How to copy files from kubernetes Pods to local system
KubernetesAzure AksKubernetes Problem Overview
I'm trying to copy files from Kubernetes Pods to my local system. I am getting the below error while running following command:
kubectl cp aks-ssh2-6cd4948f6f-fp9tl:/home/azureuser/test.cap ./test.cap
Output:
> tar: home/azureuser/test: Cannot stat: No such file or directory tar: > Exiting with failure status due to previous errors error: > home/azureuser/test no such file or directory
I could see the file under above given path. I am really confused.
Could you please help me out?
Kubernetes Solutions
Solution 1 - Kubernetes
As stated inkubectl
help:
kubectl cp --help
Copy files and directories to and from containers.
Examples:
# !!!Important Note!!!
# Requires that the 'tar' binary is present in your container
# image. If 'tar' is not present, 'kubectl cp' will fail.
# Copy /tmp/foo_dir local directory to /tmp/bar_dir in a remote pod in the default namespace
kubectl cp /tmp/foo_dir <some-pod>:/tmp/bar_dir
# Copy /tmp/foo local file to /tmp/bar in a remote pod in a specific container
kubectl cp /tmp/foo <some-pod>:/tmp/bar -c <specific-container>
# Copy /tmp/foo local file to /tmp/bar in a remote pod in namespace <some-namespace>
kubectl cp /tmp/foo <some-namespace>/<some-pod>:/tmp/bar
# Copy /tmp/foo from a remote pod to /tmp/bar locally
kubectl cp <some-namespace>/<some-pod>:/tmp/foo /tmp/bar
Options:
-c, --container='': Container name. If omitted, the first container in the pod will be chosen
Usage:
kubectl cp <file-spec-src> <file-spec-dest> [options]
Use "kubectl options" for a list of global command-line options (applies to all commands).
You can also login to your Containter
and check if file is there:
kubectl exec -it aks-ssh2-6cd4948f6f-fp9tl /bin/bash
ls -la /home/azureuser/test.cap
If this still doesn't work, try: >You may try to copy your files to workdir and then retry to copy them using just their names. It's weird, but it works for now.
Consider advice of kchugalinskiy here #58692.
Solution 2 - Kubernetes
Let's say you are copying file from bin folder to local system. The command is
kubectl cp default/POD_NAME:bin/FILE_NAME /Users/username/FILE_NAME
You can connect to POD to verify if you are specifying correct file name
kubectl exec -ti POD_NAME bash
Solution 3 - Kubernetes
According to https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/generated/kubectl/kubectl-commands
kubectl cp <file-spec-src> <file-spec-dest>
is equivalent to using
kubectl exec -n <some-namespace> <some-pod> -- tar cf - <src-file> | tar xf - -C <dest-file>
So technically if you do not have tar installed on the pod, you can do kubectl exec -n <some-namespace> <some-pod> -- cat <src-file> > <dest-file>
Assuming the file is small or already compressed, the effect should be the same, except you cannot use cat on a directory or a set of files.
Solution 4 - Kubernetes
The command in the question posted is absolutely right. As answered before, this particular issue seems to be a missing tar
binary in the container. I actually did not know it was needed, but confirmed that the pod has it:
# find / -name tar
/bin/tar
/usr/lib/mime/packages/tar
/usr/share/doc/tar
My error was using .
to copy to the current directory (works with cp
and scp
) because it needs the full path, as shown in the original question:
kubectl cp pod-name-shown-in-get-pods:path/to/filename /local/dir/filename
But not:
kubectl cp pod-name-shown-in-get-pods:path/to/filename .
Which gives:
error: open .: is a directory
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
Now the tar
in the error message makes sense!
Note that if there is a leading /
in the source path, as in the following example:
kubectl cp pod-name-shown-in-get-pods:/etc/resolv.conf /local/dir/resolv.conf
You would also see:
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
However, the warning can be ignored, as the file would still copied. Use etc/resolv.conf
instead of /etc/resolv.conf
in the above example, to copy without the warning.
Solution 5 - Kubernetes
kubectl cp <pod-id>:<path> <destination-path> -n <namespace>
Worked for me.
Solution 6 - Kubernetes
You can mount a local directory into the pod.
Update your aks-ssh yaml file:
spec:
...
containers:
...
volumeMounts:
- name: test-dir
mountPath: /home/azureuser
...
volumes:
- name: test-dir
hostPath:
path: /path/to/your/local/dir
Now you can access your files in the local directory.
Solution 7 - Kubernetes
"kubectl cp" command is used to copy files from pods to local path and vice versa
-
Copying file from pod to local
> kubectl cp
: -
Copying file from specific container of pod to local
> kubectl cp
: -c specific_container -
Copying file from local to pod
> kubectl cp
:
Solution 8 - Kubernetes
I resolve this problem by set the source folder to be relative path. If the file location is /home/azureuser/test.cap, and working dir is /home/azureuser/, the cmd is
kubectl cp aks-ssh2-6cd4948f6f-fp9tl:test.cap ./test.cap
Solution 9 - Kubernetes
If anyone uses windows pods, it may be hard to get files copied to the pods from local machine with those linux paths for kubectl cp command:
Procedure to copy files from local machine to kubernetes pod: (especially windows container)
- I want to copy node.aspx from my local machine to podname:\c:\inetpub\wwwroot
- First upload Node.aspx to your cloud drive, path will be /home/{your_username} in my case /home/pranesh
- Then find out the pod name, in my case its aspx-deployment-84597d88f5-pk5nh, follow below command
PS /home/pranesh> kubectl cp /home/pranesh/Node.aspx aspx-deployment-84597d88f5-pk5nh:/Node.aspx
- This copies the file to c drive of container,
- then move file from c drive to required path with powershell
PS /home/pranesh> kubectl exec aspx-deployment-84597d88f5-pk5nh powershell "Copy-Item "C:\Node.aspx" -Destination "C:\inetpub\wwwroot""
- Use the reverse procedure for copying from container to cloud drive and download.
Solution 10 - Kubernetes
For people working on a Windows machine there is an additional gotcha: As at October 2021 you cannot include a drive letter in your local path.
So if you were to try a command like:
kubectl cp aks-ssh2-6cd4948f6f-fp9tl:/home/azureuser/test.cap C:/Temp/Test
you would get this error because kubectl cp
sees the colon in the Windows path as the separator between a pod name and the path within the pod.
So it would see C:/Temp/Test
as a pod named "C" with a path "/Temp/Test"
The way to get around this is to use a relative Windows path instead of an absolute path. It will need to be relative to your current working directory.
So if my current working directory is C:\Users\JoeBloggs
and I wanted to copy down to C:\Temp\Test
I'd need to use the command:
kubectl cp aks-ssh2-6cd4948f6f-fp9tl:/home/azureuser/test.cap ../../Temp/Test
Note that this issue looks like it may be fixed soon. See https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/94165
Solution 11 - Kubernetes
This works for me:
kubectl cp "namespace"/"pod_name":"path_in_pod" "local_path"
Example:
kubectl cp mynamespace/mypod:var/www/html/index.html \Users\myuser\Desktop\index.html
Solution 12 - Kubernetes
kubectl cp will not work if your container does not have tar command in the PATH. From your error it sees like tar command is not available on your container. https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/58512 Please explore other options
Solution 13 - Kubernetes
Kubernetes gives a file not found error when user does not have permissions to a pod. That was my problem.
Solution 14 - Kubernetes
On my side the issue was with having multiple containers inside the pod:
kubectl cp -c grafana \
metrics/grafana-5c4f76b49b-p88lc:/etc/grafana \
./grafana/etc
so set the container name with -c grafana
and properly prefix the namespace of the pod in my case metrics/
Solution 15 - Kubernetes
I tried this method on Azure and it worked:
kubectl cp 'POD NAME':xyz.json test
kubectl cp is the command for copying
POD NAME = vote-app
xyz.json
is the file that needs to be copied from pod
the test is the file created in the drive of the AZURE directory...
So final command would be:
kubectl cp vote-app:xyz.json test
test will get generated in Azure Directory and later u can download test
file from the download option of Azure
Solution 16 - Kubernetes
I couldn't get kubectl to work for this. Was getting error:
The connection to the server localhost:8080 was refused - did you specify the right host or port?
This worked for me instead:
docker cp CONTAINERID:FILEWITHPATH DESTFILENAME
where "CONTAINERID" was retrieved by calling docker ps
.
Solution 17 - Kubernetes
Maybe someone could met this error
tar: removing leading '/' from member names
error: open .: is a directory
Which induced by the following command
kc cp -n monitoring <pod name>:/usr/share/grafana/conf/defaults.ini ./
kc cp -n monitoring <pod name>:/usr/share/grafana/conf/defaults.ini ./default.ini
To solve it, we should add a destination folder per doc
kc cp -n monitoring <pod name>:/usr/share/grafana/conf/defaults.ini ./tmp/default.ini
Solution 18 - Kubernetes
you need to mention the namespace in which your pod is available.