Results of kubectl commands not sorted

[dnoland1]

Environmental Info:
K3s Version:

1.18.10

Node(s) CPU architecture, OS, and Version:

ubuntu 20.04

Cluster Configuration:

2 masters, MySQL backend DB

Describe the bug:

When running kubectl commands, often the results are not sorted as expected.

Steps To Reproduce:

For example, get nodes should return results in alphabetical order. Ran twice and order is not consistent:

# kubectl get nodes
NAME               STATUS   ROLES    AGE   VERSION
ip-10-10-100-203   Ready    master   13h   v1.18.10+k3s1
ip-10-10-101-91    Ready    master   13h   v1.18.10+k3s1
# kubectl get nodes
NAME               STATUS   ROLES    AGE   VERSION
ip-10-10-101-91    Ready    master   13h   v1.18.10+k3s1
ip-10-10-100-203   Ready    master   13h   v1.18.10+k3s1

Getting all pods should sort by namespace, then pod name. Results are random:

# kubectl get pods -A
NAMESPACE                 NAME                                                       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
kube-system               helm-delete-aws-ebs-csi-driver-4w68j                       0/1     Pending   0          6h31m
cattle-prometheus         prometheus-operator-monitoring-operator-7599b96796-lz62f   0/1     Pending   0          6h31m
cattle-system             cattle-node-agent-875tv                                    1/1     Running   2          24h
cattle-system             cattle-cluster-agent-97579ccdd-dt7rl                       1/1     Running   21         14h
kube-system               ebs-csi-node-6sgf4                                         3/3     Running   6          9h
cattle-system             rancher-webhook-669d998d9-cwr2n                            1/1     Running   2          9h
fleet-system              fleet-agent-55f4848f9b-jbpq6                               1/1     Running   2          9h
kube-system               coredns-autoscaler-67f94c4dc6-d8mwt                        1/1     Running   2          9h
cattle-system             system-upgrade-controller-585f9d68f9-lpx7c                 1/1     Running   1          9h
rancher-operator-system   rancher-operator-547dbc9654-trcbw                          1/1     Running   1          9h
kube-system               ebs-snapshot-controller-0                                  1/1     Running   2          9h
fleet-system              fleet-controller-649446f474-6vng2                          1/1     Running   1          9h
fleet-system              gitjob-869546b74d-2gl4s                                    1/1     Running   1          9h
kube-system               metrics-server-7566d596c8-rfz9v                            1/1     Running   2          9h
ingress-nginx             ingress-nginx-controller-nvkhl                             1/1     Running   2          14h
cattle-system             rancher-7d8957455f-56kpk                                   2/2     Running   3          9h
cattle-prometheus         alertmanager-cluster-alerting-0                            2/2     Running   4          9h
kube-system               ebs-csi-controller-5567dfcd4c-ksbk5                        6/6     Running   30         10h
kube-system               coredns-5bfb5f9668-xz5qq                                   1/1     Running   2          9h
kube-system               ebs-csi-controller-5567dfcd4c-2nw95                        6/6     Running   19         9h
ingress-nginx             ingress-nginx-default-backend-7f84d569f8-7s8lc             1/1     Running   2          9h
cattle-system             rancher-7d8957455f-mxqqw                                   2/2     Running   4          9h
cattle-prometheus         prometheus-operator-monitoring-operator-7599b96796-45gpp   0/1     Pending   0          6h24m

Additional context / logs:
Appears to be an issue because k3s is not sorting results. Likely only an issue when backend is relational, since etcd probably returns results sorted by key name.

[brandond]

It you want things sorted by a field, you have to ask for it; I don't believe it's documented as sorted any specific way otherwise. This might be due to kine not sorting the keys in the same way that etcd does, but I don't think that's guaranteed anywhere.

https://medium.com/faun/sorting-output-in-kubernetes-aa4db6894629

[caroline-suse-rancher]

Closing as this is expected behavior

[RafalSkolasinski]

I don't think it is fair to say this is expected behaviour when almost all other K8s flavours at least returns kubectl get pods -A sorted by namespace.

[brandond]

While it might be common to distros that use etcd, it is an implementation detail and not required by any spec, as discussed above.

If its a problem for you, use embedded etcd instead of kine.