website/v1.1/docs/user-guide/liveness

layout	title
docwithnav	Overview

Overview

This example shows two types of pod health checks: HTTP checks and container execution checks.

The exec-liveness.yaml demonstrates the container execution check.

{% highlight yaml %} {% raw %} livenessProbe: exec: command: - cat - /tmp/health initialDelaySeconds: 15 timeoutSeconds: 1 {% endraw %} {% endhighlight %}

Kubelet executes the command cat /tmp/health in the container and reports failure if the command returns a non-zero exit code.

Note that the container removes the /tmp/health file after 10 seconds,

{% highlight sh %} {% raw %} echo ok > /tmp/health; sleep 10; rm -rf /tmp/health; sleep 600 {% endraw %} {% endhighlight %}

so when Kubelet executes the health check 15 seconds (defined by initialDelaySeconds) after the container started, the check would fail.

The http-liveness.yaml demonstrates the HTTP check.

{% highlight yaml %} {% raw %} livenessProbe: httpGet: path: /healthz port: 8080 initialDelaySeconds: 15 timeoutSeconds: 1 {% endraw %} {% endhighlight %}

The Kubelet sends an HTTP request to the specified path and port to perform the health check. If you take a look at image/server.go, you will see the server starts to respond with an error code 500 after 10 seconds, so the check fails. The Kubelet sends the probe to the container's ip address by default which could be specified with host as part of httpGet probe. If the container listens on 127.0.0.1, host should be specified as 127.0.0.1. In general, if the container listens on its ip address or on all interfaces (0.0.0.0), there is no need to specify the host as part of the httpGet probe.

This guide has more information on health checks.

Get your hands dirty

To show the health check is actually working, first create the pods:

{% highlight console %} {% raw %} $ kubectl create -f docs/user-guide/liveness/exec-liveness.yaml $ kubectl create -f docs/user-guide/liveness/http-liveness.yaml {% endraw %} {% endhighlight %}

Check the status of the pods once they are created:

{% highlight console %} {% raw %} $ kubectl get pods NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE [...] liveness-exec 1/1 Running 0 13s liveness-http 1/1 Running 0 13s {% endraw %} {% endhighlight %}

Check the status half a minute later, you will see the container restart count being incremented:

{% highlight console %} {% raw %} $ kubectl get pods NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE [...] liveness-exec 1/1 Running 1 36s liveness-http 1/1 Running 1 36s {% endraw %} {% endhighlight %}

At the bottom of the kubectl describe output there are messages indicating that the liveness probes have failed, and the containers have been killed and recreated.

{% highlight console %} {% raw %} $ kubectl describe pods liveness-exec [...] Sat, 27 Jun 2015 13:43:03 +0200 Sat, 27 Jun 2015 13:44:34 +0200 4 {kubelet kubernetes-minion-6fbi} spec.containers{liveness} unhealthy Liveness probe failed: cat: can't open '/tmp/health': No such file or directory Sat, 27 Jun 2015 13:44:44 +0200 Sat, 27 Jun 2015 13:44:44 +0200 1 {kubelet kubernetes-minion-6fbi} spec.containers{liveness} killing Killing with docker id 65b52d62c635 Sat, 27 Jun 2015 13:44:44 +0200 Sat, 27 Jun 2015 13:44:44 +0200 1 {kubelet kubernetes-minion-6fbi} spec.containers{liveness} created Created with docker id ed6bb004ee10 Sat, 27 Jun 2015 13:44:44 +0200 Sat, 27 Jun 2015 13:44:44 +0200 1 {kubelet kubernetes-minion-6fbi} spec.containers{liveness} started Started with docker id ed6bb004ee10 {% endraw %} {% endhighlight %}