How to Make Use of Kubernetes Secrets in Bash Script

Question

I have a secret stored in the Kubernetes pod which can be accessible by the following command.

kubectl exec -it pod_name -- printenv | grep SFTP_PASSWORD

which will provide the output as

SFTP_PASSWORD=password

I am accessing this secret in the bash script.

sftp_password=$(kubectl exec -it pod_name -- printenv | grep SFTP_PASSWORD)

But the issue I am facing is the above command will return both key-value pairs instead of value.

This might help: echo "SFTP_PASSWORD=password" | sed 's/^SFTP_PASSWORD=//' — Cyrus
– Cyrus, Commented Sep 13, 2020 at 14:04
Does this answer your question? extracting a variable's value from text file using bash — Joe
– Joe, Commented Sep 13, 2020 at 14:19

David Maze · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-13 16:30:13Z

1

If it's an environment variable, you can just use ordinary Bourne shell parameter expansion syntax:

kubectl exec pod_name -- sh -c 'echo $SFTP_PASSWORD'

Note the single quotes, to prevent the local shell from expanding the parameter; the sh -c wrapper so that a remote shell will be started to do the parameter expansion; and in this non-interactive use the -it options are unnecessary.

It's possible your cluster administrator prohibits kubectl exec, to prevent copying secret values out of the cluster in exactly this way. This also avoids the non-standard printenv tool (it is part of GNU Coreutils and not the POSIX spec, so Alpine-based images may not have it).

answered Sep 13, 2020 at 16:30

David Maze

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