Executing multiple commands( or from a shell script) in a kubernetes pod

Are you running all these commands as a single line command? First of all, there’s no ; or && between those commands. So if you paste it as a multi-line script to your terminal, likely it will get executed locally.

Second, to tell bash to execute something, you need: bash -c "command".

Try running this:

$ kubectl exec POD_NAME -- bash -c "date && echo 1"

Wed Apr 19 19:29:25 UTC 2017
1

You can make it multiline like this:

$ kubectl exec POD_NAME -- bash -c "date && \
      echo 1 && \
      echo 2"