---
title: Configure Pod Initialization
content_type: task
weight: 170
---
This page shows how to use an Init Container to initialize a Pod before an
application Container runs.
## {{% heading "prerequisites" %}}
{{< include "task-tutorial-prereqs.md" >}} {{< version-check >}}
## Create a Pod that has an Init Container
In this exercise you create a Pod that has one application Container and one
Init Container. The init container runs to completion before the application
container starts.
Here is the configuration file for the Pod:
{{% code_sample file="pods/init-containers.yaml" %}}
In the configuration file, you can see that the Pod has a Volume that the init
container and the application container share.
The init container mounts the
shared Volume at `/work-dir`, and the application container mounts the shared
Volume at `/usr/share/nginx/html`. The init container runs the following command
and then terminates:
```shell
wget -O /work-dir/index.html http://info.cern.ch
```
Notice that the init container writes the `index.html` file in the root directory
of the nginx server.
Create the Pod:
```shell
kubectl apply -f https://k8s.io/examples/pods/init-containers.yaml
```
Verify that the nginx container is running:
```shell
kubectl get pod init-demo
```
The output shows that the nginx container is running:
```
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
init-demo 1/1 Running 0 1m
```
Get a shell into the nginx container running in the init-demo Pod:
```shell
kubectl exec -it init-demo -- /bin/bash
```
In your shell, send a GET request to the nginx server:
```
root@nginx:~# apt-get update
root@nginx:~# apt-get install curl
root@nginx:~# curl localhost
```
The output shows that nginx is serving the web page that was written by the init container:
```html
http://info.cern.ch - home of the first website
...
Browse the first website
...
```
## {{% heading "whatsnext" %}}
* Learn more about
[communicating between Containers running in the same Pod](/docs/tasks/access-application-cluster/communicate-containers-same-pod-shared-volume/).
* Learn more about [Init Containers](/docs/concepts/workloads/pods/init-containers/).
* Learn more about [Volumes](/docs/concepts/storage/volumes/).
* Learn more about [Debugging Init Containers](/docs/tasks/debug/debug-application/debug-init-containers/)