Failed to pull container image
Kubernetes is unable to retrieve the container image from the specified registry. This is a direct failure to pull, which often precedes an ImagePullBackOff state as Kubernetes begins to retry.
- 1Image name or tag is spelled incorrectly
- 2The image does not exist in the registry
- 3Authentication failure with the container registry
- 4Network issues preventing the node from reaching the registry
A pod fails to start, and its status immediately shows ErrImagePull.
kubectl get pod my-pod
expected output
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE my-pod 0/1 ErrImagePull 0 10s
Fix 1
Correct the image path in the deployment
WHEN The image name is wrong in the Pod or Deployment spec
kubectl edit deployment my-deployment
Why this works
Opens the deployment manifest in an editor to find and fix the 'image:' field. After saving, Kubernetes will attempt to pull the corrected image.
Fix 2
Verify registry credentials
WHEN The image is in a private registry and auth may be failing
kubectl get secrets my-registry-secret -o yaml
Why this works
This allows you to inspect the secret to ensure it is correctly formatted and contains the right credentials, even though the data is base64 encoded.
✕ Delete the pod and redeploy without checking the image name
If the image name in the deployment manifest is wrong, the new pod will fail for the exact same reason.
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