kubectl: get all logs from all pods

15 Jul, 2024 • 175 words • 1 min • updated 03 Jan, 2026

⚠️ This post is over one year old. It may no longer be up to date or relevant. Opinions may have changed.

Frequently:

shell

kubectl logs -n argocd argocd-repo-server-5d59975687-dxnh7

But how do you know what hash to use after server-?

Option 1): TAB auto-completion:

shell

kubectl logs -n argocd argocd-repo-server-<TAB>

Caveats:

tab completion for kubectl isn’t always properly set up
if there is more than one pod, you would have to type in the first few letters of the hash before hitting TAB again, that’s annoying and non-ergonomic

Option 2): subshell

     shell
     
kubectl logs -n argocd $(kubectl get pod -n argocd | grep argocd-repo-server | cut -f1 -d' ' | head -1)

Caveats:

a lot of typing
head -1 is necessary in case there are multiple pods¹

Option 3): get all logs from all pods that match a given label

     shell
     
   
kubectl logs -n argocd -l app=app.kubernetes.io/instance=argocd
[--all-containers] [--ignore-errors]

This is much more ergonomic.

You still need to figure out what label to use though:

     shell
     
   
$ kubectl describe pod -n argocd argocd-repo-server-5d59975687-dxnh7 | grep -A7 -i labels:
Labels:           app.kubernetes.io/component=repo-server
                  app.kubernetes.io/instance=argocd
                  app.kubernetes.io/managed-by=Helm
                  app.kubernetes.io/name=argocd-repo-server
                  app.kubernetes.io/part-of=argocd
                  app.kubernetes.io/version=v2.11.4
                  helm.sh/chart=argo-cd-7.3.4
                  pod-template-hash=5d59975687

Source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33069736/how-do-i-get-logs-from-all-pods-of-a-kubernetes-replication-controller

Happy logging!

Or tail -1, for that matter. ↩︎

kubectl: get all logs from all pods

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