If you are using a released version of Kubernetes, you should refer to the docs that go with that version.
The latest 1.0.x release of this document can be found [here](http://releases.k8s.io/release-1.0/docs/user-guide/introspection-and-debugging.md).Documentation for other releases can be found at releases.k8s.io.
Once your application is running, you’ll inevitably need to debug problems with it.
Earlier we described how you can use kubectl get pods to retrieve simple status information about
your pods. But there are a number of ways to get even more information about your application.
Table of Contents
For this example we’ll use a ReplicationController to create two pods, similar to the earlier example.
apiVersion: v1
kind: ReplicationController
metadata:
name: my-nginx
spec:
replicas: 2
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: nginx
spec:
containers:
- name: nginx
image: nginx
resources:
limits:
memory: "128Mi"
cpu: "500m"
ports:
- containerPort: 80$ kubectl create -f ./my-nginx-rc.yaml
replicationcontrollers/my-nginx$ kubectl get pods
NAME READY REASON RESTARTS AGE
my-nginx-gy1ij 1/1 Running 0 1m
my-nginx-yv5cn 1/1 Running 0 1mWe can retrieve a lot more information about each of these pods using kubectl describe pod. For example:
$ kubectl describe pod my-nginx-gy1ij
Name: my-nginx-gy1ij
Image(s): nginx
Node: kubernetes-minion-y3vk/10.240.154.168
Labels: app=nginx
Status: Running
Reason:
Message:
IP: 10.244.1.4
Replication Controllers: my-nginx (2/2 replicas created)
Containers:
nginx:
Image: nginx
Limits:
cpu: 500m
memory: 128Mi
State: Running
Started: Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:33:07 -0700
Ready: True
Restart Count: 0
Conditions:
Type Status
Ready True
Events:
FirstSeen LastSeen Count From SubobjectPath Reason Message
Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:32:58 -0700 Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:32:58 -0700 1 {scheduler } scheduled Successfully assigned my-nginx-gy1ij to kubernetes-minion-y3vk
Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:32:58 -0700 Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:32:58 -0700 1 {kubelet kubernetes-minion-y3vk} implicitly required container POD pulled Pod container image "gcr.io/google_containers/pause:0.8.0" already present on machine
Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:32:58 -0700 Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:32:58 -0700 1 {kubelet kubernetes-minion-y3vk} implicitly required container POD created Created with docker id cd1644065066
Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:32:58 -0700 Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:32:58 -0700 1 {kubelet kubernetes-minion-y3vk} implicitly required container POD started Started with docker id cd1644065066
Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:33:06 -0700 Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:33:06 -0700 1 {kubelet kubernetes-minion-y3vk} spec.containers{nginx} pulled Successfully pulled image "nginx"
Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:33:06 -0700 Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:33:06 -0700 1 {kubelet kubernetes-minion-y3vk} spec.containers{nginx} created Created with docker id 56d7a7b14dac
Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:33:07 -0700 Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:33:07 -0700 1 {kubelet kubernetes-minion-y3vk} spec.containers{nginx} started Started with docker id 56d7a7b14dacHere you can see configuration information about the container(s) and Pod (labels, resource requirements, etc.), as well as status information about the container(s) and Pod (state, readiness, restart count, events, etc.)
The container state is one of Waiting, Running, or Terminated. Depending on the state, additional information will be provided -- here you can see that for a container in Running state, the system tells you when the container started.
Ready tells you whether the container passed its last readiness probe. (In this case, the container does not have a readiness probe configured; the container is assumed to be ready if no readiness probe is configured.)
Restart Count tells you how many times the container has restarted; this information can be useful for detecting crash loops in containers that are configured with a restart policy of “always.”
Currently the only Condition associated with a Pod is the binary Ready condition, which indicates that the pod is able to service requests and should be added to the load balancing pools of all matching services.
Lastly, you see a log of recent events related to your Pod. The system compresses multiple identical events by indicating the first and last time it was seen and the number of times it was seen. "From" indicates the component that is logging the event, "SubobjectPath" tells you which object (e.g. container within the pod) is being referred to, and "Reason" and "Message" tell you what happened.
A common scenario that you can detect using events is when you’ve created a Pod that won’t fit on any node. For example, the Pod might request more resources than are free on any node, or it might specify a label selector that doesn’t match any nodes. Let’s say we created the previous Replication Controller with 5 replicas (instead of 2) and requesting 600 millicores instead of 500, on a four-node cluster where each (virtual) machine has 1 CPU. In that case one of the Pods will not be able to schedule. (Note that because of the cluster addon pods such as fluentd, skydns, etc., that run on each node, if we requested 1000 millicores then none of the Pods would be able to schedule.)
$ kubectl get pods
NAME READY REASON RESTARTS AGE
my-nginx-9unp9 0/1 Pending 0 8s
my-nginx-b7zs9 0/1 Running 0 8s
my-nginx-i595c 0/1 Running 0 8s
my-nginx-iichp 0/1 Running 0 8s
my-nginx-tc2j9 0/1 Running 0 8sTo find out why the my-nginx-9unp9 pod is not running, we can use kubectl describe pod on the pending Pod and look at its events:
$ kubectl describe pod my-nginx-9unp9
Name: my-nginx-9unp9
Image(s): nginx
Node: /
Labels: app=nginx
Status: Pending
Reason:
Message:
IP:
Replication Controllers: my-nginx (5/5 replicas created)
Containers:
nginx:
Image: nginx
Limits:
cpu: 600m
memory: 128Mi
State: Waiting
Ready: False
Restart Count: 0
Events:
FirstSeen LastSeen Count From SubobjectPath Reason Message
Thu, 09 Jul 2015 23:56:21 -0700 Fri, 10 Jul 2015 00:01:30 -0700 21 {scheduler } failedScheduling Failed for reason PodFitsResources and possibly othersHere you can see the event generated by the scheduler saying that the Pod failed to schedule for reason PodFitsResources (and possibly others). PodFitsResources means there were not enough resources for the Pod on any of the nodes. Due to the way the event is generated, there may be other reasons as well, hence "and possibly others."
To correct this situation, you can use kubectl scale to update your Replication Controller to specify four or fewer replicas. (Or you could just leave the one Pod pending, which is harmless.)
Events such as the ones you saw at the end of kubectl describe pod are persisted in etcd and provide high-level information on what is happening in the cluster. To list all events you can use
kubectl get events
but you have to remember that events are namespaced. This means that if you're interested in events for some namespaced object (e.g. what happened with Pods in namespace my-namespace) you need to explicitly provide a namespace to the command:
kubectl get events --namespace=my-namespace
To see events from all namespaces, you can use the --all-namespaces argument.
In addition to kubectl describe pod, another way to get extra information about a pod (beyond what is provided by kubectl get pod) is to pass the -o yaml output format flag to kubectl get pod. This will give you, in YAML format, even more information than kubectl describe pod--essentially all of the information the system has about the Pod. Here you will see things like annotations (which are key-value metadata without the label restrictions, that is used internally by Kubernetes system components), restart policy, ports, and volumes.
$ kubectl get pod my-nginx-i595c -o yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
annotations:
kubernetes.io/created-by: '{"kind":"SerializedReference","apiVersion":"v1","reference":{"kind":"ReplicationController","namespace":"default","name":"my-nginx","uid":"c555c14f-26d0-11e5-99cb-42010af00e4b","apiVersion":"v1","resourceVersion":"26174"}}'
creationTimestamp: 2015-07-10T06:56:21Z
generateName: my-nginx-
labels:
app: nginx
name: my-nginx-i595c
namespace: default
resourceVersion: "26243"
selfLink: /api/v1/namespaces/default/pods/my-nginx-i595c
uid: c558e44b-26d0-11e5-99cb-42010af00e4b
spec:
containers:
- image: nginx
imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
name: nginx
ports:
- containerPort: 80
protocol: TCP
resources:
limits:
cpu: 600m
memory: 128Mi
terminationMessagePath: /dev/termination-log
volumeMounts:
- mountPath: /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount
name: default-token-zkhkk
readOnly: true
dnsPolicy: ClusterFirst
nodeName: kubernetes-minion-u619
restartPolicy: Always
serviceAccountName: default
volumes:
- name: default-token-zkhkk
secret:
secretName: default-token-zkhkk
status:
conditions:
- status: "True"
type: Ready
containerStatuses:
- containerID: docker://9506ace0eb91fbc31aef1d249e0d1d6d6ef5ebafc60424319aad5b12e3a4e6a9
image: nginx
imageID: docker://319d2015d149943ff4d2a20ddea7d7e5ce06a64bbab1792334c0d3273bbbff1e
lastState: {}
name: nginx
ready: true
restartCount: 0
state:
running:
startedAt: 2015-07-10T06:56:28Z
hostIP: 10.240.112.234
phase: Running
podIP: 10.244.3.4
startTime: 2015-07-10T06:56:21ZSometimes when debugging it can be useful to look at the status of a node -- for example, because you've noticed strange behavior of a Pod that’s running on the node, or to find out why a Pod won’t schedule onto the node. As with Pods, you can use kubectl describe node and kubectl get node -o yaml to retrieve detailed information about nodes. For example, here's what you'll see if a node is down (disconnected from the network, or kubelet dies and won't restart, etc.). Notice the events that show the node is NotReady, and also notice that the pods are no longer running (they are evicted after five minutes of NotReady status).
$ kubectl get nodes
NAME LABELS STATUS
kubernetes-minion-861h kubernetes.io/hostname=kubernetes-minion-861h NotReady
kubernetes-minion-bols kubernetes.io/hostname=kubernetes-minion-bols Ready
kubernetes-minion-st6x kubernetes.io/hostname=kubernetes-minion-st6x Ready
kubernetes-minion-unaj kubernetes.io/hostname=kubernetes-minion-unaj Ready
$ kubectl describe node kubernetes-minion-861h
Name: kubernetes-minion-861h
Labels: kubernetes.io/hostname=kubernetes-minion-861h
CreationTimestamp: Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:32:29 -0700
Conditions:
Type Status LastHeartbeatTime LastTransitionTime Reason Message
Ready Unknown Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:34:32 -0700 Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:35:15 -0700 Kubelet stopped posting node status.
Addresses: 10.240.115.55,104.197.0.26
Capacity:
cpu: 1
memory: 3800808Ki
pods: 100
Version:
Kernel Version: 3.16.0-0.bpo.4-amd64
OS Image: Debian GNU/Linux 7 (wheezy)
Container Runtime Version: docker://Unknown
Kubelet Version: v0.21.1-185-gffc5a86098dc01
Kube-Proxy Version: v0.21.1-185-gffc5a86098dc01
PodCIDR: 10.244.0.0/24
ExternalID: 15233045891481496305
Pods: (0 in total)
Namespace Name
Events:
FirstSeen LastSeen Count From SubobjectPath Reason Message
Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:32:28 -0700 Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:32:28 -0700 1 {kubelet kubernetes-minion-861h} NodeNotReady Node kubernetes-minion-861h status is now: NodeNotReady
Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:32:30 -0700 Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:32:30 -0700 1 {kubelet kubernetes-minion-861h} NodeNotReady Node kubernetes-minion-861h status is now: NodeNotReady
Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:33:00 -0700 Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:33:00 -0700 1 {kubelet kubernetes-minion-861h} starting Starting kubelet.
Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:33:02 -0700 Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:33:02 -0700 1 {kubelet kubernetes-minion-861h} NodeReady Node kubernetes-minion-861h status is now: NodeReady
Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:35:15 -0700 Fri, 10 Jul 2015 14:35:15 -0700 1 {controllermanager } NodeNotReady Node kubernetes-minion-861h status is now: NodeNotReady
$ kubectl get node kubernetes-minion-861h -o yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Node
metadata:
creationTimestamp: 2015-07-10T21:32:29Z
labels:
kubernetes.io/hostname: kubernetes-minion-861h
name: kubernetes-minion-861h
resourceVersion: "757"
selfLink: /api/v1/nodes/kubernetes-minion-861h
uid: 2a69374e-274b-11e5-a234-42010af0d969
spec:
externalID: "15233045891481496305"
podCIDR: 10.244.0.0/24
providerID: gce://striped-torus-760/us-central1-b/kubernetes-minion-861h
status:
addresses:
- address: 10.240.115.55
type: InternalIP
- address: 104.197.0.26
type: ExternalIP
capacity:
cpu: "1"
memory: 3800808Ki
pods: "100"
conditions:
- lastHeartbeatTime: 2015-07-10T21:34:32Z
lastTransitionTime: 2015-07-10T21:35:15Z
reason: Kubelet stopped posting node status.
status: Unknown
type: Ready
nodeInfo:
bootID: 4e316776-b40d-4f78-a4ea-ab0d73390897
containerRuntimeVersion: docker://Unknown
kernelVersion: 3.16.0-0.bpo.4-amd64
kubeProxyVersion: v0.21.1-185-gffc5a86098dc01
kubeletVersion: v0.21.1-185-gffc5a86098dc01
machineID: ""
osImage: Debian GNU/Linux 7 (wheezy)
systemUUID: ABE5F6B4-D44B-108B-C46A-24CCE16C8B6ELearn about additional debugging tools, including:
- Logging
- Monitoring
- Getting into containers via
exec - Connecting to containers via proxies
- Connecting to containers via port forwarding