Useful Tools

Useful tools (aliases, plugins, commands) that I found useful on a daily basis of managing K8s clusters:

Aliases

Useful aliases you can add to your .bashrc or .zshrc for day to day Kubernetes operations:

alias k='kubectl'
# kn $1 to switch current namespace
alias kn='f() { [ "$1" ] && kubectl config set-context --current --namespace $1 || kubectl config view --minify | grep namespace | cut -d" " -f6 ; } ; f'
# kx $1 to switch current context
alias kx='f() { [ "$1" ] && kubectl config use-context $1 || kubectl config current-context ; } ; f'

Plugins

Useful plugins you can install to speed your day to day Kubernetes operations:

Prerequisites

• kubectl CLI

• Kubernetes krew plugin manager:

  (
  set -x; cd "$(mktemp -d)" &&
  OS="$(uname | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')" &&
  ARCH="$(uname -m | sed -e 's/x86_64/amd64/' -e 's/\(arm\)\(64\)\?.*/\1\2/' -e 's/aarch64$/arm64/')" &&
  KREW="krew-${OS}_${ARCH}" &&
  curl -fsSLO "https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/krew/releases/latest/download/${KREW}.tar.gz" &&
  tar zxvf "${KREW}.tar.gz" &&
  ./"${KREW}" install krew
  )
  echo 'export PATH="${KREW_ROOT:-$HOME/.krew}/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
  source ~/.bashrc
  

kubectl ctx: Context switcher

kubectl krew install ctx
kubectl ctx # List contexts
kubectl ctx ${NEW_CTX} # Switch current context to ${NEW_CTX}

kubectl ns: Namespace switcher

kubectl krew install ns
kubectl ns # List namespaces
kubectl ns ${NEW_NS} # Switch current namespace to ${NEW_NS}

Commands

• Delete a namespace that is stuck terminating:

  export NAMESPACE=<CHANGEME>
  kubectl proxy &
  kubectl get namespace $NAMESPACE -o json |jq '.spec = {"finalizers":[]}' >/tmp/patch.json
  curl -k -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X PUT --data-binary @/tmp/patch.json 127.0.0.1:8001/api/v1/namespaces/$NAMESPACE/finalize
  

• Delete stuck objects:

  kubectl patch ${TYPE} ${NAME} -p '{"metadata":{"finalizers": []}}' --type=merge