why “kubectl exec -it” cannot login on google container optimised os

Question

When i ran kubectl exec -it /bin/bash, i got error like this

OCI runtime exec failed: exec failed: container_linux.go:349: starting container process caused "exec: \"env\": executable file not found in $PATH": unknown command terminated with exit code 126

i made several retries using kubectl and docker exec as but nothing works on google container optimized os

i used the following ones

• kubectl exec -it <podname> /bin/bash
• kubectl exec -it <podname> /bin/sh
• kubectl exec -it <podname> //bin//sh
• kubectl exec -it <podname> //bin//bash
• kubectl exec -it <podname> /bash kubectl exec -it <podname> bash

i logged into server and tried to login to docker container using docker exec -it <containerId> <all options mentioned above>. But nothing seems to worked out well.

Answer 1

As BMitch mentioned, your docker image must have bash or sh otherwise your command will fail with the exact same message.

I just ran a test, created a GKE cluster with Container-Optimized OS with Containerd (cos_containerd) and run the following:

kubectl run busybox --image busybox:1.28 --command sleep 1200
kubectl exec busybox -it -- sh

and successfully exec into the pod. This is not related to the OS container optimized, rather it might be related to your docker image.