Access K8s services in a browser on Windows

[johan974]

After migrating from Docker Desktop to Rancher Desktop Windows I like the stability of the Rancher Desktop! Great!

I would like to access any service in a browser. Normally i would do that via a LoadBalancer, NodePort or Ingress. Whatever i tried, it didn't work on Rancher Desktop Windows (running in WSL2).

There is a simple example for using ingress, see https://docs.rancherdesktop.io/how-to-guides/traefik-ingress-example.

After creating the simple environment, i tried with curl to reach it. The error message is below. I also tried simpler configs by changing my windows env/host file. Of course i used the right $IP (internal address).

curl whoami.$IP.sslip.io
curl : The external name can't be converted: 'whoami.$IP.sslip.io'
At line:1 char:1
+ curl whoami.192.168.nnn.n.sslip.io
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidOperation: (System.Net.HttpWebRequest:HttpWebRequest) [Invoke-WebRequest], WebExc
   eption
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : WebCmdletWebResponseException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.InvokeWebRequestCommand

I guess that internal IP can 'never' be reached by the browser. I did also some tricks like:

$wslIp = (wsl hostname -I).Trim()
Write-Host "WSL IP is: $wslIp"

# Now add the rules with the actual IP
netsh interface portproxy add v4tov4 listenport=80 listenaddress=0.0.0.0 connectport=80 connectaddress=$wslIp
netsh interface portproxy add v4tov4 listenport=443 listenaddress=0.0.0.0 connectport=443 connectaddress=$wslIp
netsh interface portproxy add v4tov4 listenport=8080 listenaddress=0.0.0.0 connectport=30777 connectaddress=$wslIp

# Verify it worked
netsh interface portproxy show all

I really hope you can help, so I can enjoy RD even more.

[johan974]

Solved. There was a strict network policy. That blocked any traffic.