Kubernetes pod gets recreated when deleted

Question

You need to delete the deployment, which should in turn delete the pods and the replica sets https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/24137

To list all deployments:

kubectl get deployments --all-namespaces

Then to delete the deployment:

kubectl delete -n NAMESPACE deployment DEPLOYMENT

Where NAMESPACE is the namespace it's in, and DEPLOYMENT is the name of the deployment. If NAMESPACE is default, leave off the -n option altogether.

In some cases it could also be running due to a job or daemonset. Check the following and run their appropriate delete command.

kubectl get jobs

kubectl get daemonsets.app --all-namespaces

kubectl get daemonsets.extensions --all-namespaces

Instead of trying to figure out whether it is a deployment, deamonset, statefulset... or what (in my case it was a replication controller that kept spanning new pods :) In order to determine what it was that kept spanning up the image I got all the resources with this command:

kubectl get all

Of course you could also get all resources from all namespaces:

kubectl get all --all-namespaces

or define the namespace you would like to inspect:

kubectl get all -n NAMESPACE_NAME

Once I saw that the replication controller was responsible for my trouble I deleted it:

kubectl delete replicationcontroller/CONTROLLER_NAME

if your pod has name like name-xxx-yyy, it could be controlled by a replicasets.apps named name-xxx, you should delete that replicaset first before deleting the pod

kubectl delete replicasets.apps name-xxx

Look out for stateful sets as well

kubectl get sts --all-namespaces

to delete all the stateful sets in a namespace

kubectl --namespace <yournamespace> delete sts --all

to delete them one by one

kubectl --namespace ag1 delete sts mssql1 
kubectl --namespace ag1 delete sts mssql2
kubectl --namespace ag1 delete sts mssql3

Many answers here tells to delete a specific k8s object, but you can delete multiple objects at once, instead of one by one:

kubectl delete deployments,jobs,services,pods --all -n <namespace>

In my case, I'm running OpenShift cluster with OLM - Operator Lifecycle Manager. OLM is the one who controls the deployment, so when I deleted the deployment, it was not sufficient to stop the pods from restarting.

Only when I deleted OLM and its subscription, the deployment, services and pods were gone.

First list all k8s objects in your namespace:

$ kubectl get all -n openshift-submariner

NAME                                       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod/submariner-operator-847f545595-jwv27   1/1     Running   0          8d  
NAME                                  TYPE        CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)    AGE
service/submariner-operator-metrics   ClusterIP   101.34.190.249   <none>        8383/TCP   8d
NAME                                  READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
deployment.apps/submariner-operator   1/1     1            1           8d
NAME                                             DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AGE
replicaset.apps/submariner-operator-847f545595   1         1         1       8d

OLM is not listed with get all, so I search for it specifically:

$ kubectl get olm -n openshift-submariner

NAME                                                      AGE
operatorgroup.operators.coreos.com/openshift-submariner   8d
NAME                                                             DISPLAY      VERSION
clusterserviceversion.operators.coreos.com/submariner-operator   Submariner   0.0.1 

Now delete all objects, including OLMs, subscriptions, deployments, replica-sets, etc:

$ kubectl delete olm,svc,rs,rc,subs,deploy,jobs,pods --all -n openshift-submariner

operatorgroup.operators.coreos.com "openshift-submariner" deleted
clusterserviceversion.operators.coreos.com "submariner-operator" deleted
deployment.extensions "submariner-operator" deleted
subscription.operators.coreos.com "submariner" deleted
service "submariner-operator-metrics" deleted
replicaset.extensions "submariner-operator-847f545595" deleted
pod "submariner-operator-847f545595-jwv27" deleted

List objects again - all gone:

$ kubectl get all -n openshift-submariner
No resources found.

$ kubectl get olm -n openshift-submariner
No resources found.

This will provide information about all the pods,deployments, services and jobs in the namespace.

kubectl get pods,services,deployments,jobs

pods can either be created by deployments or jobs

kubectl delete job [job_name]
kubectl delete deployment [deployment_name]

If you delete the deployment or job then restart of the pods can be stopped.