How to delete completed kubernetes pod?

Question

I have a bunch of pods in kubernetes which are completed (successfully or unsuccessfully) and I'd like to clean up the output of kubectl get pods . Here's what I see when I run kubectl get pods :

NAME                                           READY   STATUS             RESTARTS   AGE
intent-insights-aws-org-73-ingest-391c9384     0/1     ImagePullBackOff   0          8d
intent-postgres-f6dfcddcc-5qwl7                1/1     Running            0          23h
redis-scheduler-dev-master-0                   1/1     Running            0          10h
redis-scheduler-dev-metrics-85b45bbcc7-ch24g   1/1     Running            0          6d
redis-scheduler-dev-slave-74c7cbb557-dmvfg     1/1     Running            0          10h
redis-scheduler-dev-slave-74c7cbb557-jhqwx     1/1     Running            0          5d
scheduler-5f48b845b6-d5p4s                     2/2     Running            0          36m
snapshot-169-5af87b54                          0/1     Completed          0          20m
snapshot-169-8705f77c                          0/1     Completed          0          1h
snapshot-169-be6f4774                          0/1     Completed          0          1h
snapshot-169-ce9a8946                          0/1     Completed          0          1h
snapshot-169-d3099b06                          0/1     ImagePullBackOff   0          24m
snapshot-204-50714c88                          0/1     Completed          0          21m
snapshot-204-7c86df5a                          0/1     Completed          0          1h
snapshot-204-87f35e36                          0/1     ImagePullBackOff   0          26m
snapshot-204-b3a4c292                          0/1     Completed          0          1h
snapshot-204-c3d90db6                          0/1     Completed          0          1h
snapshot-245-3c9a7226                          0/1     ImagePullBackOff   0          28m
snapshot-245-45a907a0                          0/1     Completed          0          21m
snapshot-245-71911b06                          0/1     Completed          0          1h
snapshot-245-a8f5dd5e                          0/1     Completed          0          1h
snapshot-245-b9132236                          0/1     Completed          0          1h
snapshot-76-1e515338                           0/1     Completed          0          22m
snapshot-76-4a7d9a30                           0/1     Completed          0          1h
snapshot-76-9e168c9e                           0/1     Completed          0          1h
snapshot-76-ae510372                           0/1     Completed          0          1h
snapshot-76-f166eb18                           0/1     ImagePullBackOff   0          30m
train-169-65f88cec                             0/1     Error              0          20m
train-169-9c92f72a                             0/1     Error              0          1h
train-169-c935fc84                             0/1     Error              0          1h
train-169-d9593f80                             0/1     Error              0          1h
train-204-70729e42                             0/1     Error              0          20m
train-204-9203be3e                             0/1     Error              0          1h
train-204-d3f2337c                             0/1     Error              0          1h
train-204-e41a3e88                             0/1     Error              0          1h
train-245-7b65d1f2                             0/1     Error              0          19m
train-245-a7510d5a                             0/1     Error              0          1h
train-245-debf763e                             0/1     Error              0          1h
train-245-eec1908e                             0/1     Error              0          1h
train-76-86381784                              0/1     Completed          0          19m
train-76-b1fdc202                              0/1     Error              0          1h
train-76-e972af06                              0/1     Error              0          1h
train-76-f993c8d8                              0/1     Completed          0          1h
webserver-7fc9c69f4d-mnrjj                     2/2     Running            0          36m
worker-6997bf76bd-kvjx4                        2/2     Running            0          25m
worker-6997bf76bd-prxbg                        2/2     Running            0          36m

and I'd like to get rid of the pods like train-204-d3f2337c . How can I do that?

Answer 1

You can do this a bit easier, now.

You can list all completed pods by:

kubectl get pod --field-selector=status.phase==Succeeded

delete all completed pods by:

kubectl delete pod --field-selector=status.phase==Succeeded

and delete all errored pods by:

kubectl delete pod --field-selector=status.phase==Failed

Answer 2

If this pods created by CronJob, you can use spec.failedJobsHistoryLimit and spec.successfulJobsHistoryLimit

Example:

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: my-cron-job
spec:
  schedule: "*/10 * * * *"
  failedJobsHistoryLimit: 1
  successfulJobsHistoryLimit: 3
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
         ...

Answer 3

You can do it on two ways.

$ kubectl delete pod $(kubectl get pods | grep Completed | awk '{print $1}')

or

$ kubectl get pods | grep Completed | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kubectl delete pod

Both solutions will do the job.

Answer 4

If you would like to delete pods not Running, it could be done with one command

kubectl get pods --field-selector=status.phase!=Running

Updated command to delete pods

kubectl delete pods --field-selector=status.phase!=Running

Answer 5

As previous answers mentioned you can use the command:

kubectl delete pod --field-selector=status.phase=={{phase}}

To delete pods in a certain "phase", What's still missing is a quick summary of what phases exist, so the valid values for a "pod phase" are:

Pending, Running, Succeeded, Failed, Unknown

And in this specific case to delete "error" pods:

kubectl delete pod --field-selector=status.phase==Failed

Answer 6

Here's a one liner which will delete all pods which aren't in the Running or Pending state (note that if a pod name has Running or Pending in it, it won't get deleted ever with this one liner):

kubectl get pods --no-headers=true |grep -v "Running" | grep -v "Pending" | sed -E 's/([a-z0-9-]+).*/\1/g' | xargs kubectl delete pod

Here's an explanation:

1. get all pods without any of the headers
2. filter out pods which are Running
3. filter out pods which are Pending
4. pull out the name of the pod using a sed regex
5. use xargs to delete each of the pods by name

Note, this doesn't account for all pod states. For example, if a pod is in the state ContainerCreating this one liner will delete that pod too.

Answer 7

Here you go:

kubectl get pods --all-namespaces |grep -i completed|awk '{print "kubectl delete pod "$2" -n "$1}'|bash

you can replace completed with CrashLoopBackOff or any other state...

Answer 8

You can list all completed pods by:

kubectl get pod --field-selector=status.phase==Succeeded

And delete all completed pods by:

kubectl delete pod --field-selector=status.phase==Succeeded

Answer 9

I think pjincz handled your question well regarding deleting the completed pods manually.

However, I popped in here to introduce a new feature of Kubernetes, which may remove finished pods automatically on your behalf. You should just define a time to live to auto clean up finished Jobs like below:

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: Job
metadata:
  name: remove-after-ttl
spec:
  ttlSecondsAfterFinished: 86400
  template:
    ...

Answer 10

Here is a single command to delete all pods that are terminated, Completed, in Error, etc.

kubectl delete pods --field-selector status.phase=Failed -A --ignore-not-found=true

If you are using preemptive GKE nodes, you often see those pods hanging around.

Here is an automated solution I setup to cleanup: https://stackoverflow.com/a/72872547/4185100