kubectl-auth-can-i(1)

kubectl-auth-can-i1

Check whether an action is allowed

Usage

kubectl auth can-i [OPTIONS]

Eric Paris Jan 2015

Overview

Check whether an action is allowed.

VERB is a logical Kubernetes API verb like 'get', 'list', 'watch', 'delete', etc. TYPE is a Kubernetes resource. Shortcuts and groups will be resolved. NONRESOURCEURL is a partial URL that starts with "/". NAME is the name of a particular Kubernetes resource. This command pairs nicely with impersonation. See --as global flag.

Options

-A, --all-namespaces=false
If true, check the specified action in all namespaces.

--list=false
If true, prints all allowed actions.

--no-headers=false
If true, prints allowed actions without headers

-q, --quiet=false
If true, suppress output and just return the exit code.

--subresource=""
SubResource such as pod/log or deployment/scale

Options inherited from parent commands

--as=""
Username to impersonate for the operation. User could be a regular user or a service account in a namespace.

--as-group=[]
Group to impersonate for the operation, this flag can be repeated to specify multiple groups.

--as-uid=""
UID to impersonate for the operation.

--as-user-extra=[]
User extras to impersonate for the operation, this flag can be repeated to specify multiple values for the same key.

--cache-dir="/home/username/.kube/cache"
Default cache directory

--certificate-authority=""
Path to a cert file for the certificate authority

--client-certificate=""
Path to a client certificate file for TLS

--client-key=""
Path to a client key file for TLS

--cluster=""
The name of the kubeconfig cluster to use

--context=""
The name of the kubeconfig context to use

--disable-compression=false
If true, opt-out of response compression for all requests to the server

--insecure-skip-tls-verify=false
If true, the server's certificate will not be checked for validity. This will make your HTTPS connections insecure

--kubeconfig=""
Path to the kubeconfig file to use for CLI requests.

--kuberc=""
Path to the kuberc file to use for preferences. This can be disabled by exporting KUBECTL_KUBERC=false feature gate or turning off the feature KUBERC=off.

--match-server-version=false
Require server version to match client version

-n, --namespace=""
If present, the namespace scope for this CLI request

--password=""
Password for basic authentication to the API server

--profile="none"
Name of profile to capture. One of (none|cpu|heap|goroutine|threadcreate|block|mutex|trace)

--profile-output="profile.pprof"
Name of the file to write the profile to

--proxy-url=""
Proxy URL to use for requests to the API server

--request-timeout="0"
The length of time to wait before giving up on a single server request. Non-zero values should contain a corresponding time unit (e.g. 1s, 2m, 3h). A value of zero means don't timeout requests.

-s, --server=""
The address and port of the Kubernetes API server

--tls-server-name=""
Server name to use for server certificate validation. If it is not provided, the hostname used to contact the server is used

--token=""
Bearer token for authentication to the API server

--user=""
The name of the kubeconfig user to use

--username=""
Username for basic authentication to the API server

--version=false
--version, --version=raw prints version information and quits; --version=vX.Y.Z... sets the reported version

--warnings-as-errors=false
Treat warnings received from the server as errors and exit with a non-zero exit code

Examples

  # Check to see if I can create pods in any namespace
  kubectl auth can-i create pods --all-namespaces
  # Check to see if I can list deployments in my current namespace
  kubectl auth can-i list deployments.apps
  # Check to see if service account "foo" of namespace "dev" can list pods in the namespace "prod"
  # You must be allowed to use impersonation for the global option "--as"
  kubectl auth can-i list pods --as=system:serviceaccount:dev:foo -n prod
  # Check to see if I can do everything in my current namespace ("*" means all)
  kubectl auth can-i '*' '*'
  # Check to see if I can get the job named "bar" in namespace "foo"
  kubectl auth can-i list jobs.batch/bar -n foo
  # Check to see if I can read pod logs
  kubectl auth can-i get pods --subresource=log
  # Check to see if I can access the URL /logs/
  kubectl auth can-i get /logs/
  # Check to see if I can approve certificates.k8s.io
  kubectl auth can-i approve certificates.k8s.io
  # List all allowed actions in namespace "foo"
  kubectl auth can-i --list --namespace=foo

Releases

3 releases since Debian 11 (Bullseye); the text changed 1 time.

  1. 11–12
  2. Arch

History

January 2015, Originally compiled by Eric Paris (eparis at redhat dot com) based on the kubernetes source material, but hopefully they have been automatically generated since!

From kubectl 1.37.2-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.