AKS node access using kubectl debug Pod

You need to access your AKS nodes and you don’t have the possibility to use SSH?

Don’t worry, it’s easy as using kubectl debug!

So, of course you need to have access to your AKS cluster API. In this example we will access it using kubectl.

Step 1: Get the Node Name

kubectl get nodes -o wide
NAME                                  STATUS   ROLES    AGE   VERSION   INTERNAL-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   OS-IMAGE             KERNEL-VERSION      CONTAINER-RUNTIME
aks-nodepool1-12121212-vmss000000   Ready    <none>   8d    v1.29.8   10.10.10.5    <none>        Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS   5.15.0-1071-azure   containerd://1.7.20-1
aks-nodepool1-12121212-vmss000001   Ready    <none>   8d    v1.29.8   10.10.10.6    <none>        Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS   5.15.0-1071-azure   containerd://1.7.20-1
aks-nodepool2-13131313-vmss000000   Ready    <none>   8d    v1.29.8   10.10.10.7    <none>        Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS   5.15.0-1071-azure   containerd://1.7.20-1
aks-nodepool2-13131313-vmss000001   Ready    <none>   8d    v1.29.8   10.10.10.12   <none>        Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS   5.15.0-1071-azure   containerd://1.7.20-1

Identify on which node you want to connect and then run the Microsoft busybox image on it.

kubectl debug node/aks-nodepool1-12121212-vmss000000 -it --image=mcr.microsoft.com/cbl-mariner/busybox:2.0

Now you are connected to the Busybox that is running on your AKS node.

if you specifically need an image with azure cli installed on it, you need to run the following image.

kubectl debug node/aks-nodepool1-12121212-vmss000000 -it --image=mcr.microsoft.com/azure-cli:cbl-mariner2.0

Step 2: Access the Node OS

To access the node OS, you will need to chroot.

chroot /host

Now you can debug image pull issues, network access issues and others using the default binaries installed on the node ;-)

crictl pull xyz
curl -k https://my.example.com/api/vx
dig @DNS-server-name Hostname
nc -z -v 10.10.8.8 80

Step 3: Clean Up

When you have finished with the debug pod, don’t forget to delete it from the default namespace.

Enjoy!