Edit PODs and Deployments

Edit a POD

Remember, we CANNOT edit specifications of an existing POD other than the below.

• spec.containers[*].image
• spec.initContainers[*].image
• spec.activeDeadlineSeconds
• spec.tolerations

For example we cannot edit the environment variables, service accounts, resource limits of a running pod. But if you really want to, you have 2 options:

• Run the kubectl edit pod <pod name> command. This will open the pod specification in an editor (vi editor). Then edit the required properties. When you try to save it, you will be denied. This is because you are attempting to edit a field on the pod that is not editable.

A copy of the file with your changes is saved as a yaml file in a temporary location.
We can then delete the existing pod by running the command: kubectl delete pod <pod name>

Then create a new pod with changes using the temporary file kubectl create -f <newly created yaml file with changes>
like kubectl create -f /tmp/kubectl-edit-ccvrq.yaml

• The second option is to extract the pod definition in YAML format to a file using the command kubectl get pod <pod name> -o yaml > my-new-pod.yaml
  Then make the changes to the exported file using an editor (vi editor). Save the changes vi my-new-pod.yaml
  Then delete the existing pod kubectl delete pod <pod-name>
  Then create a new pod with the edited file kubectl create -f my-new-pod.yaml

Edit Deployments

With Deployments we can easily edit any field/property of the POD template. Since the pod template is a child of the deployment specification, with every change the deployment will automatically delete and create a new pod with the new changes. So if we are asked to edit a property of a POD part of a deployment you may do that simply by running the command

kubectl edit deployment my-deployment