Here are 5 pod failures you'll actually face
- ImagePullBackOff - "No basic auth credentials."
Your node needs an IAM role with ECR permissions.
Check: kubectl describe node | grep iam
No role = No image pulls. Attach AmazonEC2ContainerRegistryReadOnly policy.
"Exec format error"
You built the image on your Mac M2. EKS nodes run AMD64.
Fix: Always build with --platform linux/amd64"Connection refused" to database
Your RDS security group isn't allowing traffic from your NODE security group.
Add inbound rule: Allow port 5432 from sg-node-xxxxx
- "Environment variable not set"
Secret exists but in wrong namespace. Or wrong key name.
Check: kubectl get secret -n
Match the key names exactly in your secretKeyRef.
- CrashLoopBackOff with no logs
App needs more startup time than your liveness probe allows.
Increase initialDelaySeconds in your probe from 10s to 30s.
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