I am making a bash script to copy files from a Kubernetes pod running Debian. When I include the following line:
kubectl --namespace "$namesp" exec "$pod" -c "$container" -- cd /var
it errors out:
OCI runtime exec failed: exec failed: container_linux.go:380: starting container process caused: exec: "cd": executable file not found in $PATH: unknown
command terminated with exit code 126
I also tried
kubectl --namespace "$namesp" exec "$pod" -c "$container" -- builtin
kubectl --namespace "$namesp" exec "$pod" -c "$container" -it -- cd /var
which gave the same result.
I was able to resolve the issue by changing the command to:
kubectl --namespace "$namesp" exec "$pod" -c "$container" -- /bin/bash -c "builtin"
Would love to understand why the first command(s) don't work and the latter one does. I would have thought that builtin commands are the one group of commands that would always be found, in contrast to commands that rely on the PATH environment variable.
kubectl exec is used to execute an executable in a running container. The command has to be built into the container.
Neither builtin nor cd are valid executables in your container. Only /bin/bash is.
To execute a builtin shell command, you have to execute the shell and call it as the command argument like in your third example.