Kubernetes - minikube service connection timeout - docker

Question

I have a Docker environment with 3 containers: nginx, PHP with Laravel and a MySQL database. It works fine, and I'm now trying to learn Kubernetes.
I was hoping to create a deployment and a service just for the nginx container to make it simple to start with:
Here is the deployment.yaml:
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: toolkit-app-deployment
spec:
replicas: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
container: toolkit-server
template:
metadata:
labels:
container: toolkit-server
spec:
containers:
- name: toolkit-server
image: my/toolkit-server:test
ports:
- containerPort: 8000
imagePullSecrets:
- name: my-cred
Here is the service.yaml:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: backend
spec:
selector:
container: toolkit-server
ports:
- protocol: "TCP"
port: 80
targetPort: 8000
type: LoadBalancer
And just incase it's needed, here is the nginx part of the docker-compose.yaml:
version: "3.8"
services:
server:
build:
context: .
dockerfile: dockerfiles/nginx.dockerfile
ports:
- "8000:80"
volumes:
- ./src:/var/www/html
- ./nginx/nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf:ro
container_name: toolkit-server
The deployment is created successfully and I can see that 1/1 pods are running.
However when I run minikube service backend, the URL I get just times out.
I was expecting to see some sort of nginx page, maybe an nginx error - but with a time out I'm not sure what the next step is.
I'm brand new to Kubernetes to theres a good chance I've messed the ports up or something basic. Any help appreciated.
Edit:
As advised by #david-maze I changed the following in the deployment.yaml:
ports:
- containerPort: 80
And the following in service.yaml:
targetPort: 80
This gave me an nginx error page when viewed in the browser, as expected, but crucially no longer times out.

Answer 1

This is a community wiki answer posted for better visibility. Feel free to expand it.
As discussed in the comments the issue was due to wrong port configuration.
TargetPort is the port on which the service will send requests to, that your pod will be listening on. Your application in the container will need to be listening on this port also.
ContainerPort defines the port on which app can be reached out inside the container.
So in your use case the deployment should have:
ports:
- containerPort: 80
and the service:
targetPort: 80
This will make the connection not to timeout anymore.