Slides from Philly Kubernetes meetup.

1. kubectl tips and tricks
By Jon Mosco
@jpmosco
github.com/jonmosco

2. Disclaimer
I'm horrible with UIs
CLI is my best friend

3. Overview
• What is kubectl
• Installation tips
• Completion
• Explain
• .kube/config
• Context and Namespaces
• Helpers
• Aliases

4. How do we say this anyway?
• kube cuddle ?
• kube control ?
• kewb see tea el ?
• cube or kewb ?

5. Very fast overview
kubectl [command] [TYPE] [NAME] [flags]
command: operation to perform (verb)
TYPE: the resource type to perform the operation on
NAME: Specifies the name of the resource
flags: optional flags

6. Available Operations

7. Installing kubectl
Packages for most major platforms:
• Homebrew
• Yum/Apt/Snap
• Powershell PSGallery/Chocolatey
If all else fails….curl!
$ curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/$(curl -s
https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-release/release/stable.txt)/bin/darwin/amd64/kubectl

8. Completion Files
• bash
echo "source <(kubectl completion bash)" >> ~/.bashrc
• zsh
source <(kubectl completion zsh)
•fish
Third party, but available:

10. Multiple Configurations
• Multiple files stored in ~/.kube
• Multiple files added to $KUBECONFIG
• Gets a little hairy...

11. $KUBECONFIG
• Multiple configurations files as a list of paths
• KUBECONFIG
• Append new configurations temporarily

12. Context and Namespace
Display current context:
$ kubectl config current-context (very cheap operation)
Display current namespace:
$ kubectl config view --minify --output 'jsonpath={..namespace}'
2>/dev/null

13. Short names
• kubeconfig config rename-context

14. Logging
• Follow (tail) logs

15. Formatting Output
• YAML
• JSON

16. YAML Extraction
$ kubectl get deployment name –o yaml –export > name.yaml

17. Creating YAML from scratch
$ kubectl run app-name --image=nginx -o yaml --dry-run > app-
name.yaml
$ kubectl create secret generic secret-name --from-literal=pass=pass -o
yaml --dry-run > secret-name.yaml

18. API Conversions
$ kubectl convert --output-version=apps/v1
$ kubectl convert -f file.yaml
$ kubectl convert -f file.yaml --local -o yaml
$ kubectl convert -f . | kubectl create -f -

19. Helper Utilities
• kubectx
• kubens
• kube-ps1

22. More help!
• kube-tmux
• kube-shell
• kubetail
• kube-prompt
• kubectl-aliases
• stern

23. Aliases are your friend

25. Links
• https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/kubectl/overview/
• https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/kubectl/cheatsheet/
• https://coreos.com/blog/kubectl-tips-and-tricks
• https://github.com/ahmetb/kubectx
• https://github.com/jonmosco/kube-ps1
• https://github.com/jonmosco/kube-tmux
• https://github.com/johanhaleby/kubetail
• https://github.com/cloudnativelabs/kube-shell
• https://github.com/c-bata/kube-prompt

26. Thank you!
Questions?