Amazon EKS & kubectl Troubleshooting Cheat Sheet

Essential kubectl commands, pod status debugging (CrashLoopBackOff, ImagePullBackOff), and node health diagnostics for SREs.

Check Node Memory & CPU PressureLists cluster nodes ordered by memory consumption.

kubectl top nodes --sort-by=memory

Stream Logs from Previous Failed ContainerFetches logs from the crashed container instance.

kubectl logs <pod-name> -c <container> --previous

Execute Interactive Bash Debugging ShellSpawns an interactive shell inside a running container.

kubectl exec -it <pod-name> -- /bin/sh

Kubernetes & EKS Quick Debugging Reference

A curated list of emergency troubleshooting commands for diagnosing broken pods, node pressure, and ingress routing issues.