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Bad Pods Lab💣

Lab Overview💣

In this lab we will create various bad-pods with intentional errors and then debug these bad-pods
Next we will cover how to take a node out of service for maintenance without disturbing our workloads.

Intro💣

In this lab you will be introduced to some error scenarios and learn how to troubleshoot issues with your kubenetes cluster.

These lab activities assume that you have a namespace called ‘refresher’ in your cluster. You can create this namespace with this command:

kubectl create namespace refresher

Experience Gained💣

  • Debug pod creation failures
  • Debug pod crashes
  • Node maintanence scenario

Debug pod creation failures💣

  1. Create a file called bad-pod.yaml Paste the following into it:

    apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: bad-pod
spec:
  containers:
  - name: fail
    image: busybox:training-fail
    tty: true
    command:
    - cat

  2. Run the following command to create the pod:

    kubectl apply -f bad-pod.yaml -n=refresher

  3. Let’s watch the various pod transitions:

    kubectl get pods --watch -n=refresher

Warning

You will see a set of transitions like ErrImagePull and ImagePullBackOff as show below

NAME      READY   STATUS         RESTARTS   AGE
bad-pod   0/1     ErrImagePull   0          3s
bad-pod   0/1     ImagePullBackOff   0          15s
bad-pod   0/1     ErrImagePull       0          28s

  1. Let’s stop watching and describe the pod to see if we can figure out what is happenning:

    Ctrl-C
kubectl describe pod bad-pod -n=refresher |  grep -A25 Events:

    In the Events section of the output you will see indicators of a problem downloading the image as seen below

  2. Let’s delete the pod and try attempt to fix the image being pulled:

    kubectl delete -f bad-pod.yaml -n=refresher
vi bad-pod.yaml

    Replace busybox:training-fail to busybox and then save

  3. Let’s create the pod and watch the pod again:

    kubectl apply -f bad-pod.yaml -n=refresher
kubectl get pods --watch -n=refresher

    The pod should be successfully created now

    NAME      READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
bad-pod   1/1     Running   0          11m

  4. Lets clean up and delete the pod :

    kubectl delete -f bad-pod.yaml -n=refresher

Debug pod crashes💣

Let’s create a pod that will continually restart because it exits with a non-zero exit code.

  1. Create a file called crash-loop.yaml Paste the following into it:

    vi crash-loop.yaml

    apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: crash-loop
spec:
  containers:
  - name: fail
    image: busybox
    command:
    - sh
    - -c
    - sleep 10 && exit 1

  2. Deploy the pod:

    kubectl apply -f crash-loop.yaml -n=refresher

  3. Let’s watch the various pod transitions

    kubectl get pods --watch -n=refresher

    Notice how after a few Running/Error transitions the pod goes into CrashLoopBackoff and the run time is delayed as shown below

    NAME         READY   STATUS              RESTARTS   AGE
crash-loop   0/1     ContainerCreating   0          3s
crash-loop   1/1     Running             0          4s
crash-loop   0/1     Error               0          14s
crash-loop   1/1     Running             1          15s
crash-loop   0/1     Error               1          25s
crash-loop   0/1     CrashLoopBackOff    1          37s
crash-loop   1/1     Running             2          39s
crash-loop   0/1     Error               2          49s
crash-loop   0/1     CrashLoopBackOff    2          60s

  4. Lets stop watching and delete the pod:

    Ctrl+C
kubectl delete -f crash-loop.yaml -n=refresher

  5. Lets fix the pod command definition: 

    vi crash-loop.yaml

    Replace - sleep 10 && exit 1 with - echo Container 1 is Running && sleep 3600 and then save

  6. Let’s create the pod and watch the pod again:

    kubectl apply -f crash-loop.yaml -n=refresher
kubectl get pods --watch -n=refresher

    The pod should be successfully created now

  7. Lets clean up and delete the pod :

    kubectl delete -f crash-loop.yaml -n=refresher

Node maintanence scenario💣

  1. Let’s create a deployment:

    kubectl create deployment maintenance-lab --image=gcr.io/google-samples/node-hello:1.0 -n=refresher

  2. Find the node for this pod:

    kubectl get pods -o wide -n=refresher
# You'll see a few columns one will have NODE and list the name of the node the pod is running on
    Copy the value under the Node column for later reference.

    Our node names look like this:
    ip-10-10-1-17.us-gov-west-1.compute.internal

  3. We need to perform some ‘maintenance’ on this node. Let’s make sure no more pods can be scheduled to it:

    kubectl cordon node-name -n=refresher
# EX: kubectl cordon ip-10-10-1-17.us-gov-west-1.compute.internal
# node-name will be the name of the kubernetes node that the 
# pod that is part of the maintenance-lab deployment is running on

    The output should be something like:

    node/ip-10-10-58-44.us-gov-west-1.compute.internal cordoned

    Describe the cordoned node:

    kubectl describe node <cordoned node: e.g `ip-10-10-58-44.us-gov-west-1.compute.internal`>

    Examine the output and look for the Taints towards the top of the output. You will see this: 

    node.kubernetes.io/unschedulable:NoSchedule as shown below
    And at the end of the output, something like: 
    Events:
  Type    Reason              Age    From     Message
  ----    ------              ----   ----     -------
  Normal  NodeNotSchedulable  5m27s  kubelet  Node ip-10-10-58-44.us-gov-west-1.compute.internal status is now: NodeNotSchedulable

  4. List out the nodes:

    kubectl get nodes

    Notice the status of the node includes SchedulingDisabled as shown below

    NAME                                            STATUS                     ROLES         AGE     VERSION
ip-10-10-3-88.us-gov-west-1.compute.internal    Ready                      <none>        3d22h   v1.18.12+rke2r2
ip-10-10-55-57.us-gov-west-1.compute.internal   Ready                      etcd,master   3d22h   v1.18.12+rke2r2
ip-10-10-58-44.us-gov-west-1.compute.internal   Ready,SchedulingDisabled   <none>        3d22h   v1.18.12+rke2r2
ip-10-10-83-95.us-gov-west-1.compute.internal   Ready                      <none>        3d22h   v1.18.12+rke2r2

  5. Let’s move the maintenance lab workload to the other node:

    kubectl drain node-name --ignore-daemonsets
# Note: If you get an error about not being able to delete pods with local storage, you may also need to add the --delete-emptydir-data option
    This step might take a few minutes. Notice that pod/maintenance-lab has been moved as shown below

    node/ip-10-10-58-44.us-gov-west-1.compute.internal already cordoned
WARNING: ignoring DaemonSet-managed Pods: kube-system/kube-proxy-t75c7, kube-system/rke2-canal-78ctm
evicting pod default/maintenance-lab-54545b884b-8j5rj
pod/maintenance-lab-54545b884b-8j5rj evicted
node/ip-10-10-58-44.us-gov-west-1.compute.internal evicted

  6. Look at the node for our maintenance-lab pod:

    kubectl get pods -o wide -n refresher
    Notice that it is now running on the other node. 
    NAME                               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE   IP          NODE                                            NOMINATED NODE   READINESS GATES
maintenance-lab-54545b884b-n26db   1/1     Running   0          10m   10.42.2.4   ip-10-10-83-95.us-gov-west-1.compute.internal   <none>           <none>

  7. Uncordon the node and look at the nodes again

    kubectl uncordon node-name

    node/ip-10-10-58-44.us-gov-west-1.compute.internal uncordoned
NAME                                            STATUS   ROLES         AGE     VERSION
ip-10-10-3-88.us-gov-west-1.compute.internal    Ready    <none>        3d22h   v1.18.12+rke2r2
ip-10-10-55-57.us-gov-west-1.compute.internal   Ready    etcd,master   3d22h   v1.18.12+rke2r2
ip-10-10-58-44.us-gov-west-1.compute.internal   Ready    <none>        3d22h   v1.18.12+rke2r2
ip-10-10-83-95.us-gov-west-1.compute.internal   Ready    <none>        3d22h   v1.18.12+rke2r2

  8. Clean up and delete the deployment and refresher namespace:

    kubectl delete deployment maintenance-lab -n=refresher
# deployment.apps "maintenance-lab" deleted
kubectl delete namespace refresher

Lab Summary💣

You have been able to successfully troubleshoot issues with pod creation and inspect the lifecyle to infer underlying issues that were preventing a pod for getting created and/or stuck in a crash loop.

You also ran a typical maintenance scenario where you cordoned off a node and then drained that node off any workloads it was running. After performing some maintenance such as upgrades or repairs you have uncordoned the node so that it back available to run workloads.