slimtoolkit/slim · error

no pods

Error message

no pods

What it means

ensurePod resolves the target pod. With no explicit pod name it lists pods in the namespace and takes the first; if the namespace contains zero pods it fails with 'no pods'. Nothing is running in the selected namespace for the tool to debug.

Source

Thrown at pkg/app/master/command/debug/handle_kubernetes_runtime.go:961

	var list []string
	for _, status := range input {
		if status.State.Running != nil || status.State.Waiting != nil {
			list = append(list, status.Name)
		}
	}

	return list
}

func ensurePod(ctx context.Context, api *kubernetes.Clientset, nsName string, podName string) (*corev1.Pod, string, error) {
	if podName == "" {
		pods, err := api.CoreV1().Pods(nsName).List(ctx, metav1.ListOptions{})
		if err != nil {
			return nil, "", err
		}

		if len(pods.Items) == 0 {
			return nil, "", fmt.Errorf("no pods")
		}

		podName = pods.Items[0].Name
	}

	var outputPod *corev1.Pod
	isPodRunning := func() (bool, error) {
		pod, err := api.CoreV1().Pods(nsName).Get(ctx, podName, metav1.GetOptions{})
		if err != nil {
			return false, err
		}

		switch pod.Status.Phase {
		case corev1.PodRunning:
			outputPod = pod
			return true, nil
		case corev1.PodFailed, corev1.PodSucceeded:
			return false, fmt.Errorf("pod is done")

View on GitHub (pinned to 81940d17fa)

Solutions

1. Pass the pod name explicitly to the command instead of relying on auto-detection.
2. Confirm with `kubectl get pods -n <ns>` that pods actually exist in that namespace.
3. Scale the workload back up (`kubectl scale deploy/<name> --replicas=1`) before debugging.
4. Switch to the correct namespace/cluster context via KUBECONFIG.

Example fix

// before: empty namespace fallback
slim debug <target> --namespace default
// after
slim debug myapp-5d7f8c6b9-x2klm --namespace production

ns=production
[ "$(kubectl get pods -n "$ns" --field-selector=status.phase=Running -o name | wc -l)" -gt 0 ] || echo "no running pods in $ns"

if err := runDebug(target); err != nil && strings.Contains(err.Error(), "no pods") {
    // check namespace/scale and retry
}

When it happens

Trigger: HandleKubernetesRuntime / listDebuggableK8sContainersWithConfig / listK8sDebugContainersWithConfig call ensurePod with a namespace whose Pods().List returns an empty Items slice.

Common situations: Wrong namespace (workload lives in 'production' but you are in 'default'); all pods crashed/completed and were garbage-collected; deployments scaled to 0; kubeconfig pointing at an empty cluster.

Related errors

• Pod terminated
• Pod not running
• start monitor timeout
• unexpected - more than one target pod found
• no namespaces

AI-assisted analysis of slimtoolkit/slim@81940d17fa (2026-08-31). Data as JSON: /api/errors/d2405af6ee49892d. Report an issue: GitHub.