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Kubernetes secrets need the secrets to be given in base64 encoded format, which can be created using base64 binary in case of linux distributions.

Example:

echo "hello" | base64
aGVsbG8K

Kubernetes decodes the base64 encoding when we pass the secret key as environment variable or mounted as volume.

You can use kubectl get secrets/db-user-pass -o yaml or -o json where you'll see the base64-encoded username and password. You can then copy the value and decode it with something like echo <ENCODED_VALUE> | base64 -D (Mac OS X).

A more compact one-liner for this:

kubectl get secrets/db-user-pass --template={{.data.password}} | base64 -D

and likewise for the username:

kubectl get secrets/db-user-pass --template={{.data.username}} | base64 -D

Note: on GNU/Linux, the base64 flag is -d, not -D.

First, get the secret from the etcd by querying the api server using kubectl.

kubectl get secret db-user-pass -o yaml 

This will give you the base64 encoded secret in yaml format.

Once you have the yaml file decode them using

"base64 --decode"

Final command will look like this: Don't forget the -n flag in echo command

echo -n "jdddjdkkdkdmdl" | base64 --decode

I would suggest using this handy command. It utilizes a power of go-templates. It iterates over all values, decodes them, and prints them along with the key. It also handles not set values.

kubectl get secret name-of-secret -o go-template='
{{range $k,$v := .data}}{{printf "%s: " $k}}{{if not $v}}{{$v}}{{else}}{{$v | base64decode}}{{end}}{{"\n"}}{{end}}'

## In your case it would output
# password: decoded_password
# username: doceded_username

If you don't like go-templates you can use different output formats e.g. yaml or json, but that will output secrets encoded by base64.

For easier decoding you can use a tool like ksd that will do the base64 decoding for you

kubectl get secrets/db-user-pass -o yaml | ksd

or using https://github.com/elsesiy/kubectl-view-secret

kubectl view-secret secrets/db-user-pass

If you have jq (json query) this works:

kubectl get secret db-user-pass -o json | jq '.data | map_values(@base64d)'

NOTE:

• db-user-pass is the name of the k8s secret
• .data is the variable within that contains the secret value

on ubuntu 18+

kubectl get secrets/db-user-pass --template={{.data.password}} | base64 -d

Kubernetes 1.11+

kubectl get secrets/db-user-pass --template='{{.data.password | base64decode }}'

If your secret keys contain dash (-) or dot (.):

kubectl get secret db-user-pass -o=go-template='{{index .data "password"}}' | base64 -d

Extending @Břetislav Hájek solution (thank you very much for that). If you need to get it by a label, then you'll need to add an extra range command to iterate over the returned items.

$ LABEL_FILTER="app.kubernetes.io/name=mysql-chart"

$ kubectl get secret  -l "$LABEL_FILTER"  -o go-template='
{{range $i := .items}}{{range $k,$v := $i.data}}{{printf "%s: " $k}}{{if not $v}}{{$v}}{{else}}{{$v | base64decode}}{{end}}{{"\n"}}{{end}}{{end}}'

mysql_password: ...
mysql_root_password: ...
mysql_user: ...

With bash. This is running ubuntu 18.04, and Kubernetes 1.18.5

kubectl -n metallb-system get secrets memberlist -o json | grep secretkey | grep -v f:s | awk -F '"' '{print$4}' |base64 --decode; echo

This one liner is used to get an encoded kubeconfig file from a secret, and generate a file from it to be used dynamically on a ci job for example:

kubectl get secret YOUR_SECRET -o json | grep -oP '(?<=\"YOUR_SECRET_KEY\": \")[^\"]*' | base64 --decode > ./YOUR_KUBECONFIG_FILE_NAME

This jsonpath variation works for me on OSX.

kubectl get secrets/db-user-pass -o jsonpath="{.data.username}" | base64 -d

To get secret with dot in the name.

kubectl get secrets/tls -o jsonpath="{.data['tls\.crt']}" | base64 -d

This should work on all platforms, with kubectl 1.11+

kubectl get secrets/db-user-pass --template='{{.data.password | base64decode}}'

And if you want to get all keys, values

kubectl get secrets/db-user-pass --template='{{ range $key, $value := .data }}{{ printf "%s: %s\n" $key ($value | base64decode) }}{{ end }}'