How to set multiple commands in one yaml file with Kubernetes?

My preference is to multiline the args, this is simplest and easiest to read. Also, the script can be changed without affecting the image, just need to restart the pod. For example, for a mysql dump, the container spec could be something like this:

containers:
  - name: mysqldump
    image: mysql
    command: ["/bin/sh", "-c"]
    args:
      - echo starting;
        ls -la /backups;
        mysqldump --host=... -r /backups/file.sql db_name;
        ls -la /backups;
        echo done;
    volumeMounts:
      - ...

The reason this works is that yaml actually concatenates all the lines after the "-" into one, and sh runs one long string "echo starting; ls... ; echo done;".

If you're willing to use a Volume and a ConfigMap, you can mount ConfigMap data as a script, and then run that script:

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: my-configmap
data:
  entrypoint.sh: |-
    #!/bin/bash
    echo "Do this"

    echo "Do that"
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: my-pod
spec:
  containers:
  - name: my-container
    image: "ubuntu:14.04"
    command:
    - /bin/entrypoint.sh
    volumeMounts:
    - name: configmap-volume
      mountPath: /bin/entrypoint.sh
      readOnly: true
      subPath: entrypoint.sh
  volumes:
  - name: configmap-volume
    configMap:
      defaultMode: 0700
      name: my-configmap

This cleans up your pod spec a little and allows for more complex scripting.

$ kubectl logs my-pod
Do this
Do that

If you want to avoid concatenating all commands into a single command with ; or && you can also get true multi-line scripts using a heredoc:

command: 
 - sh
 - "-c"
 - |
   /bin/bash <<'EOF'

   # Normal script content possible here
   echo "Hello world"
   ls -l
   exit 123

   EOF

This is handy for running existing bash scripts, but has the downside of requiring both an inner and an outer shell instance for setting up the heredoc.

I am not sure if the question is still active but due to the fact that I did not find the solution in the above answers I decided to write it down.

I use the following approach:

readinessProbe:
  exec:
    command:
    - sh
    - -c
    - |
      command1
      command2 && command3

I know my example is related to readinessProbe, livenessProbe, etc. but suspect the same case is for the container commands. This provides flexibility as it mirrors a standard script writing in Bash.

IMHO the best option is to use YAML's native block scalars. Specifically in this case, the folded style block.

By invoking sh -c you can pass arguments to your container as commands, but if you want to elegantly separate them with newlines, you'd want to use the folded style block, so that YAML will know to convert newlines to whitespaces, effectively concatenating the commands.

A full working example:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: myapp
  labels:
    app: myapp
spec:
  containers:
  - name: busy
    image: busybox:1.28
    command: ["/bin/sh", "-c"]
    args:
    - >
      command_1 &&
      command_2 &&
      ... 
      command_n

Here is my successful run

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  labels:
    run: busybox
  name: busybox
spec:
  containers:
  - command:
    - /bin/sh
    - -c
    - |
      echo "running below scripts"
      i=0; 
      while true; 
      do 
        echo "$i: $(date)"; 
        i=$((i+1)); 
        sleep 1; 
      done
    name: busybox
    image: busybox

Here is another way to run multi line commands.

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: Job
metadata:
  name: multiline
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
      - command:
        - /bin/bash
        - -exc
        - |
          set +x
          echo "running below scripts"
          if [[ -f "if-condition.sh" ]]; then
            echo "Running if success"
          else
            echo "Running if failed"
          fi
        name: ubuntu
        image: ubuntu
      restartPolicy: Never
  backoffLimit: 1

Here is one more way to do it, with output logging.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  labels:
    type: test
  name: nginx
spec:
  containers:
  - image: nginx
    name: nginx
    volumeMounts:
      - name: log-vol
        mountPath: /var/mylog
    command:
        - /bin/sh
        - -c
        - >
            i=0;
            while [ $i -lt 100 ];
            do
             echo "hello $i";
             echo "$i :  $(date)" >> /var/mylog/1.log;
             echo "$(date)" >> /var/mylog/2.log;
             i=$((i+1));
             sleep 1;
            done

  dnsPolicy: ClusterFirst
  restartPolicy: Always
  volumes:
    - name: log-vol
      emptyDir: {}

Personally, I would do it like this because it's cleaner and I have see this a lot:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: almalinux
spec:
  containers:
  - name: almalinux
    image: almalinux
    command: ["/bin/sh", "-c"]
    args:
      - |
        echo "Hello, World!"
        echo "This is a test."
        ip a
        cat /etc/os-release
        echo "This is how you can run multiple commands in a single container and keep it running."
        tail -f /dev/null

The tail at the end keeps the pod running (it's quite useful).

the result bellow:

P.S.: I use k9s btw.

Just to bring another possible option, secrets can be used as they are presented to the pod as volumes:

Secret example:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret 
metadata:
  name: secret-script
type: Opaque
data:
  script_text: <<your script in b64>>

Yaml extract:

....
containers:
    - name: container-name
      image: image-name
      command: ["/bin/bash", "/your_script.sh"]
      volumeMounts:
        - name: vsecret-script
          mountPath: /your_script.sh
          subPath: script_text
....
  volumes:
    - name: vsecret-script
      secret:
        secretName: secret-script

I know many will argue this is not what secrets must be used for, but it is an option.

migration-testing: - step: name: Run migration script: - pipe: atlassian/aws-eks-kubectl-run:2.2.1 variables: AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: $AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: $AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY AWS_DEFAULT_REGION: $AWS_DEFAULT_REGION CLUSTER_NAME: $CLUSTER_NAME KUBECTL_COMMAND: exec KUBECTL_ARGS: - '-n' - 'test-namespace' - 'test-podname' - '-it' - '--' - '/bin/sh' - '-c' - 'npm run migrate' in place of test-podname I want to run another kubectl command to get current pod in namespace as podname is not fixed it takes some random numeric string after name provided in yaml file so that I dont have to worry about name of pod