KUBERNETES(1)(kubernetes)

✨ NAME ✨

okay bestie, meet kubectl port-forward — it forwards one or more local ports to a pod. that's the whole vibe. 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

kubectl port-forward [OPTIONS]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Forward one or more local ports to a pod. that's it, that's the gig 🫶

Use resource type/name such as deployment/mydeployment to select a pod. Resource type defaults to 'pod' if omitted — so if you just say mypod, it already knows what you mean. queen behavior.

If there are multiple pods matching the criteria, a pod will be selected automatically. The forwarding session ends when the selected pod terminates, and a rerun of the command is needed to resume forwarding. so like… if the pod dips, the tunnel dips too. you gotta run it again. no cap. 😭

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💖 OPTIONS 💖

• --address=[localhost] — Addresses to listen on (comma separated). Only accepts IP addresses or localhost as a value. When localhost is supplied, kubectl will try to bind on both 127.0.0.1 and ::1 and will fail if neither of these addresses are available to bind. so it's a both-or-nothing situation, fr.
• --pod-running-timeout=1m0s — The length of time (like 5s, 2m, or 3h, higher than zero) to wait until at least one pod is running. it will literally just stand there patiently waiting for a pod to wake up. iconic patience. ⏳

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🎀 OPTIONS INHERITED FROM PARENT COMMANDS 🎀

these are the family hand-me-downs, they come from the parent command and they're all still here, every single one:

• --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 ⚠️
• --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 🌈

okay this is the part where it gets good, look at all these:

# Listen on ports 5000 and 6000 locally, forwarding data to/from ports 5000 and 6000 in the pod
kubectl port-forward pod/mypod 5000 6000

# Listen on ports 5000 and 6000 locally, forwarding data to/from ports 5000 and 6000 in a pod selected by the deployment
kubectl port-forward deployment/mydeployment 5000 6000

# Listen on port 8443 locally, forwarding to the targetPort of the service's port named "https" in a pod selected by the service
kubectl port-forward service/myservice 8443:https

# Listen on port 8888 locally, forwarding to 5000 in the pod
kubectl port-forward pod/mypod 8888:5000

# Listen on port 8888 on all addresses, forwarding to 5000 in the pod
kubectl port-forward --address 0.0.0.0 pod/mypod 8888:5000

# Listen on port 8888 on localhost and selected IP, forwarding to 5000 in the pod
kubectl port-forward --address localhost,10.19.21.23 pod/mypod 8888:5000

# Listen on a random port locally, forwarding to 5000 in the pod
kubectl port-forward pod/mypod :5000

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• kubectl(1), — yes go read that one too bestie, it's the parent, it raised this command 💜

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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! living proof that even 2015 had lore.

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and that's a wrap, my love 🌸 this page comes to you from the Manuals collection, User version, and of course it's the KUBERNETES(1)(kubernetes) manual — compiled all the way back in Jan 2015 by Eric Paris. go forth and forward those ports, you absolute main character 🎀✨