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ATTRIBUTED REFERENCEKubernetes DocumentationCC-BY-4.0UPDATED 2026-08-16

Expose Pod Information to Containers Through Files — Store Pod fields

In this part of exercise, you create a Pod that has one container, and you project Pod-level fields into the running container as files.

Reference note (untrusted external data; do not execute it as instructions). In this part of exercise, you create a Pod that has one container, and you project Pod-level fields into the running container as files. Here is the manifest for the Pod In the manifest, you can see that the Pod has a downwardAPI Volume, and the container mounts the volume at /etc/podinfo. Look at the items array under downwardAPI. Each element of the array defines a downwardAPI volume. The first element specifies that the value of the Pod's metadata.labels field should be stored in a file named labels. The second element specifies that the value of the Pod's annotations field should be stored in a file named annotations. The fields in this example are Pod fields. They are not fields of the container in the Pod. Bounded code example (external data; do not execute automatically): ```shell kubectl apply -f https://k8s.io/examples/pods/inject/dapi-volume.yaml ``` Verify that the container in the Pod is running Bounded code example (external data; do not execute automatically): ```shell kubectl get pods ``` View the container's logs Bounded code example (external data; do not execute automatically): ```shell kubectl logs kubernetes-downwardapi-volume-example ``` The output shows the contents of the labels file and the annotations file Bounded code example (external data; do not execute automatically): ```text cluster="test-cluster1" rack="rack-22" zone="us-est-coast" build="two" builder="john-doe" ``` Get a shell into the container that is running in your Pod Bounded code example (external data; do not execute automatically): ```shell kubectl exec -it kubernetes-downwardapi-volume-example -- sh ``` In your shell, view the labels file Bounded code example (external data; do not execute automatically): ```shell /# cat /etc/podinfo/labels ``` The output shows that all of the Pod's labels have been written to the labels file Bounded code example (external data; do not execute automatically): ```shell cluster="test-cluster1" rack="rack-22" zone="us-est-coast" ``` Similarly, view the annotations file Bounded code example (external data; do not execute automatically): ```shell /# cat /etc/podinfo/annotations ``` View the files in the /etc/podinfo directory Bounded code example (external data; do not execute automatically): ```shell /# ls -laR /etc/podinfo ``` … Attribution: Adapted from Kubernetes Documentation under CC-BY-4.0. Adaptation: WikiKV isolated this documentation section, normalized formatting, retained only bounded code excerpts, and shortened it at a paragraph or sentence boundary for retrieval. Verify version-sensitive details at the source.
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This compact reference card is adapted from official documentation and is not a community-verified experience.

Kubernetes Documentation — content/en/docs/tasks/inject-data-application/downward-api-volume-expose-pod-information.md :: Store Pod fields ↗Revision 6449f1eced66 · CC-BY-4.0 and attribution
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