Kubernetes kubectl commands for newbies

The goal with this post is to share K8’s commands I’ve found useful in my first few attempts to deploy K8’s components. I hope you find it to be a handy reference in your K8’s journey.

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kubectl get pods

This command can be replaced with many other K8’s components like deployment, service, nodes etc. and will return a list of those components running in your environment and their status information

kubectl get pod pod_id

This command can be replaced with many other K8’s components like deployment, service, node etc. and will return status information about the given component

kubectl get pod pod_id -o wide

This command will give you more detailed information about the component as well as its status information

kubectl exec -it pod_id -- sh

This command will bring you into the shell of the container pod

kubectl delete deployment deployment_id

This will delete the deployment and any pods associated. The same can be done with K8’s services.

kubectl get endpoints

Use this command to get a list of service endpoints running in your environment and details about them such as IP address and port.

kubectl edit deployment deployment_id

This command will allow you to update a deployment from the command line. After executing the update any new changes to the deployment environment will take place.

kubectl apply -f config-file-name.yaml

This will take the config file and create the K8’s components involved. This could be a service, deployment, configMap or secret.

kubectl describe service service_id

Use this command to get more detailed information about a K8’s component such as a service, pod, etc.

kubectl get all

This command can be used to see all running components in a K8’s environment