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K9S ​

Global ​

Use default kubeconfig ​

sh
k9s

Use non-default kubeconfig ​

sh
k9s --kubeconfig /path/to/kubeconfig

Use non-default context ​

sh
k9s --context fooctx

Readonly ​

sh
k9s --readonly

Check info (locations for configuration, logs, screen dumps) ​

sh
k9s info

Resources ​

List Resources ​

  • :<resource> - list Resources, e.g. :pod to list all pods.
  • :<resource> <namespace> - list Resources in a given namespace.

List all available resources / apis ​

  • :aliases / Ctrl-a - list all available aliases and resources.
  • :crd - list all CRDs.
  • :apiservices - list all API Services

Filter ​

  • /<filter> - regex filter.
  • /!<filter> - inverse regex filter.
  • /-l <label> - filter by labels.
  • /-f <filter> - fuzzy match.

Choose namespace ​

  • :namespace - then select the desired namespace by up or down key, press Enter to select.

Choose context ​

  • :ctx - list ctx, then select from the list.
  • :ctx <context> - swtich to the specified context.

Show Decrypted Secrets ​

  • :secrets - to list the secrets, then x to decrypt the secret. Esc to leave the decrypted display.

Key mappingg ​

Move up and down without moving your right hand ​

  • j - down.
  • k - up.
  • SPACE - select multiple lines (e.g. then Ctrl-d to delete)
  • y - yaml.
  • d - describe.
  • v - view.
  • e - edit.
  • l - logs.
  • w - wrap.
  • r - auto-refresh.
  • s (Deployment screen) - scale the number of replicas.
  • s (Pod or Containers screen) - shell
  • x - decode a Secret.
  • f - fullscreen. Tip: enter fullscreen mode before copying, to avoid | in copied text.
  • Ctrl-d - delete.
  • Ctrl-k - kill (no confirmation).
  • Ctrl-w - toggle wide columns. (Equivalent to kubectl ... -o wide)
  • Ctrl-z - toggle error state
  • Ctrl-e - hide header.
  • Ctrl-s - save output (e.g. the YAML) to disk.
  • Ctrl-l - rollback.

Sort by Column ​

  • Shift-c - sorts by CPU.
  • Shift-m - sorts by MEMORY.
  • Shift-s - sorts by STATUS.
  • Shift-p - sorts by namespace.
  • Shift-n - sorts by name.
  • Shift-o - sorts by node.
  • Shift-i - sorts by IP address.
  • Shift-a - sorts by container age.
  • Shift-t - sorts by number of restarts.
  • Shift-r - sorts by pod readiness.

Helm ​

  • :helm - show helm releases.
  • :helm <namespace> - show releases in a specific namespace.

User ​

There's no "user" object but in k9s you can see all the users by :users. Press Enter to see a list of Policies.

XRay View ​

  • :xray <resource_type> - e.g. :xray deploy.

Pulse View ​

  • :pulse - displays general information about the Kubernetes cluster.

Popeye View ​

  • :popeye / :pop - checks all resources for conformity with the correctness criteria and displays the resulting "rating" with explanations. https://popeyecli.io

Show Disk Files ​

  • :dir /path

E.g. :dir /tmp will show your /tmp folder on local disk. One common use case: Ctrl-s to save a yaml, then find it in :dir /tmp/k9s-screens-root, find the file, press e to edit and a to apply.

Quit ​

  • :q / Ctrl-c - quit k9s.

Esc: Bails out of view/command/filter mode.

Meaning of the Header ​

Most of the headers are easy to understand; some of the special ones ​

%CPU/R: Percentage of requested CPU %CPU/L: Percentage of limited CPU %MEM/R: Percentage of requested memory %MEM/L: Percentage of limited memory CPU/A: allocatable CPU

Pods ​

pf: PortForward

Containers ​

PROBES(L:R): Liveness and Readiness probes

Bonus ​

How to scale up or scale down a deployment? ​

Go to the Deployments page, and press s, then enter a number for the desired num of ReplicaSet.

How to force delete a pod? ​

Ctrl-d, move cursor to Force, press space to select, click OK.

Where are the k9s config files? ​

$HOME/.k9s/views.yml: customize the column view for resource lists. $HOME/.k9s/plugin.yml: manage plugins. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/k9s/config.yml: k9s config. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/k9s/alias.yml: define your own alias. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/k9s/hotkey.yml: define your own hotkeys. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/k9s/plugin.yml: manage plugins.

Note that all YAML files in the .k9s directory must have the .yml extension (.yaml doesn’t work).

How to Check Objects with the Same Name in Different API Groups ​

e.g. Cluster may be found in different api groups, like cluster.x-k8s.io or clusterregistry.k8s.io or baremetal.cluster.gke.io.

yaml
apiVersion: cluster.x-k8s.io/v1alpha3
kind: Cluster
yaml
apiVersion: clusterregistry.k8s.io/v1alpha1
kind: Cluster
yaml
apiVersion: baremetal.cluster.gke.io/v1
kind: Cluster

Use apiVersion/kind (i.e. Group/Version/kind) instead of just kind to check the API of a specific group. Or go to the CRDs page (:crd), move to the correct row, press enter.

  • :cluster.x-k8s.io/v1alpha3/clusters
  • :clusterregistry.k8s.io/v1alpha1/clusters
  • :baremetal.cluster.gke.io/v1/clusters

How to change log setting ​

Change ~/.config/k9s/config.yml:

yaml
logger:
  tail: 500
  buffer: 5000
  sinceSeconds: -1

How to monitor what's going on ​

  • :event / :ev - see the stream of events.
  • :pod - see the list of pods Shift-a to sort by age.
  • :job - see the list of jobs, ordered by time by default.

Benchmark ​

k9s includes a basic HTTP load generator. To enable it, you have to configure port forwarding in the pod. Select the pod and press SHIFT + f, go to the port-forward menu (using the pf alias). After selecting the port and hitting CTRL + b, the benchmark would start. Its results are saved in /tmp for subsequent analysis. To change the configuration of the benchmark, create the $HOME/.k9s/bench-<my_context>.yml file (unique for each cluster).

Plugins ​

https://github.com/derailed/k9s/tree/master/plugins

Install ​

Go ​

sh
go install github.com/derailed/k9s@latest

Homebrew / LinuxBrew ​

sh
brew install derailed/k9s/k9s

MacPort ​

sh
sudo port install k9s

Snap ​

sh
sudo snap install k9s

PacMan ​

sh
pacman -S k9s

Windows: scoop ​

sh
scoop install k9s

Windows: chocolatey ​

sh
choco install k9s