I'm sporting a fresh Minikube install on an ArchLinux box, using Docker as the Minikube driver.

I started the minikube "cluster" using the minikube start command. docker container ls tells us it's up and running:

CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                                 COMMAND                  CREATED          STATUS          PORTS                                                                                                                                  NAMES
d86070af0c21   gcr.io/k8s-minikube/kicbase:v0.0.28   "/usr/local/bin/entr…"   50 minutes ago   Up 50 minutes   127.0.0.1:49162->22/tcp, 127.0.0.1:49161->2376/tcp, 127.0.0.1:49160->5000/tcp, 127.0.0.1:49159->8443/tcp, 127.0.0.1:49158->32443/tcp   minikube

I'm trying to run a simple nginx pod, using this command: kubectl run my-nginx --image nginx

Since I'm pulling a public image from a public repo, I would expect I don't need any authentication. But the describe pod sub-command shows:

Events:
  Type     Reason     Age                From               Message
  ----     ------     ----               ----               -------
  Normal   Scheduled  47s                default-scheduler  Successfully assigned default/my-nginx to minikube
  Normal   BackOff    31s                kubelet            Back-off pulling image "nginx"
  Warning  Failed     31s                kubelet            Error: ImagePullBackOff
  Normal   Pulling    19s (x2 over 46s)  kubelet            Pulling image "nginx"
  Warning  Failed     4s (x2 over 31s)   kubelet            Failed to pull image "nginx": rpc error: code = Unknown desc = Error response from daemon: Get "https://registry-1.docker.io/v2/": net/http: request canceled while waiting for connection (Client.Timeout exceeded while awaiting headers)
  Warning  Failed     4s (x2 over 31s)   kubelet            Error: ErrImagePull

When I try to curl the URL found in the error message from inside the minikube container, it shows that authentication is needed:

patres@arch:~$ minikube ssh                                                                        

docker@minikube:~$ curl https://registry-1.docker.io/v2/
{"errors":[{"code":"UNAUTHORIZED","message":"authentication required","detail":null}]}

When I try to pull that very image from host using docker pull nginx command, the image gets pulled, no auth required.

I also tried to create a kubernetes secret this way, then launching the pod using YAML with that secret, but it was to no avail.

kubectl create secret docker-registry regcred --docker-server=https://registry-1.docker.io/v2/ --docker-username=myusername --docker-password=mypass --docker-email=my@email.com

Finally, it seems like the issue might not be unique to DockerHub, since if I follow the official minikubes documentation and launch the default hello-minikube deployment:

kubectl create deployment hello-minikube --image=k8s.gcr.io/echoserver:1.4

I get the same ImagePullBackOff error:

$ kubectl get pod hello-minikube-6ddfcc9757-zdzz2                                           
NAME                              READY   STATUS             RESTARTS   AGE
hello-minikube-6ddfcc9757-zdzz2   0/1     ImagePullBackOff   0          6m11s