ArgoCD CLI Commands

Overview

This article lists argocd CLI commands that were used to review and manage the ArgoCD installation. A lot of times finding useful commands isn’t easy. This article lists the more commands I used when getting things set up.

Help

Once you log in, simply typing argocd will give you a pretty complete list of commands and flags you can use. Generally I’m checking my project and applications but other commands are available.

Available Commands:
  account     Manage account settings
  admin       Contains a set of commands useful for Argo CD administrators and requires direct Kubernetes access
  app         Manage applications
  appset      Manage ApplicationSets
  cert        Manage repository certificates and SSH known hosts entries
  cluster     Manage cluster credentials
  completion  output shell completion code for the specified shell (bash or zsh)
  context     Switch between contexts
  gpg         Manage GPG keys used for signature verification
  help        Help about any command
  login       Log in to Argo CD
  logout      Log out from Argo CD
  proj        Manage projects
  relogin     Refresh an expired authenticate token
  repo        Manage repository connection parameters
  repocreds   Manage repository connection parameters
  version     Print version information

Logging In

As noted in a prior article, there were a few issues with logging in to the cluster and you have to log in in order to use the CLI tool. Mainly because I didn’t set up a set of certificates, I needed to use the insecure flag to log in.

$ argocd login argocd.dev.internal.pri --insecure
WARN[0000] Failed to invoke grpc call. Use flag --grpc-web in grpc calls. To avoid this warning message, use flag --grpc-web.
Username: admin
Password:
'admin:login' logged in successfully
Context 'argocd.dev.internal.pri' updated

And I’m in. From here I can now manage my ArgoCD projects. Since I use gitops to manage my Kubernetes clusters, the commands I use here generally are getting information and not setting up the project. See my github repo for those configurations.

Project Information

First off, you need to know what projects are installed. There is always a default project. The two projects I have installed are the blue and green projects.

First commands.

Available Commands:
  add-destination          Add project destination
  add-orphaned-ignore      Add a resource to orphaned ignore list
  add-signature-key        Add GnuPG signature key to project
  add-source               Add project source repository
  allow-cluster-resource   Adds a cluster-scoped API resource to the allow list and removes it from deny list
  allow-namespace-resource Removes a namespaced API resource from the deny list or add a namespaced API resource to the allow list
  create                   Create a project
  delete                   Delete project
  deny-cluster-resource    Removes a cluster-scoped API resource from the allow list and adds it to deny list
  deny-namespace-resource  Adds a namespaced API resource to the deny list or removes a namespaced API resource from the allow list
  edit                     Edit project
  get                      Get project details
  list                     List projects
  remove-destination       Remove project destination
  remove-orphaned-ignore   Remove a resource from orphaned ignore list
  remove-signature-key     Remove GnuPG signature key from project
  remove-source            Remove project source repository
  role                     Manage a project's roles
  set                      Set project parameters
  windows                  Manage a project's sync windows

Then you can use the list command to view the projects.

$ argocd proj list
NAME          DESCRIPTION                                 DESTINATIONS    SOURCES                                                    CLUSTER-RESOURCE-WHITELIST  NAMESPACE-RESOURCE-BLACKLIST  SIGNATURE-KEYS  ORPHANED-RESOURCES
default                                                   *,*             *                                                          */*                         <none>                        <none>          disabled
llamas-blue   Project to install the llamas band website  4 destinations  git@lnmt1cuomgitlab.internal.pri/external-unix/gitops.git  */*                         <none>                        <none>          disabled
llamas-green  Project to install the llamas band website  4 destinations  git@lnmt1cuomgitlab.internal.pri/external-unix/gitops.git  */*                         <none>                        <none>          disabled

If I wanted to check out the details of a project, I’d run the get command:

$ argocd proj get llamas-blue
Name:                        llamas-blue
Description:                 Project to install the llamas band website
Destinations:                https://kubernetes.default.svc,llamas-blue
                             https://cabo0cuomvip1.qa.internal.pri:6443,llamas-blue
                             https://tato0cuomvip1.stage.internal.pri:6443,llamas-blue
                             https://lnmt1cuomvip1.internal.pri:6443,llamas-blue
Repositories:                git@lnmt1cuomgitlab.internal.pri/external-unix/gitops.git
Scoped Repositories:         <none>
Allowed Cluster Resources:   */*
Scoped Clusters:             <none>
Denied Namespaced Resources: <none>
Signature keys:              <none>
Orphaned Resources:          disabled

If you compare, the only real difference between the two is the get command lists the remote K8S clusters vs just indicating there are 4.

Application Information

The main thing I’m checking is the application status. Let’s see the options first.

Available Commands:
  actions         Manage Resource actions
  create          Create an application
  delete          Delete an application
  delete-resource Delete resource in an application
  diff            Perform a diff against the target and live state.
  edit            Edit application
  get             Get application details
  history         Show application deployment history
  list            List applications
  logs            Get logs of application pods
  manifests       Print manifests of an application
  patch           Patch application
  patch-resource  Patch resource in an application
  resources       List resource of application
  rollback        Rollback application to a previous deployed version by History ID, omitted will Rollback to the previous version
  set             Set application parameters
  sync            Sync an application to its target state
  terminate-op    Terminate running operation of an application
  unset           Unset application parameters
  wait            Wait for an application to reach a synced and healthy state

For that I’d run the following list command:

$ argocd app list
NAME                       CLUSTER                                        NAMESPACE     PROJECT       STATUS  HEALTH   SYNCPOLICY  CONDITIONS  REPO                                                       PATH                 TARGET
argocd/llamas-blue-dev     https://kubernetes.default.svc                 llamas-blue   llamas-blue   Synced  Healthy  Auto        <none>      git@lnmt1cuomgitlab.internal.pri/external-unix/gitops.git  dev/llamas-blue/     dev
argocd/llamas-blue-prod    https://lnmt1cuomvip1.internal.pri:6443        llamas-blue   llamas-blue   Synced  Healthy  Auto        <none>      git@lnmt1cuomgitlab.internal.pri/external-unix/gitops.git  prod/llamas-blue/    main
argocd/llamas-blue-qa      https://cabo0cuomvip1.qa.internal.pri:6443     llamas-blue   llamas-blue   Synced  Healthy  Auto        <none>      git@lnmt1cuomgitlab.internal.pri/external-unix/gitops.git  qa/llamas-blue/      main
argocd/llamas-blue-stage   https://tato0cuomvip1.stage.internal.pri:6443  llamas-blue   llamas-blue   Synced  Healthy  Auto        <none>      git@lnmt1cuomgitlab.internal.pri/external-unix/gitops.git  stage/llamas-blue/   main
argocd/llamas-green-dev    https://kubernetes.default.svc                 llamas-green  llamas-green  Synced  Healthy  Auto        <none>      git@lnmt1cuomgitlab.internal.pri/external-unix/gitops.git  dev/llamas-green/    dev
argocd/llamas-green-prod   https://lnmt1cuomvip1.internal.pri:6443        llamas-green  llamas-green  Synced  Healthy  Auto        <none>      git@lnmt1cuomgitlab.internal.pri/external-unix/gitops.git  prod/llamas-green/   main
argocd/llamas-green-qa     https://cabo0cuomvip1.qa.internal.pri:6443     llamas-green  llamas-green  Synced  Healthy  Auto        <none>      git@lnmt1cuomgitlab.internal.pri/external-unix/gitops.git  qa/llamas-green/     main
argocd/llamas-green-stage  https://tato0cuomvip1.stage.internal.pri:6443  llamas-green  llamas-green  Synced  Healthy  Auto        <none>      git@lnmt1cuomgitlab.internal.pri/external-unix/gitops.git  stage/llamas-green/  main

There is a lot of information here in part because my ArgoCD instance is connected and manages applications on four Kubernetes clusters. So you’ll see a blue and green application four times each.

Getting details though provides a ton of information.

$ argocd app get argocd/llamas-blue-dev
Name:               argocd/llamas-blue-dev
Project:            llamas-blue
Server:             https://kubernetes.default.svc
Namespace:          llamas-blue
URL:                https://argocd.dev.internal.pri/applications/llamas-blue-dev
Repo:               git@lnmt1cuomgitlab.internal.pri/external-unix/gitops.git
Target:             dev
Path:               dev/llamas-blue/
SyncWindow:         Sync Allowed
Sync Policy:        Automated
Sync Status:        Synced to dev (1ef2090)
Health Status:      Healthy

GROUP                      KIND                     NAMESPACE    NAME                        STATUS   HEALTH   HOOK  MESSAGE
                           ResourceQuota            llamas-blue  llamas-rq                   Synced                  resourcequota/llamas-rq unchanged
                           LimitRange               llamas-blue  llamas-lr                   Synced                  limitrange/llamas-lr unchanged
                           ServiceAccount           llamas-blue  cschelin-admin              Synced                  serviceaccount/cschelin-admin unchanged
                           ServiceAccount           llamas-blue  cschelin                    Synced                  serviceaccount/cschelin unchanged
rbac.authorization.k8s.io  ClusterRoleBinding       llamas-blue  cschelin-view-llamas-blue   Running  Synced         clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cschelin-view-llamas-blue reconciled. clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cschelin-view-llamas-blue unchanged
rbac.authorization.k8s.io  ClusterRoleBinding       llamas-blue  cschelin-admin-llamas-blue  Running  Synced         clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cschelin-admin-llamas-blue reconciled. clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/cschelin-admin-llamas-blue unchanged
                           Service                  llamas-blue  llamas                      Synced   Healthy        service/llamas unchanged
autoscaling                HorizontalPodAutoscaler  llamas-blue  llamas                      Synced   Healthy        horizontalpodautoscaler.autoscaling/llamas unchanged
networking.k8s.io          Ingress                  llamas-blue  llamas                      Synced   Healthy        ingress.networking.k8s.io/llamas configured
argoproj.io                Rollout                  llamas-blue  llamas                      Synced   Healthy        rollout.argoproj.io/llamas unchanged
rbac.authorization.k8s.io  ClusterRoleBinding                    cschelin-admin-llamas-blue  Synced
rbac.authorization.k8s.io  ClusterRoleBinding                    cschelin-view-llamas-blue   Synced