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Chapter 4. Using the oc tool

The optional OpenShift CLI (oc) tool provides a subset of oc commands for MicroShift deployments. Using oc is convenient if you are familiar with OpenShift Container Platform and Kubernetes.

4.1. About the OpenShift CLI
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With the OpenShift command-line interface (CLI), the oc command, you can deploy and manage MicroShift projects from a terminal. The CLI oc tool is ideal in the following situations:

  • Working directly with project source code
  • Scripting Red Hat build of MicroShift operations
  • Managing projects while restricted by bandwidth resources
Note

A kubeconfig file must exist for the node to be accessible. The values are applied from built-in default values or a config.yaml, if you created one.

4.2. Using oc with a MicroShift node
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Review the following sections to learn how to complete common tasks in MicroShift using the oc CLI.

4.2.1. Viewing pods
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Use the oc get pods command to view the pods for the current project.

Note

When you run oc inside a pod and do not specify a namespace, the namespace of the pod is used by default. 

$ oc get pods -o wide
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Example output

NAME                  READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE     IP            NODE                           NOMINATED NODE
cakephp-ex-1-build    0/1     Completed   0          5m45s   10.131.0.10   ip-10-0-141-74.ec2.internal    <none>
cakephp-ex-1-deploy   0/1     Completed   0          3m44s   10.129.2.9    ip-10-0-147-65.ec2.internal    <none>
cakephp-ex-1-ktz97    1/1     Running     0          3m33s   10.128.2.11   ip-10-0-168-105.ec2.internal   <none>
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4.2.2. Viewing pod logs
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Use the oc logs command to view logs for a particular pod. 

$ oc logs cakephp-ex-1-deploy
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Example output

--> Scaling cakephp-ex-1 to 1
--> Success
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4.2.3. Listing supported API resources
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Use the oc api-resources command to view the list of supported API resources on the server. 

$ oc api-resources
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Example output

NAME                                  SHORTNAMES       APIGROUP                              NAMESPACED   KIND
bindings                                                                                     true         Binding
componentstatuses                     cs                                                     false        ComponentStatus
configmaps                            cm                                                     true         ConfigMap
...
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4.3. Getting help
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You can get help with CLI commands and MicroShift resources in the following ways.

  • Use oc help --flag to get information about a specific CLI command:

    Example: Get help for the oc create command

    $ oc create --help
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    Example output

    Create a resource by filename or stdin

JSON and YAML formats are accepted.

Usage:
  oc create -f FILENAME [flags]

...
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  • Use the oc explain command to view the description and fields for a particular resource:

    Example: View documentation for the Pod resource

    $ oc explain pods
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    Example output

    KIND:     Pod
VERSION:  v1

DESCRIPTION:
     Pod is a collection of containers that can run on a host. This resource is
     created by clients and scheduled onto hosts.

FIELDS:
   apiVersion	<string>
     APIVersion defines the versioned schema of this representation of an
     object. Servers should convert recognized schemas to the latest internal
     value, and may reject unrecognized values. More info:
     https://git.k8s.io/community/contributors/devel/api-conventions.md#resources

...
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4.4. oc command errors in MicroShift
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Not all OpenShift CLI (oc) commands are relevant for MicroShift deployments. When you use oc to make a request call against an unsupported API, the oc binary usually generates an error message about a resource that cannot be found.

  • For example, when you run the following new-project command: 

    $ oc new-project test
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    The following error message can be generated: 

    Error from server (NotFound): the server could not find the requested resource (get projectrequests.project.openshift.io)
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  • When you run the get projects command, another error can be generated as follows: 

    $ oc get projects
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    The following error message can be generated: 

    error: the server doesn't have a resource type "projects"
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