Common Kubernetes Pod Errors and How to Fix Them (2026 Guide)

8 Common Kubernetes Pod Errors Explained (CrashLoopBackOff, ImagePullBackOff & Fixes)

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Last Updated: January 8 2026

You know that feeling when you tr to run kubectl get pods and see bunch of pods stuck in the CrashLoopBackOff or ImagePullBackOff?. After years of dealing with Kubernetes in the production environment I have pretty much seen every pod error imaginable.

My sole aim of writing this article “8 Common Kubernetes Pod Errors Explained (CrashLoopBackOff, ImagePullBackOff & Fixes)” I want to share the most common pod errors you’ll encounter, what they actually mean, and more importantly, how to fix them all. These are not textbook solutions—these are real debugging and troubleshooting steps that have saved my deployments number of times.

Understanding the Pod Status: What’s Actually Happening?

Common Kubernetes Pod Error and How to Fix Them (2026 Guide)

Before we dive into the specific pod errors, let’s quickly understand what the Kubernetes is trying to telling us. When you check your pods, you’ll see different status like Running, Pending, Failed, or various error states. Each one is Kubernetes’ way of saying “hey, something’s not right here.”

The status combined with the reason gives you hints and clues about what’s exactly is going wrong. Sometimes the error message is clear, the other times.. not so much. That’s where experience comes in handy.

Error 1: ImagePullBackOff / ErrImagePull

What you see:

NAME                    READY   STATUS             RESTARTS   AGE
my-app-7d8216b9c-xk4mp   0/1     ImagePullBackOff   2         3m

This is the most common error you’ll run into, especially when you’re starting out. I still remember my first week with Kubernetes in production—I must have seen this error a hundred times.

What it actually means:

Kubernetes is trying to pull the container image from registry but failing repeteadly. The “BackOff” part means it’s retrying with increasingly longer delays.

Real-world Causes and Solutions:

Cause 1: Typing mistake in the image name

I once spent 15 minutes debugging before realizing I typed ngnix instead of nginx. Embarrassing, but it happens to everyone out there.

# Check what image Kubernetes is trying to pull from repository
kubectl describe pod my-app-7d8f6b9c-xk4mp

# Look for the Events section at the bottom
# You'll see something like:
# Failed to pull image "myregistry.com/myapp:v2.0.0": rpc error...

Solution: Fix the image name in your deployment YAML and reapply:

spec:
  containers:
  - name: my-app
    image: nginx:latest  # Make sure this is correct image name!

Cause 2: Private registry authentication issues

Sometimes when you moved to a private Docker registry. Your cluster doesn’t have the required credentials to pull the image.

# Check if you have the right imagePullSecrets present in pod
kubectl get pod my-app-7d836b9c-xk4mp -o yaml | grep imagePullSecrets

# If empty, you need to create a secret for pod to run successfully
kubectl create secret docker-registry my-registry-secret \
  --docker-server=myregistry.com \
  --docker-username=myuser \
  --docker-password=mypassword \
  --docker-email=myemail@example.com

Then update your deployment with the newly created secret:

spec:
  imagePullSecrets:
  - name: my-registry-secret
  containers:
  - name: my-app
    image: myregistry.com/myapp:v1.0.0

Cause 3: The image tag doesn’t exist

Sometimes you reference a tag that was never pushed or was deleted. I’ve done this after cleaning up old images and forgetting I was still using one.

# Check available tags in your registry
# For Docker Hub:
curl https://registry.hub.docker.com/v1/repositories/library/nginx/tags

# For private registries, use your registry's API or UI

Solution: You can push missing tag or you do update your deployment to use an existing one.

Cause 4: Network issues reaching the registry

This error is very frustrating. Your nodes can’t reach the registry due to firewall rules or network policies blocking our nodes.

# SSH into a node and try pulling manually
docker pull myregistry.com/myapp:v1.0.0

# Check if you can reach the registry
curl -I https://myregistry.com

Error 2: CrashLoopBackOff

Kubernetes pod CrashLoopBackOff error example

What you see:

NAME                    READY   STATUS             RESTARTS   AGE
my-app-7d8f6b9c-xk4mp   0/1     CrashLoopBackOff   5          3m

This is the error that keeps me up at night. It means your pod starts, crashes, Kubernetes restarts it, it crashes again, and the cycle continues. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve dealt with this.

What the Error means:

Your application is starting but then dying. The container always exits with a non-zero exit code, so Kubernetes keeps trying to restart it with exponential backoff.

Real-world causes and solutions:

Cause 1: Application crashes on startup

This happened to me with an app that couldn’t find a required environment variable and just exited.

# First, check the logs
kubectl logs my-app-7f8f6b9c-xk4mp

# If the pod restarted, check previous logs
kubectl logs my-app-7f8f6b9c-xk4mp --previous

# You might see something like:
# Error: Cannot find module 'depressso'
# or
# panic: runtime error: invalid memory addresses

Solution: Fix whatever is causing your app to crash. Common error/issue include missing dependencies, configuration errors, or bugs in the code.

Cause 2: Missing or incorrect environment variables

I once deployed Database connection that was looking for DATABASE_URL but I provided DB_URL. The app crashed instantly.

# Check what environment variables your pod is using
kubectl exec my-app-7d8f6b9c-xk4mp -- env

# Compare with your app

Solution: Add the missing environment variables in app deloyment:

spec:
  containers:
  - name: my-app
    image: myapp:v2.0.0
    env:
    - name: DATABASE_URL
      value: "postgresql://db:5432/mydb"
    - name: API_KEY
      valueFrom:
        secretKeyRef:
          name: my-secrets
          key: api-key

Cause 3: liveness or readiness probes failure

Your app is running, but Kubernetes thinks it’s not healthy and keeps killing it repeatedly. I set up an overly aggressive probes once that kept restarting a perfectly healthy app.

# Check configration of probes
kubectl describe pod my-app-7d8f6b9c-xk4mp

# Look for events related to liveness and readiness:
# Liveness probe failed: HTTP probe failed with statuscode: 500

Solution: fix your application’s health endpoint or adjust the probe settings:

spec:
  containers:
  - name: my-app
    livenessProbe:
      httpGet:
        path: /health
        port: 8080
      initialDelaySeconds: 30  # Give your app time to start
      periodSeconds: 10
      timeoutSeconds: 5
      failureThreshold: 3  # Don't be too aggressive

Cause 4: Permission issues:

Your app tries to access something for which it does not have permission and crashes. I’ve seen this with apps trying to write to a read-only filesystem.

# Check pod's security context setting
kubectl get pod my-app-7d8q6b9c-xk4mp -o yaml | grep -A 10 securityContext

Solution: Adjust your security context or you can give the app the permissions it requires:

spec:
  containers:
  - name: my-app
    securityContext:
      runAsUser: 1000
      runAsGroup: 3000
      fsGroup: 2000

I have written a detailed Blog on CrashloopBackOff error and different ways to troubleshoot and fix the error. You can check that out on this website or by visiting the Blog section of this website.

Error 3: Pending (No Resources Available)

What you see:

NAME                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
my-app-7d8f6b9c-xk2mp   0/1     Pending   0          4m

What it means:

Kubernetes wants to schedule your pod but cannot find the node with enough resources. I ran into this several times when I tried to deploy an AI app workload without checking if my nodes had enough memory.

Real-world causes and solutions:

Cause 1: Not enough CPU or Memory on the nodes

# Check why it's in pending state
kubectl describe pod my-app-7d8f6bc-xk4mp

# You'll see something like:
# Warning  FailedScheduling  2m  default-scheduler  0/4 nodes are available: 
# 4 Insufficient memory.

# Check the node resources
kubectl top nodes

# See what's requesting resources
kubectl describe nodes

Solution: You can scale up your cluster, reduce the resource requests, or clean other pods out:

spec:
  containers:
  - name: my-app
    resources:
      requests:
        memory: "356Mi"  # Reduce this if too high
        cpu: "500m"
      limits:
        memory: "512Mi"
        cpu: "1000m"

Cause 2: Node selectors or taints preventing scheduling

I configured a pod to only run on nodes, but forgot to label the nodes. The pod just stayed pending.

I used the following troubleshooting commands to get the details of the nodes and the labels applied on that nodes.

# Check node selectors
kubectl get pod my-app-7d8f6b9c-xk4mp -o yaml | grep -A 5 nodeSelector

# Check node labels
kubectl get nodes --show-labels

# Check taints
kubectl describe nodes | grep -i taint

Solution: Either to update the node selector or label your nodes appropriately:

# Add a label to a node
kubectl label nodes node-1 disktype=ssd

# Or remove the node selector from your pod spec

Error 4: CreateContainerConfigError

What you see:

NAME                    READY   STATUS                       RESTARTS   AGE
my-app-7d8f6b9c-xk4mp   0/1     CreateContainerConfigError   0          1m

What it actually means:

Kubernetes is not able to creating your container’s configuration. Usually, this is because of missing configurations like ConfigMaps or Secrets.

Real-world solution:

# Find out what's missing using the following commands
kubectl describe pod my-app-7d8f6b9c-xk4mp

# You'll see something like this:
# Error: couldn't find key database-password in Secret default/my-secrets

# Check if the secret exists in the cluster
kubectl get secret my-secrets

# If it doesn't exist in the cluster, create it
kubectl create secret generic my-secrets \
  --from-literal=database-password=supersecret

# If it exists but sometimes the key is wrong, check what keys it is using
kubectl get secret my-secrets -o jsonpath='{.data}'

Error 5: OOMKilled (Out of Memory)

What you see:

NAME                    READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
my-app-7d8fb9c-xk4mp   0/1     OOMKilled   1          2m

This one is very brutal. Your app is consuming more memory than allowed and getting killed by the OOM kill error. I encountered this most of the times with applications which are configured by the development team and most of the time with a Java app that had a memory leak.

Real-world solution:

# Check the pod memory usage before it was killed
kubectl describe pod my-app-7d8f6b9c-xk4mp

# Look for the following lines:
# Last State: Terminated
# Reason: OOMKilled
# Exit Code: 137

# Check what is the memory limits you set
kubectl get pod my-app-7d8f6bc-xk4mp -o yaml | grep -A 5 resources

Solutions:

  1. Increase memory limits (Always work – Implement only if you have resources):
resources:
  requests:
    memory: "512Mi"
  limits:
    memory: "1Gi"  # Increased from 512Mi
  1. Fix the memory leaks in your application (the better solution) – Mostly dev team work on this.
  2. Optimize the application: use less memory

Error 6: InvalidImageName

What you see:

NAME                    READY   STATUS              RESTARTS   AGE
my-app-7d8f6b9c-xk4mp   0/1     InvalidImageName    0          30s

I made this mistake in m initial days when I accidentally used the uppercase letters in my image name. Container image names must follow specific naming conventions or else you can expect these type of errors.

Solution:

# Check image name
kubectl describe pod my-app-7d8f6bc-xk4mp

# Fix your image name to follow docker naming rules

Error 7: Init:Error or Init:CrashLoopBackOff

What you see:

NAME                    READY   STATUS                  RESTARTS   AGE
my-app-7d8f6b9c-xk4mp   0/1     Init:CrashLoopBackOff   3          2m

The init container is failing. Init containers are the containers that run before your main container starts and must complete successfully.

Real-world solution:

# Check init container logs
kubectl logs my-app-7d8f6bc-xk4mp -c init-myapp ← container-name

# Common issues:
# - Init container trying to connect to a service that's is not in ready state
# - Missing permissions
# - Also can be a Bug in init container code

Solution: Fix the init container or add a retry logic:

spec:
  initContainers:
  - name: init-myservice
    image: busibox:1.27
    command: ['sh', '-c', 
      'until nslookup myservice; do echo waiting for myservice; sleep 2; done']

Error 8: Evicted

What you see:

NAME                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
my-app-7d8f6bc-xk4mp   0/1     Evicted   0          14m

This error occurs usually because the node getting ran out of disk space or memory. This happens when logs filled up the disk.

Real-world solution:

# Find out the cause of pod eviction
kubectl describe pod my-app-7d8f6b9c-xk4mp

# Common reasons:
# - The node has DiskPressure
# - The node has MemoryPressure

# Delete the evicted pods
kubectl get pods | grep Evicted | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kubectl delete pod

# Check the node conditions
kubectl describe nodes | grep -A 5 Conditions

Solutions:

  • Add more disk space to nodes
  • Set up log rotation
  • Implement ephemeral storage limits
  • Clean up unused images and containers

A Quick Troubleshooting Checklist

When a pod isn’t working, here’s my debugging process which I follow:

  1. Check the status: kubectl get pods
  2. Get detailed info: kubectl describe pod <pod-name>
  3. Check logs: kubectl logs <pod-name> (add --previous if it restarted)
  4. Check events: kubectl get events --sort-by='.lastTimestamp'
  5. Verify resources: kubectl top pods and kubectl top nodes
  6. Check configuration: kubectl get pod <pod-name> -o yaml

Tips from my experience with Kubernetes Pod troubleshooting

Set appropriate resource requests and limits: Don’t just guess. Monitor your app in production and set realistic values. I learned this the hard way when my cluster went down because I set limits too low.

Use meaningful labels: When you have hundreds of pods, good labels save your sanity. Trust me on this.

Implement proper health checks: Don’t skip liveness and readiness probes. They’re there for a reason.

Check logs regularly: Don’t wait for things to break. Set up log aggregation and monitor your apps.

Test in staging first: I know it’s tempting to deploy straight to production, but please don’t. Test your deployments in a staging environment that mirrors production.

Conclusion

Pod errors are frustrating, but they’re also Kubernetes’ way of telling you something’s wrong before it becomes a bigger problem. I’ve dealt with every one of these errors multiple times, and each time I learned something new.

The key is to not panic when you see these errors. Read the error message carefully, check the logs, and work through the troubleshooting steps methodically. Most pod errors are straightforward once you understand what Kubernetes is trying to tell you.

What pod errors have you encountered that drove you crazy? Drop a comment below and let’s help each other out. We’re all in this Kubernetes journey together.

If this Article helped you, share it with your team.

Additional Resources

Official Kubernetes Documentation

Keywords

kubernetes pod errors, crashloopbackoff kubernetes, imagepullbackoff fix, kubernetes troubleshooting, pod pending kubernetes, oomkilled kubernetes, kubernetes debugging, container errors, k8s pod status, kubernetes logs, pod restart issues, kubernetes memory limit, kubernetes resource limits, createcontainerconfigerror, init container error, kubernetes evicted pods, kubectl troubleshooting, kubernetes health checks, liveness probe failed, readiness probe kubernetes

Remember, troubleshooting Kubernetes gets easier with practice. Bookmark this guide and refer back whenever you encounter these common errors. Happy debugging!

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