KUBERNETES(1)(kubernetes)

💖 KUBERNETES(1)(kubernetes) — the kubectl describe era 💖

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, and let me tell you about kubectl describe, because this command is genuinely the main character of your debugging journey. ✨

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✨ NAME ✨

kubectl describe — show details of a specific resource or group of resources 🫶

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

kubectl describe [OPTIONS]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Show details of a specific resource or group of resources.

Print a detailed description of the selected resources, including related resources such as events or controllers. You may select a single object by name, all objects of that type, provide a name prefix, or label selector. For example:

$ kubectl describe TYPE NAME_PREFIX

will first check for an exact match on TYPE and NAME_PREFIX. If no such resource exists, it will output details for every resource that has a name prefixed with NAME_PREFIX.

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

ngl the prefix thing is lowkey iconic — you type half a name and it just finds everything that starts with it. the way that it matches exactly first and then falls back to prefix vibes? chef's kiss. 👑

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -A, --all-namespaces=false — If present, list the requested object(s) across all namespaces. Namespace in current context is ignored even if specified with --namespace. basically: every namespace, all at once, no cap. 🌈
• --chunk-size=500 — Return large lists in chunks rather than all at once. Pass 0 to disable. (yes, 0 means "give me everything at once, I live dangerously" 😭)
• -f, --filename=[] — Filename, directory, or URL to files containing the resource to describe 🍓
• -k, --kustomize="" — Process the kustomization directory. This flag can't be used together with -f or -R. it's giving "pick a lane, bestie" 💀
• -R, --recursive=false — Process the directory used in -f, --filename recursively. Useful when you want to manage related manifests organized within the same directory. 🧚
• -l, --selector="" — Selector (label query) to filter on, supports '=', '==', '!=', 'in', 'notin'. (e.g. -l key1=value1,key2=value2,key3 in (value3)). Matching objects must satisfy all of the specified label constraints. and yes, all of them — it's an AND situation, not a "whichever one is vibing" situation. 💜
• --show-events=true — If true, display events related to the described object. Defaults to true for a single object, false for multiple objects and prefix matching. 👀

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🎀 OPTIONS INHERITED FROM PARENT COMMANDS 🎀

these are the ones that come with the whole kubectl family, like the matching bestie necklace of flags. 🫶

• --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.
• --as-user-extra=[] — User extras to impersonate for the operation, this flag can be repeated to specify multiple values for the same key.
• --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. 🚨 like, actually insecure. please be careful, queen.
• --kubeconfig="" — Path to the kubeconfig file to use for CLI requests.
• --kuberc="" — Path to the kuberc file to use for preferences. This can be disabled by exporting KUBECTL_KUBERC=false feature gate or turning off the feature KUBERC=off.
• --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="none" — Name of profile to capture. One of (none|cpu|heap|goroutine|threadcreate|block|mutex|trace)
• --profile-output="profile.pprof" — Name of the file to write the profile to
• --proxy-url="" — Proxy URL to use for requests to the API server
• --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

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🔥 EXAMPLE 🔥

  # Describe a node
  kubectl describe nodes kubernetes-node-emt8.c.myproject.internal

  # Describe a pod
  kubectl describe pods/nginx

  # Describe a pod identified by type and name in "pod.json"
  kubectl describe -f pod.json

  # Describe all pods
  kubectl describe pods

  # Describe pods by label name=myLabel
  kubectl describe pods -l name=myLabel

  # Describe all pods managed by the 'frontend' replication controller
  # (rc-created pods get the name of the rc as a prefix in the pod name)
  kubectl describe pods frontend

copy these EXACTLY, bestie. character for character. no improvising. 💖

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

• kubectl(1)

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🌈 HISTORY 🌈

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!

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and that's the whole page, no notes. this is KUBERNETES(1)(kubernetes) — User manual, from the Manuals section, the Eric Paris Jan 2015 original era ✨ (he really said "let's document this" and the rest is history, fr fr). go describe something, you've got this 💅💖🦋