Kubernetes Debugging Skill

Systematic diagnosis of pod failures, networking issues, and resource problems using a structured triage flow: describe, logs, events, exec.

Reference Loading Table

Signal	Reference	Size
CrashLoopBackOff, OOMKilled, config error, health check, liveness probe, ImagePullBackOff, image pull, registry auth, Pending, FailedScheduling, node affinity, taint, PVC	references/crash-diagnosis.md	~140 lines
service resolution, DNS, nslookup, CoreDNS, port-forward, NetworkPolicy, ingress, egress	references/network-debugging.md	~50 lines
CPU throttling, memory limit, OOMKill, ephemeral storage, DiskPressure, debug container, distroless, kubectl reference, rollout, exec	references/resource-debugging.md	~100 lines

Load greedily. If the user's question touches any signal keyword, load the matching reference before responding. Multiple signals matching = load all matching references.

Instructions

Triage Flow

Follow this sequence for every pod or workload issue. Do not skip steps -- many failures (scheduling, image pull, volume mount) are only visible in events and describe output, not in logs, so jumping straight to logs misses them.

Always specify -n <namespace> explicitly in every command; never rely on the default context namespace, because the wrong namespace silently returns empty or misleading results.

# 1. Get an overview of the resource state
kubectl get pods -n <namespace> -o wide

# 2. Describe the resource for events, conditions, and status
kubectl describe pod <pod-name> -n <namespace>

# 3. Check current container logs
kubectl logs <pod-name> -n <namespace> -c <container-name>

# 4. Check previous container logs (critical for CrashLoopBackOff)
# Always check --previous before current logs for crashed containers,
# because deleting or restarting the pod destroys these logs permanently.
kubectl logs <pod-name> -n <namespace> -c <container-name> --previous

# 5. Check namespace events sorted by time
kubectl get events -n <namespace> --sort-by='.lastTimestamp'

# 6. If the container is running, exec in for live inspection
kubectl exec -it <pod-name> -n <namespace> -c <container-name> -- /bin/sh

Use read-only commands (describe, logs, get) to gather evidence before proposing any modifications. Never suggest changes based on assumptions -- gather diagnostic output first.

Diagnosis Routing

Based on triage output, load the appropriate reference and follow its diagnosis flow:

Symptom	Reference
Pod status CrashLoopBackOff, ImagePullBackOff, or Pending	references/crash-diagnosis.md
Service unreachable, DNS failure, connection refused	references/network-debugging.md
CPU throttling, OOMKill, disk pressure, need debug container	references/resource-debugging.md

Error: "no endpoints available for service"

Cause: The Service selector does not match any running pod labels. Solution: Compare kubectl get svc <name> -o yaml selector with kubectl get pods --show-labels. Fix the label mismatch.

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References

• kubernetes-security skill -- NetworkPolicy patterns and RBAC debugging