Incorrect label in kubectl get pods command in Chapter 7: Service Discovery

[usmans58]

🐛 Issue: Incorrect label in kubectl get pods command in Chapter 7 (Service Discovery)

📘 Context

In Chapter 7: Service Discovery of Terraform: Up & Running, the book provides this command to retrieve the name of the alpaca pod:

$ ALPACA_POD=$(kubectl get pods -l app=alpaca -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')

❗ Problem

The above command fails with the following error:

error: error executing jsonpath "{.items[0].metadata.name}": Error executing template: array index out of bounds: index 0, length 0.

This occurs because no pods match the label app=alpaca.

🔍 Root Cause

The deployment created earlier in the chapter labels the pods with:

labels:
  app: alpaca-prod

Therefore, the kubectl command is using the wrong label selector.

✅ Suggested Fix

The corrected command should be:

ALPACA_POD=$(kubectl get pods -l app=alpaca-prod -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')

This properly matches the label used in the deployment and allows the command to succeed without an index out-of-bounds error.

🙏 Request

Please update the command in Chapter 7 and/or the example code repository so that readers don’t run into this issue.

Thanks for maintaining such a helpful and practical book!