Unlock Advanced kubectl Tricks for Faster Kubernetes Management

kubectl is the official command‑line tool for Kubernetes, and this article presents several advanced usage patterns for users who already have basic K8s experience.

Print the current API version

# kubectl's main role is to interact with the API server.
# This command is especially useful for debugging your own API interfaces.
$ kubectl get ns -v=9

Filter pods by status and delete them

kubectl get pods --all-namespaces --field-selector status.phase=Pending -o json | \
  jq '.items[] | "kubectl delete pods \(.metadata.name) -n \(.metadata.namespace)"' | \
  xargs -n 1 bash -c

For a single namespace you can use a simpler pipeline:

kubectl -n default get pods | grep Completed | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kubectl -n default delete pods

List all pods running on a specific node

kubectl get pods --all-namespaces -o wide --field-selector spec.nodeName=pve-node1

Count pod distribution across nodes

kubectl -n default get pods -o wide -l app="nginx" | awk '{print $7}' | \
awk '{ count[$0]++ } END { printf("%-35s: %s
","Node","Count"); for(i in count){ printf("%-35s: %d
",i,count[i]); } }'

Sample output shows each node and the number of matching pods.

Using kubectl proxy

The proxy adds a layer in front of the API server, allowing direct API calls without authentication. After starting the proxy you can access the API locally.

KUBECONFIG=~/.kube/config-symv3 kubectl proxy -p 8080
kubectl get ns

By default the proxy restricts certain paths (e.g., exec/attach). You can relax these limits:

kubectl proxy -p 8080 --keepalive 3600s --reject-paths='' -v=9

Running a proxy with high verbosity provides a useful log for debugging tools such as the Kubernetes dashboard.

Conclusion

kubectl is a powerful CLI; the commands above illustrate some of its lesser‑known capabilities. You don’t need to memorize them all, but knowing they exist can save time when tackling ad‑hoc tasks without writing custom client code.