How can I retrieve pods with status.phase Running OR Succeeded in a single kubectl command?

Field selectors in Kubernetes only support the logical AND operation (using a comma) and do not support OR logic. That means you cannot directly combine selectors with an OR (|) in a single kubectl command.

There are a few workarounds:

• Retrieve all pods and filter client-side:
  You can run a command that fetches all pods in JSON format and then filter the output client-side (using tools like jq or jsonpath). For example, using jq:

  BASHCopied
  kubectl get pods -n <namespace> -o json | jq '.items | map(select(.status.phase=="Running" or .status.phase=="Succeeded"))'

• Use a custom label:
  If possible, label your pods with a custom label indicating they are of interest (e.g., app-type=interesting) and then select by label. This approach requires modifying the pod spec or applying labels after deployment.

• Handle multiple requests in your client logic:
  While it requires two requests, you could programmatically combine the results from separate requests for Running and Succeeded pods.

In summary, there is no built-in single request field selector that natively supports OR conditions; you will need to use one of the above workarounds.