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Viewing pods

As an administrator, you can view cluster pods, check their health, and evaluate the overall health of the cluster. You can also view a list of pods associated with a specific project or view usage statistics about pods. Regularly viewing pods can help you detect problems early, track resource usage, and ensure cluster stability.

Viewing pods in a project

You can display pod usage statistics, such as CPU, memory, and storage consumption, to monitor container runtime environments and ensure efficient resource use.

Procedure

  1. Change to the project by entering the following command:

    $ oc project <project_name>

  2. Obtain a list of pods by entering the following command:

    $ oc get pods
    Example output
    NAME                       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
console-698d866b78-bnshf   1/1     Running   2          165m
console-698d866b78-m87pm   1/1     Running   2          165m

  3. Optional: Add the -o wide flags to view the pod IP address and the node where the pod is located. For example:

    $ oc get pods -o wide
    Example output
    NAME                       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE    IP            NODE                           NOMINATED NODE
console-698d866b78-bnshf   1/1     Running   2          166m   10.128.0.24   ip-10-0-152-71.ec2.internal    <none>
console-698d866b78-m87pm   1/1     Running   2          166m   10.129.0.23   ip-10-0-173-237.ec2.internal   <none>

Describing a pod

To troubleshoot pod issues and view detailed information about a pod in OpenShift Container Platform, you can describe a pod using the oc describe pod command. The Events section in the output provides detailed information about the pod and the containers inside of it.

Procedure

  • Describe a pod by running the following command:

    $ oc describe pod -n <namespace> busybox-1
    Example output
    Name:             busybox-1
Namespace:        busy
Priority:         0
Service Account:  default
Node:             worker-3/192.168.0.0
Start Time:       Mon, 27 Nov 2023 14:41:25 -0500
Labels:           app=busybox
                  pod-template-hash=<hash>
Annotations:      k8s.ovn.org/pod-networks:
…
Events:
  Type    Reason   Age                   From     Message
  ----    ------   ----                  ----     -------
  Normal  Pulled   41m (x170 over 7d1h)  kubelet  Container image "quay.io/quay/busybox:latest" already present on machine
  Normal  Created  41m (x170 over 7d1h)  kubelet  Created container busybox
  Normal  Started  41m (x170 over 7d1h)  kubelet  Started container busybox
Additional resources

Viewing pod usage statistics

You can display usage statistics about pods, which provide the runtime environments for containers. These usage statistics include CPU, memory, and storage consumption.

Prerequisites

  • You must have cluster-reader permission to view the usage statistics.

  • Metrics must be installed to view the usage statistics.

Procedure

  1. View the usage statistics by entering the following command:

    $ oc adm top pods -n <namespace>
    Example output
    NAME                         CPU(cores)   MEMORY(bytes)
console-7f58c69899-q8c8k     0m           22Mi
console-7f58c69899-xhbgg     0m           25Mi
downloads-594fcccf94-bcxk8   3m           18Mi
downloads-594fcccf94-kv4p6   2m           15Mi

  2. Optional: Add the --selector='' label to view usage statistics for pods with labels. Note that you must choose the label query to filter on, such as =, ==, or !=. For example:

    $ oc adm top pod --selector='<pod_name>'

Viewing resource logs

You can view logs for resources in the OpenShift CLI (oc) or web console. Logs display from the end (or tail) by default. Viewing logs for resources can help you troubleshoot issues and monitor resource behavior.

Viewing resource logs by using the web console

Use the following procedure to view resource logs by using the OpenShift Container Platform web console.

Procedure

  1. In the OpenShift Container Platform console, navigate to Workloads → Pods or navigate to the pod through the resource you want to investigate.

    Note

    Some resources, such as builds, do not have pods to query directly. In such instances, you can locate the Logs link on the Details page for the resource.

  2. Select a project from the drop-down menu.

  3. Click the name of the pod you want to investigate.

  4. Click Logs.

Viewing resource logs by using the CLI

Use the following procedure to view resource logs by using the command-line interface (CLI).

Prerequisites

  • Access to the OpenShift CLI (oc).

Procedure

  • View the log for a specific pod by entering the following command:

    $ oc logs -f <pod_name> -c <container_name>

    where:

    -f

    Optional: Specifies that the output follows what is being written into the logs.

    <pod_name>

    Specifies the name of the pod.

    <container_name>

    Optional: Specifies the name of a container. When a pod has more than one container, you must specify the container name.

    For example:

    $ oc logs -f ruby-57f7f4855b-znl92 -c ruby

  • View the log for a specific resource by entering the following command:

    $ oc logs <object_type>/<resource_name>

    For example:

    $ oc logs deployment/ruby