Learn how to troubleshoot the most common Kubernetes Issues
When a kubelet starts creating containers for a Pod using a container runtime, it might be possible the container is in Waiting state because of ImagePullBackOff.
The status ImagePullBackOff means that a container could not start because Kubernetes could not pull a container image for reasons such as
- Invalid image name or
- Pulling from a private registry without imagePullSecret.
The BackOff part indicates that Kubernetes will keep trying to pull the image, with an increasing back-off delay.
Kubernetes raises the delay between each attempt until it reaches a compiled-in limit, which is 300 seconds (5 minutes).
This state occurs when the container within the pod repeatedly crashes shortly after starting up. Kubernetes continuously restarts the pod, but if the container keeps crashing, it enters a backoff state where it waits before attempting to restart the pod again. This typically indicates problems within the container itself, such as application errors, misconfigurations, or resource constraints.