Accessing the CRC cluster from the same LAN

Prerequisites: CRC running on a Linux machine, another machine on the same LAN wanting to access it.

1. On the CRC host — open firewall ports

sudo firewall-cmd --add-port=80/tcp --add-port=443/tcp --add-port=6443/tcp --permanent
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

2. On the CRC host — forward the API port

CRC exposes ports 80 and 443 on all interfaces, but the API server (6443) only listens on localhost. Create a socat forward:

Replace YOUR_LAN_IP with the CRC host's LAN IP (e.g. 192.168.1.6).

sudo dnf install -y socat

cat <<'EOF' | sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/crc-api-forward.service
[Unit]
Description=Forward CRC API port (6443) to LAN
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/socat TCP-LISTEN:6443,bind=YOUR_LAN_IP,fork,reuseaddr TCP:127.0.0.1:6443
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now crc-api-forward

3. On the client machine — update /etc/hosts

YOUR_LAN_IP api.crc.testing console-openshift-console.apps-crc.testing oauth-openshift.apps-crc.testing downloads-openshift-console.apps-crc.testing
canary-openshift-ingress-canary.apps-crc.testing default-route-openshift-image-registry.apps-crc.testing

4. Verify

Replace <password> with the kubeadmin password shown during crc start or obtain it via crc console --credentials.

oc login https://api.crc.testing:6443 -u kubeadmin -p <password>
oc get nodes