title: Kubernetes config map symlinks (..data/) : is there a way to avoid them?
body: <p>I have noticed that when I create and mount a config map that contains some text files, the container will see those files as symlinks to <code>../data/myfile.txt</code> .</p>
  
  <p>For example, if my config map is named tc-configs and contains 2 xml files named stripe1.xml and stripe2.xml, if I mount this config map to /configs in my container, I will have, in my container :</p>
  
  <pre><code>bash-4.4# ls -al /configs/
  total 12
  drwxrwxrwx    3 root     root          4096 Jun  4 14:47 .
  drwxr-xr-x    1 root     root          4096 Jun  4 14:47 ..
  drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root          4096 Jun  4 14:47 ..2018_06_04_14_47_03.291041453
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            31 Jun  4 14:47 ..data -&gt; ..2018_06_04_14_47_03.291041453
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            18 Jun  4 14:47 stripe1.xml -&gt; ..data/stripe1.xml
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            18 Jun  4 14:47 stripe2.xml -&gt; ..data/stripe2.xml
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I guess Kubernetes requires those symlinks and ../data and ..timestamp/ folders, but I know some applications that can fail to startup if they see non expected files or folders</p>
  
  <p>Is there a way to tell Kubernetes not to generate all those symlinks and directly mount the files ?</p>