How can I trigger a Kubernetes Scheduled Job manually?

Question

I've created a Kubernetes Scheduled Job, which runs twice a day according to its schedule. However, I would like to trigger it manually for testing purposes. How can I do this?

Ballocks

Answer 1

The issue #47538 that @jdf mentioned is now closed and this is now possible. The original implementation can be found here but the syntax has changed.

With kubectl v1.10.1+ the command is:

kubectl create job --from=cronjob/<cronjob-name> <job-name> -n <namespace-name>

It seems to be backwardly compatible with older clusters as it worked for me on v0.8.x.

Ondometer

Be sure to check your version of kubectl, as of 5/10/18 the version installed via Google Cloud SDK doesn't have this command available. gcloud components install kubectl then kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl – Beslobber

It works also in Openshift, even as old as 3.11 (just replace kubectl with oc). – Saari

.. and the inverse operation is: kubectl [oc] delete job <job-name> – Saari

it's not working with an error error: unknown object type *v1beta1.CronJob ` > kubectl version Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"22", GitVersion:"v1.22.4", GitCommit:"b695d79d4f967c403a96986f1750a35eb75e75f1", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"2021-11-17T15:48:33Z", GoVersion:"go1.16.10", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"darwin/amd64"} ` – Sunda

If you getting an error like this one --> "no kind "CronJob" is registered for version "batch/v1" in scheme "k8s.io/kubectl/pkg/scheme/scheme.go:28" <-- make sure your kubectl version is up to date (21+) – Rollicking

does this run the job, or just create it as a thing that can be run via another command? – Pulsometer

its stupid that you need delete job and recreate it to trigger 🤦‍♂️ – Maidenhead

This works but is it possible to modify the configuration? For example the cron's restart policy might be "OnFailure" but I want the manually triggered job to never restart. – Kibler

Answer 2

You can create a simple job based on your ScheduledJob. If you already run a ScheduledJob, there are jobs in history.

kubectl get jobs

NAME               DESIRED   SUCCESSFUL   AGE
hello-1477281595   1         1            11m
hello-1553106750   1         1            12m
hello-1553237822   1         1            9m

Export one of these jobs:

kubectl get job hello-1477281595 -o yaml > my_job.yaml

Then edit the yaml a little bit, erasing some unnecessary fields and run it manually:

kubectl create -f my_job.yaml
kubectl delete -f my_job.yaml

Highwrought

Just small addition about "erasing some unnecessary fields". Kubernetes is complaining about *uid fields and you can remove them easily by this command sed -i '/uid:.*/d' my_job.yaml – Weathered

Assumption that there are already jobs in the history often does not hold. – Noctambulism

Answer 3

Unfortunately, none of the example syntaxes above works in Google Kubernetes Engine (GCP). Also, the GKE docs themselves are wrong.

In Kubernetes 1.10.6.gke-2, the working syntax is:

kubectl create job <your-new-job-name> --from=cronjob/<name-of-deployed-cron-job> -n <target namespace>

Enzymology

awesome to troubleshoot problems with cron jobs resiliency, thanks! – Blowtorch

Answer 4

kubectl create job --from=cronjob/<cron-job-name> <job-name> -n <namespace>

you can use the to delete job execution at any time kubectl delete job <job-name> -n <namespace>

if you want to see the list of corn jobs available use kubectl get cronjobs -n <namespace>

Myo

Answer 5

EDIT - July 2018: see @pedro_sland's answer as this feature has now been implemented

My original answer below will remain correct for older versions of kubectl less than v1.10.1

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Aside from creating a new job (as the other answers have suggested), there is no current way to do this. It is a feature request in with kubernetes now that can be tracked here: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/47538

Dhahran

Answer 6

There is an option to trigger the cron job manually whithin this tab in k8s dashboard

Halfhearted

Great! This is helpful espeically for Minikube users who want to debug and play with cronjobs (like me) :) – Sclerophyll

Answer 7

If you can use tools beyond kubectl, the K9s CLI is a wonderful tool that has, among other features, the trigger command that allow you to trigger cronjobs.

To do that, enter the K9s interface, search for your cronjobs using the command :cronjobs, select the one you want to trigger and type t.

Under the hood it probably creates a Job using the CronJob configuration, just like this answer suggested.

Eserine

Answer 8

I've created a small cmd utility for convenience to do just that and also suspend and unsuspend cronjobs.

https://github.com/iJanki/kubecron

Immortelle

Answer 9

If you want to test the job, create a Job config from your Cron Job (ScheduledJob) config and run it manually using the following command:

kubectl create -f ./job.yaml

Bainite