Liveness probe failed Kubernetes Origin: Platform & cloud Last updated 13 Oct 2026

Liveness probe failed ... Container will be restarted (also Startup probe failed)

The kubelet’s liveness (or startup) check failed enough times that it killed and restarted the container.

Exact message you may see Liveness probe failedContainer will be restartedStartup probe failedfailed liveness probe, will be restarted
Explore the map of this error Full error map →
Seen on: Kubernetes

Meaning

Liveness probes restart stuck apps — but a probe that’s too strict restarts healthy ones: slow JVM/Rails startup, GC pauses, heavy load or a dependency check inside the endpoint. The restarts then look like CrashLoopBackOff with exit code 137/143.

Common causes

  • Startup longer than initialDelaySeconds × failureThreshold
  • timeoutSeconds too short under load
  • Probe hits an endpoint that checks the database
  • Wrong port/path

⚡ Quick fix

  1. Add a startupProbe for slow starts
  2. Raise timeoutSeconds/failureThreshold
  3. Make liveness check only the process itself, not dependencies

Detailed fix by platform

YAML

  1. bash
    startupProbe:
  httpGet: { path: /healthz, port: 8080 }
  failureThreshold: 30
  periodSeconds: 10
livenessProbe:
  httpGet: { path: /healthz, port: 8080 }
  timeoutSeconds: 3
  failureThreshold: 3

How to diagnose

  1. Events — Liveness/Startup failure messages
  2. Timing — Restart time vs startup duration
  3. Endpoint — What does it check?

🔧 Still not fixed?

Many errors look alike. If the steps above didn’t solve it, one of these is probably what you’re facing:

Where this error sits

Origin: Platform & cloud. Errors that are often confused with or caused by this one (click to open):

admission webhook denied the request — Error from server: admission webhook "validate.nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io" denied the request (Kubernetes)admission webhook den…CrashLoopBackOff — Kubernetes: CrashLoopBackOff (Kubernetes)CrashLoopBackOffHealth checks failed — ALB target unhealthy: Health checks failed with these codes: [404] / Request timed out (AWS)Health checks failedis waiting to start — Error from server (BadRequest): container "x" in pod "y" is waiting to start: ContainerCreating (Kubernetes)is waiting to startOOMKilled — Kubernetes: OOMKilled (exit code 137) (Kubernetes)OOMKilledReadiness probe failed — Readiness probe failed: HTTP probe failed with statuscode: 503 / connect: connection refused (Kubernetes)Readiness probe failedunhealthy — Docker container is unhealthy (health check failing) (Docker)unhealthyLiveness …

Explore the map of this error Full error map →

🧠 Still stuck? Analyze your error

Paste the full message, response headers or stack trace — we'll detect the platform and point to the most likely cause.

💬 What worked for others

No tips yet — did something else fix this for you?

Share what worked for you

Tips are checked by an editor before they appear. Links are removed.