Kubectl: Get Pod Containers

According to best practices you should always try to have one container per Pod, and this is the most common Kubernetes use case.

However, a Pod can contain multiple containers and the primary reason for this is to support helper applications that assist a primary application.

Typical examples of helper applications are data pullers, data pushers and proxies.

This short note shows how to get Pod containers using a kubectl command, and also how to get logs and log into the particular container running inside the Pod.

Cool Tip: Get Pods on specific Node in Kubernetes! Read more →

Kubectl: Get Pod Containers

Use one of the commands below to get the Pods and find out the name of the one which containers you want to list:

$ kubectl get pods
$ kubectl get pods --all-namespaces 
$ kubectl get pods --namespace <namespaceName>
- sample output -
NAME                         READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
runner-ctrl-71c8ff88-bc9pq   2/2       Running   0          5m5s

To get the Pod containers, execute the following command and search for the “Containers”:

$ kubectl describe pod <podName>
- example -
$ kubectl describe pod runner-ctrl-71c8ff88-bc9pq
- sample output -
...
Containers:
  runner: ←
    Container ID:   ...
    Image:          ...
    ...
  proxy: ←
    Container ID:   ...
    Image:          ...
    ...
...

To list the names only of the containers running inside the Pod, execute:

$ kubectl get pod <podName> -o jsonpath='{.spec.containers[*].name}'
- example -
$ kubectl get pod runner-ctrl-71c8ff88-bc9pq -o jsonpath='{.spec.containers[*].name}'
- sample output -
runner ← proxy ←

Cool Tip: Get Pod’s logs using the kubectl command! Read more →

Get Pod Container Logs

If you know the names of the containers running inside the Pod, you can check the logs of the particular container:

$ kubectl logs pod/<podName> -c <containerName>
- example -
$ kubectl logs pod/runner-ctrl-71c8ff88-bc9pq -c runner

Log Into Pod Container

Also you can log into the particular container and start a shell sessions inside it using the kubectl exec command:

$ kubectl exec -it <podName> -c <containerName> -- /bin/bash
$ kubectl exec -it <podName> -c <containerName> -- /bin/sh
- example -
$ kubectl exec -it runner-ctrl-71c8ff88-bc9pq -c runner -- /bin/sh