Copy Directory or File to Kubernetes POD

Photo by Jan Huber on Unsplash

When running kubernetes pod, sometimes we need to copy local files to remote pod, or need to copy from remote pod to local.

You can use kubectl cp for this task.

1. Copy /tmp/foo local file to /tmp/bar in a remote pod in namespace <YOUR-NAMESPACE>

tar cf — /tmp/foo | kubectl exec -i -n <YOUR-NAMESPACE> <YOUR-POD> — tar xf — -C /tmp/bar

2. Copy /tmp/foo from a remote pod to /tmp/bar locally

kubectl exec -n <YOUR-NAMESPACE> <YOUR-POD> — tar cf — /tmp/foo | tar xf — -C /tmp/bar

3. Copy /tmp/foo_dir local directory to /tmp/bar_dir in a remote pod in the default namespace

kubectl cp /tmp/foo_dir <YOUR-POD>:/tmp/bar_dir

4. Copy /tmp/foo local file to /tmp/bar in a remote pod in a specific container

kubectl cp /tmp/foo <YOUR-POD>:/tmp/bar -c <YOUR-CONTAINER>

5. Copy /tmp/foo local file to /tmp/bar in a remote pod in namespace <YOUR-NAMESPACE>

kubectl cp /tmp/foo <YOUR-NAMESPACE>/<YOUR-POD>:/tmp/bar

6. Copy /tmp/foo from a remote pod to /tmp/bar locally

kubectl cp <YOUR-NAMESPACE>/<YOUR-POD>:/tmp/foo /tmp/bar