Docker-Desktop context select not updating the kubectl active context

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I'm running Docker Desktop for Windows with WSL2 integration. I'm also running minikube. The Docker Desktop GUI correctly shows both known contexts:

Docker desktop GUI context menu showing available contexts

I've selected the 'minikube' context because that's the one I want to use.

However when I go into the WSL terminal and run kubectl config get-contexts, I can only see the docker-desktop context, which is the active one:

admin@RODDY01-PC:/mnt/c/workspace$ kubectl config get-contexts
CURRENT   NAME             CLUSTER          AUTHINFO         NAMESPACE
*         docker-desktop   docker-desktop   docker-desktop

Running which kubectl reveals that I'm using the kubectl that docker-desktop installed when doing the WSL integration:

admin@RODDY01-PC:/mnt/c/workspace$ which kubectl
/usr/local/bin/kubectl

admin@RODDY01-PC:/mnt/c/workspace$ ls -la /usr/local/bin/kubectl
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 55 Aug  1 17:49 /usr/local/bin/kubectl -> /mnt/wsl/docker-desktop/cli-tools/usr/local/bin/kubectl

(In Windows, where kubectl is bundled as part of docker at C:\Program Files\Docker\Docker\resources\bin\kubectl.exe, it correctly shows both contexts and indicates minikube is the active; it's just the Linux/WSL2 kubectl instance that's not updating/recognizing the active and available contexts.)

How can I get Docker Desktop to properly update the kubectl active context in WSL2?

Version info: Docker Desktop 3.5.2; Windows 10 Professional; Debian 10 on WSL2.

docker-desktop kubectl
1 Answers

The problem turned out to be that I actually had two kube config files.

Windows, which was correctly being updated by the GUI, had a config located at: C:\Users\<username\.kube\config.

WSL also had one, at ~/.kube/config. This one was NOT up-to-date, and was actually missing the entire minikube context definition.

I solved this by setting an environment variable in my ~/.bashrc file to point $KUBECONFIG to the Windows kube config file. One of my colleagues having a similar issue instead deleted the linux file and created a symlink to the Windows one; both solutions work.

Tangentially related: the minikube configuration include certificates that use Windows-style paths in the config file; it was necessary to embed these certificates into the configuration file in order for them to work properly cross-OS.

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