Essential kubectl Commands for Comprehensive Kubernetes Troubleshooting

This guide provides a curated collection of more than 100 kubectl commands useful for diagnosing and troubleshooting Kubernetes clusters. It is organized by diagnostic categories, each with concrete command examples and placeholders for namespace, pod, service, deployment, and other resource names.

Cluster Information

kubectl version

– display client and server versions. kubectl cluster-info – show endpoint URLs for the control plane. kubectl get nodes – list all nodes. kubectl describe node <node-name> – detailed node information. kubectl get namespaces – list all namespaces. kubectl get pods --all-namespaces – list every pod across namespaces.

Pod Diagnosis

kubectl get pods -n <namespace>

kubectl describe pod <pod-name> -n <namespace>

kubectl logs <pod-name> -n <namespace>

kubectl logs -f <pod-name> -n <namespace>

(follow logs)

kubectl exec -it <pod-name> -n <namespace> -- <command>

– run a command inside the pod.

Pod Health Checks

kubectl get pods <pod-name> -n <namespace> -o jsonpath='{.status.conditions[?(@.type=="Ready")].status}'

kubectl get events -n <namespace> --field-selector involvedObject.name=<pod-name>

Service Diagnosis

kubectl get svc -n <namespace>

kubectl describe svc <service-name> -n <namespace>

Deployment Diagnosis

kubectl get deployments -n <namespace>

kubectl describe deployment <deployment-name> -n <namespace>

kubectl rollout status deployment/<deployment-name> -n <namespace>

kubectl rollout history deployment/<deployment-name> -n <namespace>

StatefulSet Diagnosis

kubectl get statefulsets -n <namespace>

kubectl describe statefulset <statefulset-name> -n <namespace>

ConfigMap & Secret Diagnosis

kubectl get configmaps -n <namespace>

kubectl describe configmap <configmap-name> -n <namespace>

kubectl get secrets -n <namespace>

kubectl describe secret <secret-name> -n <namespace>

Namespace Diagnosis

kubectl describe namespace <namespace-name>

Resource Usage

kubectl top pod <pod-name> -n <namespace>

kubectl top nodes

Network Diagnosis

kubectl get pods -n <namespace> -o custom-columns=POD:metadata.name,IP:status.podIP --no-headers

kubectl get networkpolicies -n <namespace>

kubectl describe networkpolicy <network-policy-name> -n <namespace>

Persistent Volume & PVC Diagnosis

kubectl get pv

kubectl describe pv <pv-name>

kubectl get pvc -n <namespace>

kubectl describe pvc <pvc-name> -n <namespace>

Node Diagnosis

kubectl get pods --field-selector spec.nodeName=<node-name> -n <namespace>

kubectl describe node <node-name> | grep Conditions -A5

kubectl describe node <node-name> | grep -E "Capacity|Allocatable"

Resource Quotas & Limits

kubectl get resourcequotas -n <namespace>

kubectl describe resourcequota <resource-quota-name> -n <namespace>

Custom Resource Definition (CRD) Diagnosis

kubectl get <custom-resource-name> -n <namespace>

kubectl describe <custom-resource-name> <custom-resource-instance-name> -n <namespace>

Scaling & Autoscaling

kubectl scale deployment <deployment-name> --replicas=<replica-count> -n <namespace>

kubectl autoscale deployment <deployment-name> --min=<min-pods> --max=<max-pods> --cpu-percent=<cpu-percent> -n <namespace>

kubectl get hpa -n <namespace>

Job & CronJob Diagnosis

kubectl get jobs -n <namespace>

kubectl describe job <job-name> -n <namespace>

kubectl get cronjobs -n <namespace>

kubectl describe cronjob <cronjob-name> -n <namespace>

Capacity Diagnosis

kubectl get pv --sort-by=.spec.capacity.storage

kubectl get pv <pv-name> -o=jsonpath='{.spec.persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy}'

kubectl get storageclasses

Ingress & Service Mesh Diagnosis

kubectl get ingress -n <namespace>

kubectl describe ingress <ingress-name> -n <namespace>

kubectl get virtualservices -n <namespace>

kubectl describe virtualservice <virtualservice-name> -n <namespace>

Pod Network Troubleshooting

kubectl run -it --rm --restart=Never --image=busybox net-debug-pod -- /bin/sh

kubectl exec -it <pod-name> -n <namespace> -- curl <endpoint-url>

kubectl exec -it <source-pod-name> -n <namespace> -- traceroute <destination-pod-ip>

kubectl exec -it <pod-name> -n <namespace> -- nslookup <domain-name>

Configuration Validation

kubectl apply --dry-run=client -f <yaml-file>

kubectl auth can-i list pods --as=system:serviceaccount:<namespace>:<serviceaccount-name>

RBAC & Security

kubectl get roles,rolebindings -n <namespace>

kubectl describe role <role-name> -n <namespace>

Service Account Diagnosis

kubectl get serviceaccounts -n <namespace>

kubectl describe serviceaccount <serviceaccount-name> -n <namespace>

Node Drain & Uncordon

kubectl drain <node-name> --ignore-daemonsets

kubectl uncordon <node-name>

Pod Disruption Budget (PDB) Diagnosis

kubectl get pdb -n <namespace>

kubectl describe pdb <pdb-name> -n <namespace>

Resource Locks (if used)

kubectl get resourcelocks -n <namespace>

Endpoints & DNS

kubectl get endpoints <service-name> -n <namespace>

kubectl exec -it <pod-name> -n <namespace> -- cat /etc/resolv.conf

Custom Metrics (Prometheus/Grafana)

Use kubectl port-forward to expose Prometheus/Grafana services and query custom metrics.

Pod Priority & Preemption

kubectl get priorityclasses

Pod Overhead (Kubernetes 1.18+)

kubectl get pod <pod-name> -n <namespace> -o=jsonpath='{.spec.overhead}'

VolumeSnapshot Diagnosis (if used)

kubectl get volumesnapshot -n <namespace>

kubectl describe volumesnapshot <snapshot-name> -n <namespace>

Resource Deserialization

kubectl get <resource-type> <resource-name> -n <namespace> -o=json

Node Taints

kubectl describe node <node-name> | grep Taints

Webhook Configurations

kubectl get mutatingwebhookconfigurations

kubectl get validatingwebhookconfigurations

Pod Network Policies

kubectl get networkpolicies -n <namespace>

Node Conditions (Kubernetes 1.17+)

kubectl get nodes -o custom-columns=NODE:.metadata.name,READY:.status.conditions[?(@.type=="Ready")].status -l 'node-role.kubernetes.io/worker='

Audit Logs

Check the cluster’s audit log configuration and location to retrieve audit events.

Node OS Details

kubectl get node <node-name> -o jsonpath='{.status.nodeInfo.osImage}'

Replace placeholders such as <namespace>, <pod-name>, <deployment-name>, etc., with actual values from your environment before executing the commands.