Hands-on Lab·Certified Kubernetes Administrator
Troubleshooting Pod ContainerCreating
A Pod that is scheduled and still will not start. This walks the FailedMount event back to the object that is missing, and is precise about why one of the three obvious causes behaves completely differently from the other two.
Troubleshooting Guide 81 of 103 Beginner
- Kubernetes1.36.4
- Runtimecontainerd 2.2.6
- CNICalico v3.32.1
- TimeAbout 16 min
- Reviewed26 August 2026
Written against the versions above. Event text is the kubelet's own. The retry interval and the `(x6 over 20s)` counter will differ on your cluster; the message format is what to learn.
| Server Name | IP Address | OS | Roles | CPU | RAM | HDD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CKA1001 | 192.168.0.175 | Ubuntu 26.04 LTS | Control Plane Node | 2 Core | 4 GB | 50 GB |
| CKA1001-NODE01 | 192.168.0.176 | Ubuntu 26.04 LTS | Worker Node | 2 Core | 4 GB | 50 GB |
| CKA1001-NODE02 | 192.168.0.177 | Ubuntu 26.04 LTS | Worker Node | 2 Core | 4 GB | 50 GB |
| CKA1001-NODE03 | 192.168.0.178 | Ubuntu 26.04 LTS | Worker Node | 2 Core | 4 GB | 50 GB |
Before you start
- guide 80 - the other half of this split, where the Pod never reaches a node at all.
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A Pod that never leaves ContainerCreating
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What the kubelet is complaining about
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Why the phase field will not tell you
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The same reason, and the one that is not
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Fix it, and watch the retry succeed