Kubernetes Useful Commands Cheat Sheet

February 15, 2026•Salih Kayiplar

kubernetes

kubectl

bash

cheatsheet

Check All Running Image Versions Across a Cluster

Quickly audit every container image running in your cluster:

kubectl get deployment -o=jsonpath="{range .items[*]}{'\n'}{.metadata.name}{': '}{range .spec.template.spec.containers[*]}{.image},{end}{end}" -A | sort

Compare Versions Between Two Clusters

Diff deployments across environments to find drift:

diff --width=300 --suppress-common-lines --side-by-side \
  <(kubectl get deployment --context=cluster-a -o=jsonpath="{range .items[*]}{'\n'}{.metadata.name}{': '}{range .spec.template.spec.containers[*]}{.image},{end}{end}" -A | sort) \
  <(kubectl get deployment --context=cluster-b -o=jsonpath="{range .items[*]}{'\n'}{.metadata.name}{': '}{range .spec.template.spec.containers[*]}{.image},{end}{end}" -A | sort)

Cleanup Dangling Pods

Remove pods stuck in error states across all namespaces:

# Clean up Error pods
for I in $(kubectl get pods --all-namespaces | grep Error | awk '{print $1 "," $2}'); do
  pod=($(echo "$I" | tr "," " "))
  kubectl -n ${pod[0]} delete pod ${pod[1]}
done

# Clean up ContainerStatusUnknown pods
for I in $(kubectl get pods --all-namespaces | grep ContainerStatusUnknown | awk '{print $1 "," $2}'); do
  pod=($(echo "$I" | tr "," " "))
  kubectl -n ${pod[0]} delete pod ${pod[1]}
done

# Clean up empty ReplicaSets
for I in $(kubectl get rs --all-namespaces | grep "0         0         0" | awk '{print $1 "," $2}'); do
  pod=($(echo "$I" | tr "," " "))
  kubectl -n ${pod[0]} delete rs ${pod[1]}
done

Bulk Patch Deployments in a Namespace

Change an environment variable across all deployments at once:

kubectl get deployments -o name | sed -e 's/.*\///g' | \
  xargs -I {} kubectl patch deployment {} \
  --type=json -p='[{"op": "replace", "path": "/spec/template/spec/containers/0/env/0/value", "value": "DEBUG"}]'

Delete Secrets in a Loop (Filtered)

Clean up secrets matching a pattern:

kubectl get secrets -n postgres-operator | grep myapp | awk '{print $1}' | \
  while read secret; do
    kubectl -n postgres-operator delete secret "$secret"
  done

Connect to AKS Node as Root

Debug node-level issues by getting a root shell:

kubectl debug node/aks-nodepool1-12345678-vmss000000 -it --image=mcr.microsoft.com/cbl-mariner/busybox:2.0
# Then inside the debug container:
chroot /host

Kubeconfig Management

# List all contexts
kubectl config get-contexts

# Delete a context
kubectl config delete-context my-cluster-context

# List config users
kubectl config view -o jsonpath='{.users[*].name}'

# Delete a user
kubectl config delete-user my-user

Show Node Capacity with Actual Limits

kubectl top nodes --show-capacity=true

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