Kubernetes Helm stuck with an update in progress

Question

I tried to run a Helm upgrade before running helm repo update and now it seems to be permanently stuck in "STATUS: pending-upgrade" and won't let me try to run the upgrade again.

Trying to run: helm upgrade --namespace coder --install --force --atomic --wait --version 1.13.2 --values ./coder.yaml coder coder/coder

outputs: Error: UPGRADE FAILED: another operation (install/upgrade/rollback) is in progress

Answer 1

TLDR: You need to rollback to another version first and then helm upgrade again:

helm rollback <release> <revision> --namespace <namespace>

---

This can happen for a few reasons, but it ultimately occurs when there's an interruption during the upgrade/install process. Commonly, you SIGKILL (Ctrl C) while the deployment is ongoing.

You'll notice that if you helm ls --namespace <namespace> while it's stuck in STATUS: pending-upgrade state, you'll see the following without any other information:

NAME    NAMESPACE   REVISION    UPDATED STATUS  CHART   APP VERSION

The best workaround currently is to rollback to another version, and then helm upgrade again:

helm rollback <release> <revision> --namespace <namespace>

revision is optional, but you should try to provide it.

more resources:

• https://github.com/helm/helm/issues/8987
• https://github.com/helm/helm/issues/4558

Answer 2

This solution worked for me:

kubectl get secrets
kubectl delete secret sh.helm.release.v1.<RELEASE_NAME>.v<LATEST_REVISION>

Following the resolution described in this issue

Answer 3

In case is useful to someone, and in response to explicitsoul's comment, what fixed it to me was just:

helm delete <release> -n <namespace>

That removed the pending install (in my case, the first one so I hadn't a previous release to rollback to) and then I was able to run the install again.

What caused the stuck process in my case was a CTRL-C canceling the install command, so don't do that.

Answer 4

Here is what worked for me

1. helm list --all This will list all the releases with their status

NAME  NAMESPACE       REVISION        UPDATED                                 STATUS               CHART                   APP VERSION
rel1  default         1               2021-06-04 14:15:37.652066 +0530 IST    deployed             rel1-3.32.0             0.46.0     
rel2  default         29              2021-06-18 11:02:38.779801 +0530 IST    pending-upgrade      rel2-0.0.1                     
rel3  default         3               2021-06-17 11:27:14.608042 +0530 IST    deployed             rel3-0.0.1      

2. Notice that rel2 has status as pending-update . This happened because I did a Ctrl+C while upgrade was in progress
3. All i had to do was rollback to previous revision in this case 28 helm rollback rel2 28 --namespace default

NAME   NAMESPACE       REVISION        UPDATED                                 STATUS          CHART          APP VERSION
rel1   default         1               2021-06-04 14:15:37.652066 +0530 IST    deployed        rel1-3.32.0    0.46.0     
rel2   default         30              2021-06-18 11:26:07.555547 +0530 IST    deployed        rel2-0.0.1                     
rel3   default         3               2021-06-17 11:27:14.608042 +0530 IST    deployed        rel3-0.0.1