Use an Image Volume With a Pod [page]deterministic

tasksstorage

This page shows how to configure a pod using image volumes. This allows you to mount content from OCI registries inside containers.

The container runtime needs to support the image volumes feature
You need to exec commands in the host
You need to be able to exec into pods

## Run a Pod that uses an image volume {#create-pod}

An image volume for a pod is enabled by setting the `volumes[*].image` field of `.spec` to a valid reference and consuming it in the `volumeMounts` of the container. For example:

1. Create the pod on your cluster:

```shell kubectl apply -f https://k8s.io/examples/pods/image-volumes.yaml ```

1. Attach to the container:

```shell kubectl exec image-volume -it -- bash ```

1. Check the content of a file in the volume:

```shell cat /volume/dir/file ```

The output is similar to:

```none 1 ```

You can also check another file in a different path:

```shell cat /volume/file ```

The output is similar to:

```none 2 ```

## Use `subPath` (or `subPathExpr`)

It is possible to utilize [`subPath`](/docs/concepts/storage/volumes/#using-subpath) or [`subPathExpr`](/docs/concepts/storage/volumes/#using-subpath-expanded-environment) from Kubernetes v1.33 when using the image volume feature.

1. Create the pod on your cluster:

```shell kubectl apply -f https://k8s.io/examples/pods/image-volumes-subpath.yaml ```

1. Attach to the container:

```shell kubectl exec image-volume -it -- bash ```

1. Check the content of the file from the `dir` sub path in the volume:

```shell cat /volume/file ```

The output is similar to:

```none 1 ```

## Further reading