EC
ConfigMapNotFound
KubernetesERRORCommonConfigurationHIGH confidence

A referenced ConfigMap was not found

Production Risk

The application cannot start, leading to a service outage or deployment failure. It is a hard dependency failure.

What this means

A pod is trying to start but fails because it references a ConfigMap that does not exist. This prevents the container from being configured and started.

Why it happens
  1. 1The ConfigMap was never created
  2. 2The ConfigMap was created in the wrong namespace
  3. 3A typo in the ConfigMap name within the pod specification
How to reproduce

A pod fails to start, and describing the pod shows a 'CreateContainerConfigError' with a message saying 'configmap not found'.

trigger — this will error
trigger — this will error
kubectl describe pod my-app-pod

expected output

Events:
  Type     Reason        Age                  From               Message
  ----     ------        ----                 ----               -------
  Warning  Failed        30s (x4 over 90s)    kubelet            Error: CreateContainerConfigError: configmap "my-app-config" not found

Fix 1

Verify the ConfigMap exists in the correct namespace

WHEN The pod cannot find its required ConfigMap

Verify the ConfigMap exists in the correct namespace
kubectl get configmap my-app-config -n my-namespace

Why this works

This command attempts to retrieve the specified ConfigMap from the pod's namespace. If it fails, the ConfigMap needs to be created or the pod spec needs to be corrected.

Fix 2

Create the missing ConfigMap

WHEN The ConfigMap does not exist

Create the missing ConfigMap
kubectl create configmap my-app-config --from-literal=key1=value1 -n my-namespace

Why this works

Creates a new ConfigMap with the given name and data in the specified namespace, resolving the dependency for the pod.

What not to do

✕ Mark the ConfigMap as optional in the pod spec

While this will allow the pod to start, the application will likely crash if it requires the configuration that is now missing. It masks the root problem.

Sources
Official documentation ↗

k8s.io/kubernetes/pkg/kubelet/kubelet_pods.go

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