Kubernetes config map symlinks (..data/) : is there a way to avoid them?

Question

I have noticed that when I create and mount a config map that contains some text files, the container will see those files as symlinks to ../data/myfile.txt .

Answer 1

I am afraid I don't know if you can tell Kubernetes not to generate those symlinks although I think that it is a native behaviour.

If having those files and links is an issue, a workaround that I can think of is to mount the configmap on one folder and copy the files over to another folder when you initialise the container:

  initContainers:
    - name: copy-config
      image: busybox
      command: ['sh', '-c', 'cp /configmap/* /configs']
      volumeMounts:
        - name: configmap
          mountPath: /configmap
        - name: config
          mountPath: /configs

But you would have to declare two volumes, one for the configMap (configmap) and one for the final directory (config):

  volumes:
    - name: config
      emptyDir: {}
    - name: configmap
      configMap:
        name: myconfigmap

Change the type of volume for the config volume as you please obviously.