kubectl

kubectl is the command-line tool to manage Kubernetes clusters. The most general usage of kubectl is to check the version of the cluster:

// check Kubernetes version
# kubectl version

Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"12", GitVersion:"v1.12.0", GitCommit:"0ed33881dc4355495f623c6f22e7dd0b7632b7c0", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2018-10-01T00:59:42Z", GoVersion:"go1.11", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"darwin/amd64"}
Server Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"11", GitVersion:"v1.11.3", GitCommit:"a4529464e4629c21224b3d52edfe0ea91b072862", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2018-09-09T17:53:03Z", GoVersion:"go1.10.3", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}

We then know our server version is upto date, which is the latest at the time of writing—version 1.12.0. The general syntax of kubectl is as follows:

kubectl [command] [type] [name] [flags] 

command indicates the operation you want to perform. If you type kubectl help in Terminal, it'll show the supported commands. type means the resource type. We'll learn about the major resource types in the next section. name is how we name our resources. It's always good practice to have clear and informative names throughout. For the flags, if you type kubectl options, the stdout will show all of the flags you could pass on.

We can always add --help to get more detailed information on specific commands, as in the example:

// show detailed info for logs command
kubectl logs --help
Print the logs for a container in a pod or specified resource. If the pod has only one container, the container name is optional.


Aliases:
logs, log


Examples:
  # Return snapshot logs from pod nginx with only one container
  kubectl logs nginx

  # Return snapshot logs for the pods defined by label app=nginx
  kubectl logs -lapp=nginx

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Options
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We can then get examples and supported options in the kubectl logs command.