Kubectl quick reference

This document acts as a quick reference to kubectl, listing some of the most common operations.

The examples here only address the most basic approach to these operations. For more options, please refer to the command-line help of kubectl subcommands, which you can access like this:

kubectl get --help

There is also a more detailed cheatsheet in the official kubernetes documentation.

Inspecting running instances of an application

To list running Pods:

$ kubectl -n <namespace> get pods

To view details for a Pod:

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

Viewing logs

To access the logs of a running container:

$ kubectl -n <namespace> logs <pod>

Viewing kubernetes events

To see kubernetes events, which can help debugging:

$ kubectl -n <namespace> get events

Container shell

You can get a shell inside a running container:

$ kubectl -n <namespace> exec -it <pod> sh

For more information, click here

Pod port-forwarding

To forward port 5000 on localhost to port 5001 in the Pod:

$ kubectl -n <namespace> port-forward <pod> 5000:5001

For more information, click here

This page was last reviewed on 23 September 2025. It needs to be reviewed again on 23 March 2026 by the page owner #cloud-platform .