highIntermediateSymptom-first#probes#liveness#readiness#pods

Liveness and readiness probes fighting — healthy app killed repeatedly

Pod restarts repeatedly but application logs show no errors

Likely source:availabilityconfiguration

Focused incident mode — strips away everything but this runbook.

Symptoms

Pod restarts repeatedly but application logs show no errors
kubectl describe shows liveness probe failed, followed by container killed
Pod is removed from endpoints (unready) immediately after becoming ready

Liveness should only check 'is the process alive', not 'is the app ready'. Use separate endpoints: /healthz/live for liveness, /healthz/ready for readiness.

Evidence to grab

Collect these artifacts before you change anything — they prove (or rule out) each cause.

Probe failure events
kubectl describe pod <pod> -n <namespace> | grep -E 'Liveness|Readiness' | tail -20
Probe configuration
kubectl get pod <pod> -n <namespace> -o jsonpath='{.spec.containers[*].livenessProbe}'

Diagnostic flow

Run the steps in order, marking each claim confirmed or refuted. The evidence you gather feeds the ranked causes below.

Guided decision tree is ready.

Steps with commands, expected output, and pass/fail branches.

Ranked root causes

Evidence checklist

liveness initialDelaySeconds < actual app startup time
liveness timeoutSeconds too short for the health endpoint under load

Confirm before fixing

kubectl get pod <pod> -n <namespace> -o jsonpath='{.spec.containers[0].livenessProbe.initialDelaySeconds}'

READ

Read the liveness initial delay

Fix

kubectl patch deployment/<deploy> -n <namespace> --type merge -p '{"spec":{"template":{"spec":{"containers":[{"name":"<c>","livenessProbe":{"initialDelaySeconds":30,"periodSeconds":10,"timeoutSeconds":5}}]}}}}'

CHANGE

Increase initialDelaySeconds and timeoutSeconds for liveness

Resolution runbook

Apply from top to bottom after the cause is confirmed. Review every command before running it — risk tags are shown on each.

kubectl describe pod <pod> -n <namespace> | grep -E 'Liveness|Readiness' | tail -20

READ

Read the probe failure timeline

kubectl get pod <pod> -n <namespace> -o jsonpath='{.spec.containers[*].livenessProbe}'

READ

Read the liveness probe config

kubectl patch deployment/<deploy> -n <namespace> --type merge -p '{"spec":{"template":{"spec":{"containers":[{"name":"<c>","livenessProbe":{"initialDelaySeconds":30,"periodSeconds":10}}]}}}}'

CHANGE

Relax liveness timing

kubectl rollout status deployment/<deploy> -n <namespace>

READ

Verify the rollout completes without restarts