Challenge, Hard,  on  Kubernetes

Troubleshoot a Website That Is Not Accessible

Omkar Shelke
by  Omkar Shelke

Scenario

A web application showcasing the Solo Leveling anime universe — characters, dungeons, and the world of hunters — has been deployed in the solo-leveling namespace, but the website is not accessible.

Investigate why the website is not accessible and fix the issue so that the Solo Leveling universe explorer is reachable at:

curl http://cplane-01:30333

⏳ Wait a few seconds for the environment to fully set up. It may take up to 1 minute.

Hint 1 — Check Why the Service Has No Endpoints

Start by checking whether the Service has any endpoints — endpoints are the pod IPs that the Service routes traffic to. If there are no endpoints, traffic can never reach the pods.

kubectl get endpoints solo-leveling-service -n solo-leveling
kubectl describe endpoints solo-leveling-service -n solo-leveling

If endpoints are empty, the Service selector does not match any pod labels. Compare the Service selector with the actual pod labels:

kubectl get svc solo-leveling-service -n solo-leveling -o yaml | grep -A5 selector
kubectl get pods -n solo-leveling --show-labels

Documentation

Hint 2 — Check What Port the Application Is Listening On

Even after fixing the selector, the Service may still fail if the targetPort does not match the port the container is actually listening on. Check the nginx configuration to find the real port:

kubectl get configmap nginx-config -n solo-leveling \
  -o jsonpath='{.data.nginx\.conf}'

Then check what the Service targetPort and Deployment containerPort are set to, and update them to match.

Documentation

💡 Test Cases

How to Author Challenges on iximiuz Labs

Instead of providing a subpar online editing experience, iximiuz Labs offers a helper CLI tool called labctl, allowing you to use your favorite text editor (or a full-featured IDE) to write content from the comfort of your local machine.

Install labctl CLI

curl -sf https://labs.iximiuz.com/cli/install.sh | sh

This will download and install the latest version of the labctl CLI. You only need to do this once per workstation.

Authorize labctl

labctl auth login

This will open a browser window asking you to authorize labctl to access your account. You need to do it after a fresh install of labctl and repeat it whenever the auth session expires.

Pull challenge content

labctl content pull challenge troubleshoot-website-not-accessible-173199c4

This will create a local copy of the challenge content in a directory named troubleshoot-website-not-accessible-173199c4. You only need to do this once per challenge.

Stream your changes

labctl content push -fw challenge troubleshoot-website-not-accessible-173199c4

Run this command in a separate terminal to continuously upload your changes to the server while editing the challenge in your favorite text editor or IDE.

You can also use labctl to create, list, and delete your content. Learn more about the available commands: labctl content --help

Start challenge