About KubeErrors

A plain-language reference for Kubernetes and container error states

What this site is

A reference for the error states, pod phases, and failure reasons you hit when running Kubernetes and containers. It exists because these errors are usually explained either in specification language that assumes you already know the answer, or in blog posts that give one fix for one situation without saying which situation you are in. Each page here tries to separate what the error means from what commonly causes it, because those are different questions and conflating them is what makes debugging slow.

How the pages are written

Pages are drafted with AI assistance from primary documentation — the Kubernetes documentation, the Kubernetes and containerd source, the OCI runtime specification, and kernel documentation — and every factual claim is checked against a listed source before publication. Where behaviour differs between versions or container runtimes, the page says so rather than picking one and hoping. No page is published for a code whose meaning could not be verified.

Corrections

If a page is wrong, it should be fixed. Every page lists the sources it was built from so you can check the reasoning yourself rather than taking it on trust.

Coverage

150 codes documented, published 2026-08-03.