Shell, debug & node shell¶

When logs aren't enough, get a real terminal. Kubus gives you three kinds of shell, each opening as a tab in the bottom dock. Every tab is a full xterm.js terminal with colours, cursor control and automatic resize.

Container shell¶

Open a shell into any container:

• Pod ⋮ menu → Shell, or Ctrl+K → find the pod → Tab → Shell.

Kubus runs the Kubernetes exec API over a WebSocket. By default it tries bash and falls back to sh, so it works on minimal images too. The terminal resizes with the pane, and the session ends cleanly when you close the tab (Ctrl+W / Cmd+W on the desktop app).

You can change the default shell (or set a custom path) in Settings → Logs & terminal.

Debug containers¶

Some images have no shell at all: distroless, scratch, a stripped Go binary. For those, attach an ephemeral debug container:

• Pod ⋮ menu → Debug container…

• Pick a debug image from the catalog (default busybox:1.36). The built-in presets cover the common cases without having to remember registry paths: busybox, the three DebugBox tiers (lite ~15 MB for DNS/HTTP checks, balanced ~47 MB with tcpdump and strace, power ~91 MB with tshark and nmap) and netshoot (~200 MB, everything). Picking DebugBox power switches the profile to Network admin for you, since its tools need NET_ADMIN. Custom image… takes any image reference, and you can add your own catalog entries (an internal toolbox image, a different busybox tag) in Settings → Debug containers; one named like a built-in preset replaces it.

• Optionally pick a target container to share a process namespace with, so you can see and poke at its processes.
• Kubus attaches the ephemeral container and drops you into a shell inside it, the same idea as kubectl debug.

Node shell¶

Sometimes you need the host itself, to check dmesg, inspect /var/log or run crictl. The node shell launches a temporary privileged pod and nsenters into the node's root namespace, giving you a root shell on the machine.

• Node ⋮ menu → Node shell…

See also¶