CLI for CRI-compatible container runtimes (containerd, CRI-O).
medium risk
crictl is the kubectl-equivalent for the Container Runtime Interface layer — directly managing containers and images in containerd or CRI-O without going through Kubernetes. Essential on K8s nodes when kubelet is broken or for low-level debugging.
crictl psList running containers on the node · explain & risk-check →crictl ps -aList all containers including stopped · explain & risk-check →crictl logs <container-id>Get logs from a container by runtime ID · explain & risk-check →crictl imagesList images on the node · explain & risk-check →crictl inspect <container-id>Detailed container info at runtime level · explain & risk-check →crictl exec -it <container-id> shShell into container via runtime directly · explain & risk-check →Use crictl when kubelet is down or a pod won't schedule but the container exists — `crictl ps -a` shows all containers at the runtime level regardless of Kubernetes state.
Reference text is hand-written and may be incomplete — check man crictl for your version. Test destructive commands on a non-production system first.