Kubernetes Commands Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet provides essential kubectl commands for managing and interacting with Kubernetes clusters. Whether you're configuring clients, managing resources, or monitoring your applications, these commands will help streamline your workflow.

Client Configuration

Configure your local environment to interact with your Kubernetes cluster effectively.

Setup autocomplete in bash (requires bash-completion package)

source <(kubectl completion bash)

View Kubernetes configuration

kubectl config view

View specific config items by JSON path

kubectl config view -o jsonpath='{.users[?(@.name == "k8s")].user.password}'

Set credentials for foo.kubernetes.com

kubectl config set-credentials kubeuser/foo.kubernetes.com --username=kubeuser --password=kubepassword

Set the active namespace for the current context

kubectl config set-context --current --namespace=namespace_name

Viewing and Finding Resources

Discover and inspect resources within your Kubernetes cluster.

List all services in the current namespace

kubectl get services

List all pods in all namespaces in wide format

kubectl get pods -o wide --all-namespaces

List all pods in JSON format

kubectl get pods -o json

Describe resource details (e.g., node, pod, service)

kubectl describe nodes my-node

List services sorted by name

kubectl get services --sort-by=.metadata.name

List pods sorted by restart count

kubectl get pods --sort-by='.status.containerStatuses[0].restartCount'

Managing Resources

Create, update, scale, and delete Kubernetes resources.

Rolling update pods for frontend-v1 to frontend-v2

kubectl rolling-update frontend-v1 -f frontend-v2.json

Scale a replicaset named 'foo' to 3 replicas

kubectl scale --replicas=3 rs/foo

Scale a resource defined in "foo.yaml" to 3 replicas

kubectl scale --replicas=3 -f foo.yaml

Execute a command in every pod/replica of a deployment

for i in 0 1; do kubectl exec foo-$i -- sh -c 'echo $(hostname) > /usr/share/nginx/html/index.html'; done

Get documentation for resources like pods or services

kubectl explain pods,svc

Create resource(s) from a manifest file (e.g., pods, services, daemonsets)

kubectl create -f ./my-manifest.yaml

Apply a configuration to a resource, creating or updating it

kubectl apply -f ./my-manifest.yaml

Start a single instance of an Nginx pod

kubectl run nginx --image=nginx

Create a secret with multiple keys

cat <<EOF | kubectl create -f -
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: mysecret
type: Opaque
data:
  password: $(echo "s33msi4" | base64)
  username: $(echo "jane" | base64)
EOF

Delete a resource defined in a manifest file

kubectl delete -f ./my-manifest.yaml

Monitoring & Logging

Gain insights into your cluster's performance and troubleshoot issues.

Deploy Heapster from a GitHub repository (example)

kubectl create -f deploy/kube-config/standalone/

Show resource usage metrics for nodes

kubectl top node

Show resource usage metrics for pods

kubectl top pod

Show resource usage metrics for a given pod and its containers

kubectl top pod pod_name --containers

Dump pod logs (stdout)

kubectl logs pod_name

Stream pod container logs (stdout, for multi-container pods)

kubectl logs -f pod_name -c my-container

Interacting with Running Pods

Execute commands and access terminals within your running pods.

Run a command in a pod

kubectl exec pod_name -- command_name

Run a command in a specific container of a multi-container pod

kubectl exec pod_name -c container_name -- command_name

Get an interactive terminal session for a pod

kubectl exec -it pod_name /bin/sh

Get an interactive terminal session for a specific container in a multi-container pod

kubectl exec -it pod_name -c container_name /bin/sh

Kubernetes Commands Cheat Sheet - Essential kubectl Commands

Kubernetes Commands Cheat Sheet