 itself, probably connected with Local sites running in WSL2 not accessible in browser #5298.
You can work around that by issuing
ip addr show
in your WSL distro, and replacing 127.0.0.1/localhost with eth0 address. In my case it is 172.21.29.254 - so URL is http://172.21.29.254/productpage
This workaround worked for me.

Answer 2

I managed to get this working: This is what I did.
Shell into the distro (mine was Ubuntu 20.04 LTS)
Run:
sudo apt-get -y install socat
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
exit
The above will add socat (which I was getting errors with when looking at the istio logs - connection refused) and update the distro to the latest updates (and upgrade them)
Now you have to run a port-forward to be able to host localhost: to hit the istio gateway with:
kubectl port-forward svc/istio-ingressgateway 8080:80 -n istio-system
If you are already using 8080, just remove it from the command, just use :80 and the port forward will select a free port.
Now go to
http://localhost:8080/productpage
You should hit the page and the port-forward should output
Handling connection for 8080
Hope that helps...
Good thing is now I don't have to use Hyper-V or another cluster installer like minikube/microk8s and use the built-in kubernetes in docker desktop and... my laptop doesn't seem under load for what I'm doing too.