kubectl-debug - Man Page

kubectl debug [Options]

Debug cluster resources using interactive debugging containers.

'debug' provides automation for common debugging tasks for cluster objects identified by resource and name. Pods will be used by default if no resource is specified.

The action taken by 'debug' varies depending on what resource is specified. Supported actions include:

• Workload: Create a copy of an existing pod with certain attributes changed, for example changing the image tag to a new version.
• Workload: Add an ephemeral container to an already running pod, for example to add debugging utilities without restarting the pod.
• Node: Create a new pod that runs in the node's host namespaces and can access the node's filesystem.

--arguments-only=false If specified, everything after -- will be passed to the new container as Args instead of Command.

--attach=false If true, wait for the container to start running, and then attach as if 'kubectl attach ...' were called.  Default false, unless '-i/--stdin' is set, in which case the default is true.

-c, --container="" Container name to use for debug container.

--copy-to="" Create a copy of the target Pod with this name.

--env=[] Environment variables to set in the container.

-f, --filename=[] identifying the resource to debug

--image="" Container image to use for debug container.

--image-pull-policy="" The image pull policy for the container. If left empty, this value will not be specified by the client and defaulted by the server.

--profile="legacy" Debugging profile. Options are "legacy", "general", "baseline", "netadmin", or "restricted".

-q, --quiet=false If true, suppress informational messages.

--replace=false When used with '--copy-to', delete the original Pod.

--same-node=false When used with '--copy-to', schedule the copy of target Pod on the same node.

--set-image=[] When used with '--copy-to', a list of name=image pairs for changing container images, similar to how 'kubectl set image' works.

--share-processes=true When used with '--copy-to', enable process namespace sharing in the copy.

-i, --stdin=false Keep stdin open on the container(s) in the pod, even if nothing is attached.

--target="" When using an ephemeral container, target processes in this container name.

-t, --tty=false Allocate a TTY for the debugging container.

--as="" Username to impersonate for the operation. User could be a regular user or a service account in a namespace.

--as-group=[] Group to impersonate for the operation, this flag can be repeated to specify multiple groups.

--as-uid="" UID to impersonate for the operation.

--azure-container-registry-config="" Path to the file containing Azure container registry configuration information.

--cache-dir="/home/username/.kube/cache" Default cache directory

--certificate-authority="" Path to a cert file for the certificate authority

--client-certificate="" Path to a client certificate file for TLS

--client-key="" Path to a client key file for TLS

--cluster="" The name of the kubeconfig cluster to use

--context="" The name of the kubeconfig context to use

--disable-compression=false If true, opt-out of response compression for all requests to the server

--insecure-skip-tls-verify=false If true, the server's certificate will not be checked for validity. This will make your HTTPS connections insecure

--kubeconfig="" Path to the kubeconfig file to use for CLI requests.

--match-server-version=false Require server version to match client version

-n, --namespace="" If present, the namespace scope for this CLI request

--password="" Password for basic authentication to the API server

--profile-output="profile.pprof" Name of the file to write the profile to

--request-timeout="0" The length of time to wait before giving up on a single server request. Non-zero values should contain a corresponding time unit (e.g. 1s, 2m, 3h). A value of zero means don't timeout requests.

-s, --server="" The address and port of the Kubernetes API server

--tls-server-name="" Server name to use for server certificate validation. If it is not provided, the hostname used to contact the server is used

--token="" Bearer token for authentication to the API server

--user="" The name of the kubeconfig user to use

--username="" Username for basic authentication to the API server

--version=false --version, --version=raw prints version information and quits; --version=vX.Y.Z... sets the reported version

--warnings-as-errors=false Treat warnings received from the server as errors and exit with a non-zero exit code

  # Create an interactive debugging session in pod mypod and immediately attach to it.
  kubectl debug mypod -it --image=busybox
  
  # Create an interactive debugging session for the pod in the file pod.yaml and immediately attach to it.
  # (requires the EphemeralContainers feature to be enabled in the cluster)
  kubectl debug -f pod.yaml -it --image=busybox
  
  # Create a debug container named debugger using a custom automated debugging image.
  kubectl debug --image=myproj/debug-tools -c debugger mypod
  
  # Create a copy of mypod adding a debug container and attach to it
  kubectl debug mypod -it --image=busybox --copy-to=my-debugger
  
  # Create a copy of mypod changing the command of mycontainer
  kubectl debug mypod -it --copy-to=my-debugger --container=mycontainer -- sh
  
  # Create a copy of mypod changing all container images to busybox
  kubectl debug mypod --copy-to=my-debugger --set-image=*=busybox
  
  # Create a copy of mypod adding a debug container and changing container images
  kubectl debug mypod -it --copy-to=my-debugger --image=debian --set-image=app=app:debug,sidecar=sidecar:debug
  
  # Create an interactive debugging session on a node and immediately attach to it.
  # The container will run in the host namespaces and the host's filesystem will be mounted at /host
  kubectl debug node/mynode -it --image=busybox

kubectl(1),

January 2015, Originally compiled by Eric Paris (eparis at redhat dot com) based on the kubernetes source material, but hopefully they have been automatically generated since!

kubectl(1).