Quickstart

A short guide on setting up a simple Talos Linux cluster locally with Docker.

This guide walks you through spinning up a local Talos Linux cluster using Docker and talosctl in a few minutes.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have the following tools installed:

• talosctl: On macOS or Linux, install talosctl by running the command below. For other systems, see the talosctl documentation:

  brew tap siderolabs/tap
  brew trust siderolabs/tap
  brew install siderolabs/tap/talosctl
  

• kubectl: Refer to the Install kubectl documentation for installation instructions.

Create the cluster

With your prerequisites in place, run the following command to create a cluster on Docker:

talosctl cluster create docker

If you are using Docker Desktop on macOS and encounter the error: Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?, you may need to manually create the Docker socket symlink:sudo ln -s "$HOME/.docker/run/docker.sock" /var/run/docker.sock

Once the cluster is up, verify that you can reach Kubernetes by running:

kubectl get nodes -o wide

You should see output similar to the following:

From here, you can explore the Talos API using talosctl:

talosctl --help

Destroy the cluster

When you are done, run the following command to tear down the cluster and clean up all associated resources:

talosctl cluster destroy