apply
create or update resources in a k8s cluster according to a configuration file.
often used to spin up pods, deployments, jobs, etc.
kubectl apply -f my-manifest.yml
logs
# show stdout and stderr for a pod
kubectl logs my-pod
# can also be done for jobs/other resources
# effectively syntactic sugar for the command above
kubectl logs jobs/my-job
# can pinpoint the logs for a particular container in a pod too
kubectl logs jobs/my-job -c my-container
describe
display information about a resource, includes configuration details, current status, events, etc.
kubectl describe my-pod
exec
# open a shell inside a running container
kubectl exec my-pod -c my-container -- /bin/bash
# execute arbitrary sys commands inside a running container
kubectl exec my-pod -c my-container -- ls /data