Introduction: troubleshooting the Kubernetes error, imagepullbackoff
I am writing a series of blog posts about troubleshooting Kubernetes. One of the reasons why Kubernetes is so complex is because troubleshooting what went wrong requires many levels of information gathering. It's like trying to find the other end of a string in a tangled ball of strings. In this post, I am going to walk you through troubleshooting the state, imagepullbackoff.
You got your deployment, statefulset, or somehow turned on a pod on the Kubernetes
cluster and it is in a imagepullbackoff state. What can you do now and how do you troubleshoot
it to see what the problem is?
$ kubectl get pods
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
invalid-container-5896955f9f-cg9jg 1/2 ImagePullBackOff 0 21h
There can be various reasons on why it is in a imagepullbackoff state. First, let's figure out what error message you have and what it's telling you with describe.
$ kubectl describe pod invalid-container-5896955f9f-cg9jg
This will give you additional information. The describe output can be long but look
at the Events section first.
Troubleshooting: Invalid container image
$ kubectl describe pod invalid-container-5896955f9f-cg9jg
...
...
Containers:
my-container:
Container ID:
Image: foobartest4
...
...
Events:
Type Reason Age From Message
---- ------ ---- ---- -------
Normal Scheduled 115s default-scheduler Successfully assigned dev-k8sbot-test-pods/invalid-container-5896955f9f-r6sgz to gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-gc8h
Normal Pulling 113s kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-gc8h pulling image "gcr.io/google_containers/echoserver:1.0"
Normal Pulled 84s kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-gc8h Successfully pulled image "gcr.io/google_containers/echoserver:1.0"
Normal Created 84s kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-gc8h Created container
Normal Started 83s kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-gc8h Started container
Normal BackOff 27s (x4 over 82s) kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-gc8h Back-off pulling image "foobartest4"
Warning Failed 27s (x4 over 82s) kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-gc8h Error: ImagePullBackOff
Normal Pulling 13s (x4 over 114s) kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-gc8h pulling image "foobartest4"
Warning Failed 12s (x4 over 113s) kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-gc8h Failed to pull image "foobartest4": rpc error: code = Unknown desc = Error response from daemon: repository foobartest4 not found: does not exist or no pull access
Warning Failed 12s (x4 over 113s) kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-gc8h Error: ErrImagePull
There is a long list of events but only a few with the Reason of Failed.
Warning Failed 27s (x4 over 82s) kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-gc8h Error: ImagePullBackOff
Warning Failed 12s (x4 over 113s) kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-gc8h Failed to pull image "foobartest4": rpc error: code = Unknown desc = Error response from daemon: repository foobartest4 not found: does not exist or no pull access
Warning Failed 12s (x4 over 113s) kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-gc8h Error: ErrImagePull
This gives us a really good indication of what the problem is:
Error response from daemon: repository foobartest4 not found: does not exist or no pull access
From here, we either have a non-existent container registry name or we dont have access to it.
Usually a system will not tell you if an item exist or not if you don't have access to it. This
would allow someone to glean more information than they have access to. This is why the error
message can mean multiple things.
As a user you should at this point take a look at the image name and make sure you have the
correct name. If you do, then you should make sure that this container registry for this
image does not require authentication. As a test you can try to pull the same imae from yor laptop
to see if it works locally for you.
Troubleshooting: Invalid container image tag
Another variation to this is if the container tag does not exist:
$ kubectl describe pod invalid-container-5896955f9f-cg9jg
...
...
Containers:
my-container:
Container ID:
Image: redis:foobar
...
...
Events:
Type Reason Age From Message
---- ------ ---- ---- -------
Normal Scheduled 12m default-scheduler Successfully assigned dev-k8sbot-test-pods/invalid-container-tag-85d478dfbd-hddzg to gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-bdb3
Normal Pulling 12m kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-bdb3 pulling image "gcr.io/google_containers/echoserver:1.0"
Normal Started 11m kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-bdb3 Started container
Normal Pulled 11m kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-bdb3 Successfully pulled image "gcr.io/google_containers/echoserver:1.0"
Normal Created 11m kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-bdb3 Created container
Normal BackOff 10m (x4 over 11m) kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-bdb3 Back-off pulling image "redis:foobar"
Normal Pulling 10m (x4 over 12m) kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-bdb3 pulling image "redis:foobar"
Warning Failed 10m (x4 over 12m) kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-bdb3 Error: ErrImagePull
Warning Failed 10m (x4 over 12m) kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-bdb3 Failed to pull image "redis:foobar": rpc error: code = Unknown desc = Error response from daemon: manifest for redis:foobar not found
Warning Failed 2m1s (x40 over 11m) kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-bdb3 Error: ImagePullBackOff
This is very similar to the previous error but there is a slight difference that can tell us
that it is the image tag. Once again pulling out the pertinent events:
Warning Failed 10m (x4 over 12m) kubelet, gke-gar-3-pool-1-9781becc-bdb3 Failed to pull image "redis:foobar": rpc error: code = Unknown desc = Error response from daemon: manifest for redis:foobar not found
The previous error said the repository was not found and this one does not. It tells
you the manifest for redis:foobar not found. This is a very good indication that the
registry redis exist but it didn't find the tag foobar.
You can test and confirm this by trying to pull this image locally on your laptop:
$ docker pull redis:foobar
Error response from daemon: manifest for redis:foobar not found
We receive the save message. If we try a valid tag:
$ docker pull redis:latest
latest: Pulling from library/redis
6ae821421a7d: Already exists
e3717477b42d: Pull complete
8e70bf6cc2e6: Pull complete
0f84ab76ce60: Pull complete
0903bdecada2: Pull complete
492876061fbd: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:dd5b84ce536dffdcab79024f4df5485d010affa09e6c399b215e199a0dca38c4
Status: Downloaded newer image for redis:latest
We are able to successfully pull this image.
This will help us determine what are the valid tags. Or if your registry has a web
GUI, you can go to that also to see what the valid tags are.
Troubleshooting: Unable to pull a private image
As we mentioned above for the invalid image name, a private image that you don't
have access to will return the same error messages.
If you did determine your image is private, you have to give the pod a secret that
has the proper authentication to allow it to pull the image. This can be the same
credential that you use locally to allow you to pull the image or another read only
machine credential.
Either way, you need to do at least two things:
- Add the credential secret to Kubernetes
- Add the reference of the secret to use in your pod definition
kubectl -namespace <YOUR NAMESPACE> \
create secret docker-registry registry-secret \
--docker-server=https://index.docker.io/v1/ \
--docker-username=<THE USERNAME> \
--docker-password=<THE PASSWORD> \
--docker-email=not-needed@example.com
In this case the secret name is: registry-secret
Then add this reference so that your pod knows to use it:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: foo
namespace: awesomeapps
spec:
containers:
- name: foo
image: janedoe/awesomeapp:v1
imagePullSecrets:
- name: registry-secret
More information: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/containers/images/#referring-to-an-imagepullsecrets-on-a-pod
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