DEV Community: Faaiq Amarullah

Installing K9s: A Comprehensive Tutorial

Faaiq Amarullah — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 09:20:45 +0000

📘 What is K9s?

K9s is an open-source, terminal-based UI designed to help you interact with your Kubernetes clusters. It provides a real-time view of all your resources—pods, deployments, services, CRDs, and more—right from your terminal. K9s simplifies cluster management by offering quick keyboard shortcuts and intuitive navigation, allowing you to troubleshoot and operate clusters faster than with kubectl alone.

⚖️ Why K9s?

Before we dive into the installation, let's briefly highlight why k9s has become an indispensable tool for many DevOps practitioners:

Real-time Monitoring: Get live insights into your cluster's health, resource utilization, and pod statuses.
Intuitive Navigation: Easily browse through namespaces, deployments, services, pods, and more with a simple keyboard-driven interface.
Log Aggregation: View container logs in real-time, filter them, and even follow specific logs.
Resource Management: Perform common operations like scaling deployments, deleting pods, and editing resources directly from the UI.
Context Switching: Seamlessly switch between multiple Kubernetes contexts and clusters.
Search and Filter: Quickly find specific resources using powerful search and filtering capabilities.
Port Forwarding: Set up and manage port forwards for easy access to your applications.
Customization: Tailor k9s to your preferences with custom hotkeys and configurations.

In essence, k9s empowers you to spend less time typing kubectl commands and more time understanding and managing your Kubernetes environments.

🧰 Prerequisites

Before installing K9s, make sure you have:

Access to a Kubernetes cluster (e.g., Minikube, Kind, EKS, GKE, AKS)
kubectl installed and configured
A valid kubeconfig file (usually in ~/.kube/config)

⚙️ Installing K9s

🔧 Method 1: Automatic Installation Via Webi (Recommended)

For Linux and macOS:

curl -sS https://webinstall.dev/k9s | bash

For Windows:

curl.exe -A MS https://webinstall.dev/k9s | powershell

Note: Restart your terminal after the installation is complete.

🔧 Method 2: Manual Installation (For Linux and macOS)

1. Download the latest version (replace with the latest version tag):

# For Linux
curl -LO https://github.com/derailed/k9s/releases/download/v0.50.6/k9s_Linux_amd64.tar.gz

# For macOS
curl -LO https://github.com/derailed/k9s/releases/download/v0.50.6/k9s_Darwin_amd64.tar.gz

2. Extract the archive:

# For Linux
tar -xzf k9s_Linux_amd64.tar.gz

# For macOS
tar -xzf k9s_Darwin_amd64.tar.gz

3. Move the binary to your PATH:

sudo mv k9s /usr/local/bin/

4. Verify the installation:

k9s version

🔧 Method 3: Manual Installation (For Windows)

1. Download the binary:

Go to K9s Releases and download the k9s_Windows_amd64.tar.gz.

2. Extract using 7-Zip or similar.

3. Move `k9s.exe` to a directory in your system PATH, e.g., `C:\Program Files\k9s`.

4. (Optional) Add the path:

    - Hit Win+r and type sysdm.cpl
    - Go to "Advanced" tab and click "Environment Variables"
    - Edit Path under "System variables"
    - Add the directory where k9s.exe is located

5. Verify:

k9s version

🚀 How to Use K9s?

Once installed, just type:

k9s

This launches an interactive UI in your terminal.

🧭 Common Keyboard Shortcuts

Key / Command	Function
`Arrow Keys (Up/Down/Left/Right)`	Navigate lists and views
`Enter`	View details of a selected resource (e.g., list deployment's pod, list pod's container)
`Esc`	Go back to the previous view
`/`	Search resources (e.g., `/nginx`)
`:`	Switch resource views (e.g., `:pod`, `:deploy`, `:service`)
`e`	Edit selected resource manifest
`d`	Describe selected resource
`Ctrl+d`	Delete selected resource
`l`	View logs of a pod
`s`	Shell into the selected pod
`y`	Show YAML manifest
`0`	Switch to all namespace view
`?`	Show help
`Ctrl+c`	Quit

🔐 K9s and Kubernetes Security (RBAC)

K9s uses your kubeconfig credentials and respects any RBAC policies in place. If a resource is restricted based on your cluster permissions, K9s will reflect that. Ensure your service account or IAM role has the necessary get, list, watch, and delete permissions.

📚 Resources

✅ Conclusion

K9s is a must-have tool in any Kubernetes practitioner's toolkit. With its cross-platform support and real-time UI, managing your cluster becomes significantly faster and more intuitive.

No need to memorize dozens of kubectl commands—K9s gives you a live window into your cluster that fits right inside your terminal.

How to use nmcli command?

Faaiq Amarullah — Sun, 18 Sep 2022 03:52:33 +0000

Computer network refers to computing devices that are interconnected and can exchange data and share resources with each other. These network devices use a system of rules, known as communication protocols, to transmit information over physical or wireless technologies.

One of the requirements of a computer network is that there is a computer that can run the operating system properly without any problems. This time I will discuss how to configure a network on a RHEL 8-based computer. As we know, computers with Linux-based OS are famous for their CLI. A command-line interface (CLI) is a text-based user interface (UI) used to run programs, manage computer files and interact with the computer. So now I will explain how to managing and configuring network using CLI.

To configure the network using the cli in RHEL 8 base, we will use the nmcli command. nmcli is a command-line tool for controlling NetworkManager and reporting network status. nmcli is used to create, view, edit, delete, enable, and disable network connections, as well as control and display the status of network devices.

Who Can Modify Network Settings

Only the root user can modify and edit the NetworkManager configuration using the CLI. A normal user can only read the NetworkManager configuration, unless he has privileges as the root user (sudo), then he will get the same benefits as the root user. If you get an error message, then you just need to add sudo before nmcli.

Viewing Networking Information

To show all of network devices, you can use this command

nmcli dev status

It's can display devices name, types, states, and connections

To displays a list of all connections, use this command

nmcli con show

you can add --active option to displays only active connections

Adding a network connection

The command below can add new connection named new1 for the interface eth0, which gets IPv4 networking information using DHCP and autoconnects on startup. The name of the configuration file is based on the value of the con-name option, new1, and is saved to the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-new1 file.

nmcli con add con-name new1 type ethernet ifname eth0

You can create an new1 connection to an eth0 device using a static ipv4 address. You can use ipv4.address and ipv4.gateway options to add new static ip. it's still autoconnect on starup and save the configuration into the same file.

nmcli con add con-name new1 type ethernet ifname eth0 ipv4.address 192.168.1.5/24 ipv4.gateway 192.168.1.1

Not only ipv4, you can also add static ipv6 configuration to new1 connection. You just need to add the ipv6.address and ipv6.gateway options.

nmcli con add con-name new1 type ethernet ifname eth0 ipv6.address 2001:db8:0:1::c000:207/64 ipv6.gateway 2001:db8:0:1::1 ipv4.address 192.168.1.5/24 ipv4.gateway 192.168.1.1

if you get an error message like in the picture above, you just need to add sudo or you need to log in as root user. if it is successful, it will display the message "successfuly added". A collection of random letters like in the picture above is the connection id.

Controlling Network Connections

To activate the new connection configuration, you just need to use the command nmcli con up name. If you forget the name, remember that the nmcli con show command will list all connections. If the connection name contains spaces, then you need to add a ' symbol.

nmcli con up new1
nmcli con up 'new 1'

to deactivate it, use the command nmcli con down name or nmcli dev dis devicename. Use nmcli dev dis devicename to deactivate a network interface.

nmcli con down new1
nmcli dev dis eth0

if you get an error message, you just need to add sudo or you need to log in as root user.

Modifying Network Connection Settings

To see the details of a connection, we can use the command nmcli con show nameconnection. After the command is executed, a description of the connection will appear. Use the up arrow and down arrow on the keyboard to scroll. Use q to quit.

nmcli con show new1

The nmcli con mod nameconnection command can modify the configuration of a connection. This command can be added with several options. For example, the command below will change the ipv4 address and ipv4 gateway of the new1 connection.

nmcli con mod new1 ipv4.address 192.168.2.5/24 ipv4.gateway 192.168.2.1

You can also add more than one ip on one connection. You just need to add the + symbol before the option. For example:

nmcli con mod new1 +ipv4.address 10.1.1.11/24

You can add several options like the one in the image below

You can also manually edit the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-nameconnection using a text editor like nano or vim. Because I named it new1, the file will be stored in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-new1.

sudo vim /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-new1

if you have finished configuring via vim or nano, don't forget to save it. If you are using vim, press Esc and type :wq if you are using nano, press Ctrl+x > y > Enter to save it.

You can configure IP statically or dynamically, it all depends on your needs.

After all the configuration is done, you need to run this command.

nmcli con reload
nmcli con down 'new1'
nmcli con up 'new1'

The nmcli con reload command is used to make NetworkManager read configuration changes. The interface still needs to be restarted for changes to take effect.

Deleting a Network Connection

To delete a connection, you need to run the command nmcli con del 'nameconnection'. This will disconnect the connection and will automatically delete the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-nameconnection. For example :

nmcli con del 'new1'