minikube tunnel on Windows 11 doesn't complete

[Mike NavMail]

Trying to use Minikube to learn about K8S and Istio along with Kafka (it's a work thing), so I can write some good internal documentation for setting up to debug things we change, and when I try to use minikube tunnel after having everything configured, this is what I see:

Starts here with the command of execution:
> minikube tunnel
✅  Tunnel successfully started

�  NOTE: Please do not close this terminal as this process must stay alive for the tunnel to be accessible ...

❗  Access to ports below 1024 may fail on Windows with OpenSSH clients older than v8.1. For more information, see: https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/handbook/accessing/#access-to-ports -1024-on-windows-requires-root-permission
�  Starting tunnel for service istio-ingressgateway.

And that's it.. It'll just sit there for hours doing nothing else, where as all the documentation shows that I should see a lot more information.

I've already validated that I have a supported OpenSSH version, and I've walked through this with someone who's had success with this configuration on a Mac using minikube tunnel, and I can't find any documentation beyond "hey, it should work" so I'm creating this conversation hopefully to get some traction and maybe a solution.

Any suggestions beyond "reboot your computer" would be greatly appreciated as yes, I've already done that, along with tearing down the whole setup and rebuilding it.

Thanks!
Mike

[Mike NavMail]

Some extra information before anyone asks:

• ssh -V -> OpenSSH_for_Windows_8.1p1, LibreSSL 3.0.2
• the tunnel is "running" if it is, in fact, running and at the state indicated in my original post.
• The Istio Ingress Gateway information is as follows:
  • NAMESPACE:     istio-system
  • NAME:         istio-ingressgateway
  • TYPE:          LoadBalancer
  • CLUSTER-IP:     10.106.186.198
  • EXTERNAL-IP: 127.0.0.1
  • PORT(S):      15021:31570/TCP,80:31433/TCP,443:31288/TCP,9092:30503/TCP,2181:32122/TCP
    
• Attempting to connect to the target IP address and port 127.0.0.1:30503 fails in the application with these repeating errors:
  
  • Connection to node -1 (/127.0.0.1:30503) could not be established. Broker may not be available.
    
  • Bootstrap broker 127.0.0.1:30503 (id: -1 rack: null) disconnected
    

Additionally, if I try using the native port 9092, I get the same error.

Again, any information that will help me to understand and work around this problem would be greatly helpful as I've tried everything and the only thing I can think of is that the tunnel is not complete, and that's why it doesn't actually work.

Thanks!
Mike