Setting Up Red Hat OpenShift Local (CodeReady Containers) on a Desktop or Laptop

When first encountering OpenShift back in 2018, the author used the older white‑paper version; now the focus is on the newer Red Hat OpenShift Local (formerly CodeReady Containers) for local development.

Local Development with OpenShift

Red Hat OpenShift Local provides the quickest way to spin up a minimal, pre‑configured OpenShift 4.x cluster on a laptop or desktop, enabling developers to build, image, and run containerized micro‑services on Linux, macOS, or Windows.

Differences from Production OCP Installations

The cluster is short‑lived and not intended for production use.

There is no upgrade path to newer OpenShift Container Platform versions.

It runs a single node that acts as both control plane and worker.

Cluster Monitoring Operator is disabled by default, affecting some console features.

The cluster runs inside a virtual machine, which can affect networking.

Additional immutable settings include the *.crc.testing domain and the internal 172.x.x.x address range.

Installation Environment Requirements

AMD64 or Intel 64 CPU (ARM M1 only supports the Podman runtime preset, not the full platform).

4 vCPU, 9‑10 GB RAM, 40 GB storage.

VT‑x enabled in BIOS (nested virtualization not supported).

Supported OS: Linux, macOS, Windows.

Example host used: 8‑core, 32 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD CentOS 8.5.

Downloading the Deployment Tool

The CRC tool is used to deploy Red Hat OpenShift Local . Download it from the Red Hat console (e.g., https://console.redhat.com/openshift/create/local ) or the specific version link (e.g., https://developers.redhat.com/.../crc/1.32.1/ for OCP 4.8.5).

Installation Steps

Add a system user ocp to the wheel group: useradd ocp -G wheel .

Set a password for ocp and SSH into the server: passwd ocp ; ssh [email protected] .

Download the CRC package (≈2.2 GB, ~5‑6 minutes).

Extract the package and add the crc executable to PATH .

Run crc setup to install required packages (ensure network connectivity).

After setup, start the cluster with crc start .

Download the pull‑secret from the Red Hat console and save it as pull-secret.txt on the server.

Start the cluster with the secret: crc start -p pull-secret.txt --log-level debug .

Started the OpenShift cluster.

The server is accessible via web console at:
  https://console-openshift-console.apps-crc.testing

Log in as administrator:
  Username: kubeadmin
  Password: vFX7y-KfI98-qdw2X-dP9ax

Log in as user:
  Username: developer
  Password: developer

Use the 'oc' command line interface:
  $ eval $(crc oc-env)
  $ oc login -u developer https://api.crc.testing:6443

Potential Issues

If using a VM (e.g., VirtualBox), enable nested hardware virtualization: VBoxManage modifyvm "node01.ocp.com" --nested-hw-virt on .

Run crc setup as the ocp user; otherwise you may see errors like "Executing systemctl action failed: exit status 1: Failed to connect to bus".

Obtain the pull‑secret from https://console.redhat.com/openshift/create/local and provide it during cluster start.

Reference Documentation

https://www.unixarena.com/2022/03/openshift-4-x-single-node-cluster-setup-using-redhat-crc.html/ https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_openshift_local/2.5/html/getting_started_guide/installation_gsg