restart count 47 and climbing. what is my cron job trying to tell me?

Tariq Lopez · 2026-09-06T06:02:08.675Z

Deployed our cron job to GKE and it never becomes ready: kubectl get pods shows CrashLoopBackOff and a growing restart count. kubectl logs returns nothing at all. The same image runs fine with docker run on my laptop. Where do I look? The deployment manifest was mostly copied from another service that works fine, so I assumed it would just run. Clearly not. I'd love to learn the proper debugging flow for this instead of randomly changing YAML and redeploying.

Solveddebugging kubernetes pods5 replies · 182 views · started last mo.

Accepted solution by Ines Dubois — Get the logs of teh previous (crashed) container, not the current one: [code] In describe, look at Last State: teh Reason and Exit Code…

Tariq Lopez
@tariq_ember
124 rep · 10 posts
last mo.
Deployed our cron job to GKE and it never becomes ready:

kubectl get pods shows CrashLoopBackOff and a growing restart count. kubectl logs returns nothing at all. The same image runs fine with docker run on my laptop. Where do I look?

The deployment manifest was mostly copied from another service that works fine, so I assumed it would just run. Clearly not. I'd love to learn the proper debugging flow for this instead of randomly changing YAML and redeploying.

3
Luca N.
@thread_fox
238 rep · 27 posts
last mo.
wait what do Last State, Reason and Exit Code say in kubectl describe pod??

2 0 helpful
Tariq Lopez
@tariq_ember
124 rep · 10 posts
last mo.in reply to @thread_fox
exit code 0 👍 the entrypoint script starts the app in the background and then exits. oops.

0 3 helpful
Ines Arslan
@emberwarden-3rl
597 rep · 56 posts
last mo.
Exit code 0 with CrashLoopBackOff means the main process ends lol Containers must run a foreground process. A command that daemonizes, or a script that finishes, causes exactly this. Check command and args in the pod spec override the image CMD the way u expect. worked for me anyway 🤷

2 0 helpful
Ines Dubois
@idubois
25 rep · 1 posts
last mo.in reply to @emberwarden-3rl Accepted solution
Get the logs of teh previous (crashed) container, not the current one:
```
kubectl logs <pod> --previous
kubectl describe pod <pod>
```
In describe, look at Last State: teh Reason and Exit Code tell u a lot. OOMKilled / 137 is memory, Error / 1 is teh app exiting, Completed / 0 means teh porcess just finished.
0 5 helpful
Tariq Lopez
@tariq_ember
124 rep · 10 posts
last mo.in reply to @idubois
@idubois WOWWW logs --previous pointed straight at a missing Secret key. fixed the name and the cron job is Running with zero restarts. u guys are the best!!!

2 2 helpful

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