Debugging Applications: Logs, Events, and Exec

Your pod is stuck in CrashLoopBackOff. You have no APM agent, no centralized logging stack, no Datadog dashboard. Just kubectl and a terminal. That's enough.

Kubernetes ships with three debugging tools that require zero extra infrastructure: container logs for application output, events for cluster-level state changes, and exec/debug for live container inspection. They won't cover node-level kernel issues or deep network packet analysis, but they handle the vast majority of "why is my pod broken?" scenarios.