kubectl explain

Synopsis

Describe fields and structure of various resources.

This command describes the fields associated with each supported API resource. Fields are identified via a simple JSONPath identifier:

  1.     <type>.<fieldName>[.<fieldName>]

Information about each field is retrieved from the server in OpenAPI format.

Use “kubectl api-resources” for a complete list of supported resources.

  1. kubectl explain TYPE [--recursive=FALSE|TRUE] [--api-version=api-version-group] [--output=plaintext|plaintext-openapiv2]

Examples

  1.   # Get the documentation of the resource and its fields
  2.   kubectl explain pods
  4.   # Get all the fields in the resource
  5.   kubectl explain pods --recursive
  7.   # Get the explanation for deployment in supported api versions
  8.   kubectl explain deployments --api-version=apps/v1
  10.   # Get the documentation of a specific field of a resource
  11.   kubectl explain pods.spec.containers
  13.   # Get the documentation of resources in different format
  14.   kubectl explain deployment --output=plaintext-openapiv2

Options

—api-version string

Use given api-version (group/version) of the resource.

-h, —help

help for explain

—output string     Default: “plaintext”

Format in which to render the schema. Valid values are: (plaintext, plaintext-openapiv2).

—recursive

When true, print the name of all the fields recursively. Otherwise, print the available fields with their description.

—as string

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

—as-group strings

Group to impersonate for the operation, this flag can be repeated to specify multiple groups.

—as-uid string

UID to impersonate for the operation.

—cache-dir string     Default: “$HOME/.kube/cache”

Default cache directory

—certificate-authority string

Path to a cert file for the certificate authority

—client-certificate string

Path to a client certificate file for TLS

—client-key string

Path to a client key file for TLS

—cloud-provider-gce-l7lb-src-cidrs cidrs     Default: 130.211.0.0/22,35.191.0.0/16

CIDRs opened in GCE firewall for L7 LB traffic proxy & health checks

—cloud-provider-gce-lb-src-cidrs cidrs     Default: 130.211.0.0/22,209.85.152.0/22,209.85.204.0/22,35.191.0.0/16

CIDRs opened in GCE firewall for L4 LB traffic proxy & health checks

—cluster string

The name of the kubeconfig cluster to use

—context string

The name of the kubeconfig context to use

—default-not-ready-toleration-seconds int     Default: 300

Indicates the tolerationSeconds of the toleration for notReady:NoExecute that is added by default to every pod that does not already have such a toleration.

—default-unreachable-toleration-seconds int     Default: 300

Indicates the tolerationSeconds of the toleration for unreachable:NoExecute that is added by default to every pod that does not already have such a toleration.

—disable-compression

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

—insecure-skip-tls-verify

If true, the server’s certificate will not be checked for validity. This will make your HTTPS connections insecure

—kubeconfig string

Path to the kubeconfig file to use for CLI requests.

—match-server-version

Require server version to match client version

-n, —namespace string

If present, the namespace scope for this CLI request

—password string

Password for basic authentication to the API server

—profile string     Default: “none”

Name of profile to capture. One of (none|cpu|heap|goroutine|threadcreate|block|mutex)

—profile-output string     Default: “profile.pprof”

Name of the file to write the profile to

—request-timeout string     Default: “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 string

The address and port of the Kubernetes API server

—storage-driver-buffer-duration duration     Default: 1m0s

Writes in the storage driver will be buffered for this duration, and committed to the non memory backends as a single transaction

—storage-driver-db string     Default: “cadvisor”

database name

—storage-driver-host string     Default: “localhost:8086”

database host:port

—storage-driver-password string     Default: “root”

database password

—storage-driver-secure

use secure connection with database

—storage-driver-table string     Default: “stats”

table name

—storage-driver-user string     Default: “root”

database username

—tls-server-name string

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

—token string

Bearer token for authentication to the API server

—user string

The name of the kubeconfig user to use

—username string

Username for basic authentication to the API server

—version version[=true]

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

—warnings-as-errors

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

See Also

  • kubectl - kubectl controls the Kubernetes cluster manager