Need a working Kubectl binary inside an image

Or, you can do this. It works in my context, with kubernetes on VMs, where I know where is kubeconfig file. You would need to make the necessary changes, to make it work in your environment.

apiVersion: apps/v1kind: Deploymentmetadata:  name: kubectlspec:  replicas: 1  selector:    matchLabels:      role: kubectl  template:    metadata:      labels:        role: kubectl    spec:      containers:      - image: viejo/kubectl        name: kubelet        tty: true        securityContext:          privileged: true        volumeMounts:        - name: kube-config          mountPath: /root/.kube/      volumes:      - name: kube-config        hostPath:          path: /home/$USER/.kube/      affinity:        nodeAffinity:          requiredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution:            nodeSelectorTerms:            - matchExpressions:              - key: node-role.kubernetes.io/master                operator: Exists      tolerations:      - effect: NoSchedule        key: node-role.kubernetes.io/master        operator: Exists

This is the result:

$ kubectl get poNAME                      READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGEkubectl-cb8bfc6dd-nv6ht   1/1     Running   0          70s$ kubectl exec kubectl-cb8bfc6dd-nv6ht -- kubectl get noNAME                     STATUS   ROLES    AGE   VERSIONkubernetes-1-17-master   Ready    master   16h   v1.17.3kubernetes-1-17-worker   Ready    <none>   16h   v1.17.3

As Suren already explained in the comments that kubectl is not a daemon so kubectl will run, exit and cause the container to restart.

There are a couple of workarounds for this. One of these is to use sleep command with infinity argument. This would keep the Pod alive, prevent it from restarting and allow you to exec into it.

Here`s an example how to do that:

spec: containers: - image: bitnami/kubectl   command:   - sleep    - "infinity"   name: kctl

Let me know if this helps.