virtualbox: unable to start minikube on macOS Ventura

[andriymahats]

What Happened?

After upgrading macOS to Ventura from Monterey the minikube start started to fail with the response:

😄  minikube v1.27.1 on Darwin 13.0
✨  Using the virtualbox driver based on user configuration
👍  Starting control plane node minikube in cluster minikube
🔥  Creating virtualbox VM (CPUs=2, Memory=8192MB, Disk=20000MB) ...
🔥  Deleting "minikube" in virtualbox ...
🤦  StartHost failed, but will try again: creating host: create: creating: Error setting up host only network on machine start: The host-only adapter we just created is not visible. This is a well known VirtualBox bug. You might want to uninstall it and reinstall at least version 5.0.12 that is is supposed to fix this issue
🔥  Creating virtualbox VM (CPUs=2, Memory=8192MB, Disk=20000MB) ...
😿  Failed to start virtualbox VM. Running "minikube delete" may fix it: creating host: create: creating: Error setting up host only network on machine start: The host-only adapter we just created is not visible. This is a well known VirtualBox bug. You might want to uninstall it and reinstall at least version 5.0.12 that is is supposed to fix this issue

❌  Exiting due to IF_VBOX_NOT_VISIBLE: Failed to start host: creating host: create: creating: Error setting up host only network on machine start: The host-only adapter we just created is not visible. This is a well known VirtualBox bug. You might want to uninstall it and reinstall at least version 5.0.12 that is is supposed to fix this issue
💡  Suggestion: Reboot to complete VirtualBox installation, verify that VirtualBox is not blocked by your system, and/or use another hypervisor
📘  Documentation: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52277019/how-to-fix-vm-issue-with-minikube-start
🍿  Related issues:
    ▪ https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/issues/3614
    ▪ https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/issues/4222
    ▪ https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/issues/5817

Attach the log file

log.txt

Operating System

macOS (Default)

Driver

VirtualBox

[crengifo]

same issue, i've tried minikube delete and start and update virtualbox and nothing...

[hakjoonglee]

Same issue. I also tried minikube delete and start and updated VirtualBox version 7.0.2

[TestRep1]

i have exactly the same issue.. Has anyone found a solution to this problem?

[crengifo]

Update 7.02 virtual box, solved the problem for me directly from virtual box site

[spowelljr]

@crengifo So it's working for you now on macOS Ventura with VirtualBox 7.02?

[andriymahats]

Update 7.02 virtual box, solved the problem for me directly from virtual box site

hmm, tried to reinstall latest virtual box (7.0.2 r154219). Issue remains for me

[crengifo]

@crengifo So it's working for you now on macOS Ventura with VirtualBox 7.02?

Yes, reinstalling obviously.

[nrudnyk]

Update 7.02 virtual box, solved the problem for me directly from virtual box site

didn't helped. Still facing same problem as described in the OP

[chris15mLW]

ugh I've tried everything -still an issue

[W07FP4X]

Same. Host only adapters are no longer supported on mac. I'm running podman until we get a VB driver update.
brew install podman
podman machine init --cpus 2 --memory 2048 --rootful
podman machine start
minikube config set driver podman
minikube start
minikube status

[DmitriyStoyanov]

Possibly we face with such issue because of in VirtualBox Host-only Adapter is DEPRECATED

[martininnotec]

@DmitriyStoyanov yep this is definitely the reason - as @W07FP4X said it's because Host-only adapters are no longer supported on Mac OS, we need to use a Host-only network instead.

I've configured my virtual machine manually to use this network setup and can connect to Minikube on the running VM.

The only problem is the Minikube start command still wants to create/see a host-only adapter so fails and it doesn't seem to be able to see the running VM.

Unfortunately, I think we will need to look at running alternatives like Docker or Podman until a Virtualbox driver update for Minikube is released.

[spowelljr]

Thanks for discovering the root cause of the issue, I believe the change will need to be in the upstream project https://github.com/machine-drivers/machine, but I could be wrong.

[martininnotec]

Thanks for discovering the root cause of the issue, I believe the change will need to be in the upstream project https://github.com/machine-drivers/machine, but I could be wrong.

Yes, this code needs to be updated to use the Host-only network instead of the adapter for the new macOS.

https://github.com/machine-drivers/machine/blob/master/drivers/virtualbox/network.go

Has someone raised this with the upstream project?

[jevy-wangfei]

down grade virtualbox to 6.* would be able to resolve this Host-ony Adapter deprecated issue.

[martininnotec]

down grade virtualbox to 6.* would be able to resolve this Host-ony Adapter deprecated issue.

I tried the downgrade to Virtualbox 6.1 and the issue still persists when starting minikube.

[d1ck50n]

Encountered similar issue, and i downgrade virtualbox to older version 6.1 @ https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Download_Old_Builds_6_1
I'm able to launch minikube using command : minikube start --driver=virtualbox

[pavgup]

Just one more macOS user having no success with minikube because of this problem.

[afbjorklund]

@martininnotec

Has someone raised this with the upstream project?

The upstream project (docker-machine) is dead, so the feature will have to be developed by minikube...

It is possible to use the machine-driver organisation for hosting the patches, but it's not the upstream.

https://github.com/docker/machine/tree/master/drivers/virtualbox

• Move machine and drivers to minikube repositories #9952

---

For newer macOS, it needs to use hostonlynet instead of hostonlyif.

Then the interface will be created by the OS, when the network is used.

This also means that libmachine can't set the IP anymore, it will have to check which one it received.

But the docs say only that it (Host-Only Adapter ) is deprecated, not that it is removed already ?

[afbjorklund]

This is the tracker issue that @spowelljr created: (github.com/docker/machine is archived and read-only)

• VirtualBox: Host-only Adapter deprecated in macOS 13 (Ventura) machine-drivers/machine#38

So far it (virtualbox2) only carries a small patch for FreeBSD, the rest of the driver is unmodified since v0.16.2

• machine-drivers/machine@154c4e8

[afbjorklund]

Unfortunately, I think we will need to look at running alternatives like Docker or Podman until a Virtualbox driver update for Minikube is released.

If you run Docker or Podman with Oracle VirtualBox instead of their "Desktop", you would have the same problem...

You can try another hypervisor driver for Minikube, such as the QEMU driver. Or run minikube in Docker or Podman ?

But the best would be to fix the machine driver.

[spowelljr]

An upstream fix was merged (machine-drivers/machine#39), I created a PR to update the dependency (#15729). Once the binaries are built I'll link them for anyone experiencing the issue to confirm if it resolves the issue for them, thanks.

[spowelljr]

If anyone could test these out and confirm whether it fixes the issue.

Intel CPU: https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube-builds/15729/minikube-darwin-amd64
Apple CPU: https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube-builds/15729/minikube-darwin-arm64

[martininnotec]

machine-drivers/machine#39

Hi @spowelljr - I've installed from the binary and still get the same error, only difference is I now get a warning at the top saying minikube doesn't support Virtualbox - am I doing something wrong?

[afbjorklund]

@spowelljr

I think you need to set the HostLoopbackReachable in the config, when not using the docker-machine flags.

It is initialized in the NewDriver, but minikube has its own implementation in the minikube driver "registry"...

d.HostLoopbackReachable = true

---

EDIT: Hmm, minikube does call the virtualbox.NewDriver - so the defaults should be OK, only flags are missing

[martininnotec]

d.HostLoopbackReachable = true

Thanks, @afbjorklund - I'm not sure where this is configured, however looking at the config.json file on the minikube machine it appears to already have that value set...

[afbjorklund]

Hmm, maybe it would read the defaults. The best would be to look in the log, and see how VBox was started ?

There should be a --natlocalhostreachable1 in the flags.

[afbjorklund]

Doh! That fix was for a totally different issue.

• Minikube VM cannot access anymore to host loopback interface through NAT with VirtualBox 7.x #15566

The network change is still left to do, sorry about the noise.

• VirtualBox: Host-only Adapter deprecated in macOS 13 (Ventura) machine-drivers/machine#38

[martininnotec]

No worries @afbjorklund - any ETA on a fix for the Host-only Adapter issue?

[fffffreedom]

No worries @afbjorklund - any ETA on a fix for the Host-only Adapter issue?

same question, anyone helps?

[afbjorklund]

There is no ETA, I am not sure if anyone is working on the problem at the moment ?

• VirtualBox: Host-only Adapter deprecated in macOS 13 (Ventura) machine-drivers/machine#38

[subhankar-banerjee]

any idea when this will be resolved ? It was working last year and suddenly I can see few days back it stopped working ..

is that problem started after Mac update ?

[yun14u]

This is how I start my minikube,

brew install podman
podman machine init --cpus 2 --memory 2048 --rootful
podman machine start
minikube start --kubernetes-version=1.24.8 --driver=podman --container-runtime=cri-o
minikube status

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