Why would /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/token be an empty file in a Pod?

Question

I'm using a vanilla minikube environment.

I'm not specifying any service account-related instructions in my bare-bones simple Pod .yaml file.

Inside a deployed Pod, /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/token is empty. What are the possible causes for this?

Answer 1

As mentioned in the docs

In version 1.6+, you can opt out of automounting API credentials for a service account by setting automountServiceAccountToken: false on the service account:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  name: build-robot
automountServiceAccountToken: false

In version 1.6+, you can also opt out of automounting API credentials for a particular pod:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: my-pod
spec:
  serviceAccountName: build-robot
  automountServiceAccountToken: false

So double check your pod file and check your ServiceAccount configuration with kubectl describe serviceaccount build-robot to see if you are disabling the automount.