This page shows how to attach handlers to Container lifecycle events. Kubernetes supports the postStart and preStop events. Kubernetes sends the postStart event immediately after a Container is started, and it sends the preStop event immediately before the Container is terminated.
You need to have a Kubernetes cluster, and the kubectl command-line tool must be configured to communicate with your cluster. If you do not already have a cluster, you can create one by using Minikube, or you can use one of these Kubernetes playgrounds:
To check the version, enter kubectl version
.
In this exercise, you create a Pod that has one Container. The Container has handlers for the postStart and preStop events.
Here is the configuration file for the Pod:
pods/lifecycle-events.yaml
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In the configuration file, you can see that the postStart command writes a message
file to the Container’s /usr/share
directory. The preStop command shuts down
nginx gracefully. This is helpful if the Container is being terminated because of a failure.
Create the Pod:
kubectl create -f https://k8s.io/examples/pods/lifecycle-events.yaml
Verify that the Container in the Pod is running:
kubectl get pod lifecycle-demo
Get a shell into the Container running in your Pod:
kubectl exec -it lifecycle-demo -- /bin/bash
In your shell, verify that the postStart
handler created the message
file:
root@lifecycle-demo:/# cat /usr/share/message
The output shows the text written by the postStart handler:
Hello from the postStart handler
Kubernetes sends the postStart event immediately after the Container is created. There is no guarantee, however, that the postStart handler is called before the Container’s entrypoint is called. The postStart handler runs asynchronously relative to the Container’s code, but Kubernetes’ management of the container blocks until the postStart handler completes. The Container’s status is not set to RUNNING until the postStart handler completes.
Kubernetes sends the preStop event immediately before the Container is terminated. Kubernetes’ management of the Container blocks until the preStop handler completes, unless the Pod’s grace period expires. For more details, see Termination of Pods.
Note: Kubernetes only sends the preStop event when a Pod is terminated. This means that the preStop hook is not invoked when the Pod is completed. This limitation is tracked in issue #55087.
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