KUBERNETES(1)(kubernetes) KUBERNETES(1)(kubernetes)
Eric Paris Jan 2015

kubectl explain - Get documentation for a resource

kubectl explain [OPTIONS]

Describe fields and structure of various resources.

This command describes the fields associated with each supported API resource. Fields are identified via a simple JSONPath identifier:

    <type>.<fieldName>[.<fieldName>]

Information about each field is retrieved from the server in OpenAPI format.

Use "kubectl api-resources" for a complete list of supported resources.

--api-version="" Use given api-version (group/version) of the resource.

--output="plaintext" Format in which to render the schema. Valid values are: (plaintext, plaintext-openapiv2).

--recursive=false When true, print the name of all the fields recursively. Otherwise, print the available fields with their description.

--as="" Username to impersonate for the operation. User could be a regular user or a service account in a namespace.

--as-group=[] Group to impersonate for the operation, this flag can be repeated to specify multiple groups.

--as-uid="" UID to impersonate for the operation.

--azure-container-registry-config="" Path to the file containing Azure container registry configuration information.

--cache-dir="/home/username/.kube/cache" Default cache directory

--certificate-authority="" Path to a cert file for the certificate authority

--client-certificate="" Path to a client certificate file for TLS

--client-key="" Path to a client key file for TLS

--cluster="" The name of the kubeconfig cluster to use

--context="" The name of the kubeconfig context to use

--disable-compression=false If true, opt-out of response compression for all requests to the server

--insecure-skip-tls-verify=false If true, the server's certificate will not be checked for validity. This will make your HTTPS connections insecure

--kubeconfig="" Path to the kubeconfig file to use for CLI requests.

--match-server-version=false Require server version to match client version

-n, --namespace="" If present, the namespace scope for this CLI request

--password="" Password for basic authentication to the API server

--profile="none" Name of profile to capture. One of (none|cpu|heap|goroutine|threadcreate|block|mutex)

--profile-output="profile.pprof" Name of the file to write the profile to

--request-timeout="0" The length of time to wait before giving up on a single server request. Non-zero values should contain a corresponding time unit (e.g. 1s, 2m, 3h). A value of zero means don't timeout requests.

-s, --server="" The address and port of the Kubernetes API server

--tls-server-name="" Server name to use for server certificate validation. If it is not provided, the hostname used to contact the server is used

--token="" Bearer token for authentication to the API server

--user="" The name of the kubeconfig user to use

--username="" Username for basic authentication to the API server

--version=false --version, --version=raw prints version information and quits; --version=vX.Y.Z... sets the reported version

--warnings-as-errors=false Treat warnings received from the server as errors and exit with a non-zero exit code

  # Get the documentation of the resource and its fields
  kubectl explain pods
  # Get all the fields in the resource
  kubectl explain pods --recursive
  # Get the explanation for deployment in supported api versions
  kubectl explain deployments --api-version=apps/v1
  # Get the documentation of a specific field of a resource
  kubectl explain pods.spec.containers
  # Get the documentation of resources in different format
  kubectl explain deployment --output=plaintext-openapiv2

kubectl(1),

January 2015, Originally compiled by Eric Paris (eparis at redhat dot com) based on the kubernetes source material, but hopefully they have been automatically generated since!

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