A simply script to delete all failed pods from Kubernetes

one_liner.sh

kubectl get pods --all-namespaces | grep Evicted | awk '{print $2 " --namespace=" $1}' | xargs kubectl delete pod

An extended @tombh answer for working with all namespaces:
https://gist.github.com/psxvoid/71492191b7cb06260036c90ab30cc9a0

kubectl get pods --all-namespaces | grep Evicted | awk '{print $2 " --namespace=" $1}' | xargs kubectl delete pod

@psxvoid this does not seem to work if multiple namespaces have evicted pods. In this case, it works only for the first namespace, so you would have to call it multiple times.

Thanks for all information.

I prefer always to specify the namespace so this is the command that I use to delete old failed/evicted pods:

kubectl --namespace=production get pods -a | grep Evicted | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kubectl --namespace=production delete pod -o name

Note the little option -a that shows all pods, without that was not working for me. Also I changed how I print values after the grep.

Hope it helps!

Please add a license :)

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

Better way for this is including namespace too
kubectl get pods -n name-spacename | grep Evicted | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kubectl delete pod -n name-spacename

kubectl get po --all-namespaces | awk '{if ($4 != "Running") system ("kubectl -n " $1 " delete pods " $2 " --grace-period=0 " " --force ")}'

If you delete a pod it just restarts right? don't we want --grace-period=0 and/or --force too?

Yep, but that's only if it's owned by something that would reschedule it elsewhere. Such is the case with a deployment or a replicaset. For example if a pod spawned by a job fails...depending on the policy you could end up with a lot of extra garbage if the job was tried over and over again. Hence this script

To everyone here, this was useful to us earlier before we got better at kubectl (plus it gave us a file based backup if we needed to know pod ID's later for post-mortems,) but there are many ways to use kubectl to do this without a script...a lot of the people on this commenting thread have make great suggestions...please use theirs instead!

What is the equivalent of kubectl get pods | grep Evicted | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kubectl delete pod in Poweshell?

That command is needlessly complicated. You just use:

kubectl delete pods --field-selector=status.phase=Evicted

But for really complicated stuff involving kubectl and powershell, you have to use something like ([string](kubectl get pods -o json)|convertfrom-json).items to get started.

An extended @tombh answer for working with all namespaces:
https://gist.github.com/psxvoid/71492191b7cb06260036c90ab30cc9a0

kubectl get pods --all-namespaces | grep Evicted | awk '{print $2 " --namespace=" $1}' | xargs kubectl delete pod

Awesome, thanks.

Hi all, I've updated this to reflect a much easier way to do this. I wrote this a long time ago before I knew bash, kubectl and Kubernetes all that well. Thanks for the awesome suggestions above you people rock! 🎉

The solution provided by @willemm is the best, as it doesn't require other tools and works on every platform, so also under Windows.

That command is needlessly complicated. You just use:

kubectl delete pods --field-selector=status.phase=Evicted

However, for me it didn't work out of the box, the = after --field-selector has to be removed to make it work and Evicted has to be replaced with Failed ("Evicted" is the reason, "Failed" is the phase). Also you have to provide a namespace.
So I ended up with:

kubectl delete pods --field-selector status.phase=Failed --all-namespaces

Bear in mind, however, that this not only deletes evicted pods, but also pods that have failed due to different reasons ("ContainerCannotRun", "Error", "ContainerCreating", etc.).

@TobiasWenzel thanks for drawing this to my attention :)

The solution provided by @willemm is the best, as it doesn't require other tools and works on every platform, so also under Windows.

That command is needlessly complicated. You just use:
kubectl delete pods --field-selector=status.phase=Evicted

However, for me it didn't work out of the box, the = after --field-selector has to be removed to make it work and Evicted has to be replaced with Failed ("Evicted" is the reason, "Failed" is the phase). Also you have to provide a namespace.
So I ended up with:

kubectl delete pods --field-selector status.phase=Failed --all-namespaces

Bear in mind, however, that this not only deletes evicted pods, but also pods that have failed due to different reasons ("ContainerCannotRun", "Error", "ContainerCreating", etc.).

make this golf even better,use -A instead of --all-namespaces.
hence kubectl delete pods --field-selector status.phase=Failed -A

Great!
Very helpful!

thanks for you all guys! very usefull

kubectl delete pods -A --field-selector=status.phase=Failed

Or, if you want to delete all pods that are not explicitly running (completed, for example):

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

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

Note this will also delete pods in PodInitializing, ContainerCreating and Pending status - which might not be desired.

This command was just perfect to delete my evicted pods: kubectl delete pods --field-selector status.phase=Failed -A

Thank you guys for this thread! It was really helpful.

First, execute kubectl get po -A |grep Evicted |awk '{print "kubectl delete po " $2 " -n " $1 }' to check the command.

After you confirm the command is what you want then execute kubectl get po -A |grep Evicted |awk '{print "kubectl delete po " $2 " -n " $1 }' |bash to run the command.

for me, all the above was not working with the newer (v1.23+) version of Kubernetes as with kubectl get pods --all-namespaces it shows some other statuses as well, like "OutOfcpu", "OOMKilled", "ContainerStatusUnknown", etc. So I added all those statuses to @yuzp1996 command:

kubectl get pods --all-namespaces | grep -E OutOfcpu\|Evicted\|Completed\|OOMKilled\|Error\|ContainerStatusUnknown | awk '{print "kubectl delete po " $2 " -n " $1 }' | bash

Thank you @rubenpetrosyan1. This worked well for me. All the other versions using --field-selector is not working for some reason.

My case I have to delete few specifically those have different name of pod, I will used below command to delete those.
If you know the name list to delete try like below worked for me.
kubectl delete pods podname1 anotherpod2 etcpod

@rubenpetrosyan1 good, it's works

This simple loop could help:

#!/bin/bash

for ns in $(kubectl get po -A --no-headers | grep -i crash | awk {'print $1'}); do
  delpods=$(kubectl get pods -n $ns |
    grep -i 'CrashLoopBackOff' |
    awk '{print $1 }')    
  for i in ${delpods[@]}; do
    kubectl delete pod $i --force=true --wait=false \
      --grace-period=0 -n $ns 
  done
done

kubectl delete pods --field-selector status.phase=Failed --all-namespaces
kubectl delete pods --field-selector status.phase=Error --all-namespaces

#ALL
kubectl delete pods --field-selector status.phase!=Running --all-namespaces

kubectl get po -A -o wide| grep -vE "Compl|Runn"|awk {'print $1,$2'}|grep -v NAMESPACE| sed "s,^,kubectl delete pod --force -n ,g" |bash