deploy-debug

Diagnose deploy failures by inspecting an app's Kubernetes pods server-side. This command classifies pods, collects pre-healthcheck logs, gathers Kubernetes events, and maps failure states to actionable hints, all without requiring kubectl or kubeconfig access.

The Problem

When a deploy fails, convox logs often shows nothing because logs are only returned from pods that have passed health checks and reached a ready state. deploy-debug closes this visibility gap by querying Kubernetes directly from the rack API.

Usage

    convox deploy-debug

Options

Flag	Short	Description	Default
--app	-a	App name	Current directory
--rack	-r	Rack name	Current rack
--output	-o	Output format: terminal, summary, json	terminal
--service	-s	Filter to specific service(s), comma-separated	All services
--checks	-c	Run specific checks: overview, init, services	All three
--age	-A	Age threshold in seconds for "new" pod classification	300
--lines	-n	Log lines per process	200
--all		Include healthy processes (normally filtered out)	false
--no-events		Skip cluster events collection	false
--no-previous		Skip previous container crash logs	false
--watch		Re-run on interval (seconds)	Off

Diagnostic Checks

The command runs three checks by default. You can select individual checks with --checks.

Overview (--checks overview) lists all Deployments and DaemonSets with their rollout status. Detects stalled deploys (ProgressDeadlineExceeded) and classifies each service as running, deploying, stalled, or scaled-down. Shows warning events from the last 30 minutes with actionable hints.

Init Containers (--checks init) finds pods stuck in init container state and fetches logs from each init container. Reports container state (Running, Waiting, Terminated with exit code).

Services (--checks services) classifies every pod:

• unhealthy - pod phase is not Running
• not-ready - Running but health checks are failing
• new - Running and ready but age is below threshold (default 300s)
• healthy - Running, ready, and established

Collects current and previous container logs, per-pod Kubernetes events, and maps failure states to plain-language hints.

Failure Hints

The command maps common pod failure states to actionable messages:

State	Hint
CrashLoopBackOff	Process is crash-looping on startup. Check the logs below for the error.
ImagePullBackOff	Failed to pull the container image. Check that the build succeeded and the image tag exists.
ErrImagePull	Failed to pull the container image. Check registry access and image name.
InvalidImageName	Image name is invalid. Check build configuration.
OOMKilled	Process ran out of memory and was killed. Increase scale.memory in convox.yml.
CreateContainerConfigError	Container config is invalid. Check environment variables and secrets (missing env var or secret reference?).
RunContainerError	Container failed to start. Check the command in convox.yml and that the entrypoint exists.
ContainerCannotRun	Container cannot run. Check that the Dockerfile CMD or convox.yml command is valid.
StartError	Container failed to start. Check logs below for the startup error.
Completed	Process exited successfully but is not expected to stop. Check your command does not exit on its own.
Error	Process exited with an error. Check the logs below.
Unschedulable	Not enough resources in the cluster to place this process. Check scale.cpu and scale.memory in convox.yml.
ContainersNotReady	Containers are not ready. Health check may be failing.
PodInitializing	Pod is still initializing. Init containers may still be running.

Examples

Basic usage (terminal mode, the default):

    $ convox deploy-debug -a myapp

    Deploy Diagnostics: myapp on myrack
    Namespace: myrack-myapp
    Time:      2026-03-18T14:30:00Z

    --- Service Status ---
      ● web  0/2 processes ready  DEPLOYING

    --- Processes ---

      ● web  not-ready
        process: web-749dd486d8-8v4ss
        state: Running    ready: 0/1    age: 2m    restarts: 0
        detail:  ContainersNotReady
        hint:    Containers are not ready -- health check may be failing

        --- Current Logs (last 2 lines) ---
        Node.js app listening on port 3000
        Error: ECONNREFUSED connecting to database

        --- Events ---
        2m ago  Warning  Unhealthy            Readiness probe failed: HTTP probe failed with statuscode: 503

      ...

    Summary: 2 total  2 not-ready

    Legend: ● unhealthy  ● not-ready  ● new  ● healthy

Summary output for quick scanning:

    $ convox deploy-debug -a myapp -o summary
    SERVICE  DESIRED  READY  STATUS
    web      2        0      deploying

    PROCESS                   SERVICE  STATUS              READY  RESTARTS  AGE  HINT
    web-749dd486d8-8v4ss      web      ContainersNotReady  0/1    0         2m   Containers are not ready -- health check may be failing
    web-749dd486d8-k2m9f      web      ContainersNotReady  0/1    0         2m   Containers are not ready -- health check may be failing

JSON output for scripting:

    $ convox deploy-debug -a myapp -o json | jq '.pods[] | {name: .name, hint: .hint}'

Filter to a specific service:

    $ convox deploy-debug -a myapp -s web

Watch mode for ongoing diagnosis:

    $ convox deploy-debug -a myapp --watch 10

See Also

• deploy for creating and promoting builds
• Rolling Updates for how rollouts and rollbacks work
• Health Checks for configuring readiness and liveness probes
• Logs for streaming logs from processes that have passed health checks
• Troubleshooting for common deployment issues