kubectl exec fails with the error "Unable to use a TTY - input is not a terminal or the right kind of file"

Question

I am running a jenkins pipeline with the following command:

kubectl exec -it kafkacat-5f8fcfcc57-2txhc -- kafkacat -b cord-kafka -C -t BBSim-OLT-0-Events -o s@1585031458

which is running fine on the terminal of the machine the pipeline is running on, but on the actual pipeline I get the following error: "Unable to use a TTY - input is not a terminal or the right kind of file"

Any tips on how to go about resolving this?

Answer 1

For windows git bash:

alias kubectl='winpty kubectl'
$ kubectl exec -it <container>

Or just use winpty before the desired command.

Answer 2

For Windows GitBash users, use Powershell and NOT GitBash

Answer 3

When the flags -it are used with kubectl exec, it enables the TTY interactive mode. Given the error that you mentioned, it seems that Jenkins doesn't allocate a TTY.

Since you are running the command in a Jenkins job, I would assume that your command is not necessarily interactive. A possible solution for the problem would be to simply remove the -t flag and try to execute the following instead:

kubectl exec -i kafkacat-5f8fcfcc57-2txhc -- kafkacat -b cord-kafka -C -t BBSim-OLT-0-Events -o s@1585031458

Answer 4

Remove the -t option. That requests a TTY, which as you noted does not exist in Jenkins.