As per the official documentation here on running Kubernetes locally within a Container -- I have followed all the steps carefully, and I am still getting the message connection refused when I type kubectl get nodes.

docker ps shows that api-server is not running, and docker logs kubelet does indeed varify so:

[kubelet.go:1137] Unable to register 127.0.0.1 with the apiserver: Post http://localhost:8080/api/v1/nodes: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:8080: connection refused.

After a little while, docker logs kubelet

E0711 16:07:06.814735   33792 event.go:202] Unable to write event: 'Post http://localhost:8080/api/v1/namespaces/default/events: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:8080: connection refused' (may retry after sleeping)

Apparently, I am not alone in experiencing this problem.

UPDATE: After several hours, docker logs kubelet

E0712 08:28:03.528010   33792 pod_workers.go:138] Error syncing pod 4c6ab43ac4ee970e1f563d76ab3d3ec9, skipping: [failed to "StartContainer" for "controller-manager" with CrashLoopBackOff: "Back-off 5m0s restarting failed container=controller-manager pod=k8s-master-127.0.0.1_default(4c6ab43ac4ee970e1f563d76ab3d3ec9)"
, failed to "StartContainer" for "apiserver" with CrashLoopBackOff: "Back-off 5m0s restarting failed container=apiserver pod=k8s-master-127.0.0.1_default(4c6ab43ac4ee970e1f563d76ab3d3ec9)"
, failed to "StartContainer" for "setup" with CrashLoopBackOff: "Back-off 5m0s restarting failed container=setup pod=k8s-master-127.0.0.1_default(4c6ab43ac4ee970e1f563d76ab3d3ec9)"
]