How to fix Liveness probe failed: HTTP probe: http://10.244.0.5:8080/health timed out in Kubernetes

KubernetesINTERMEDIATEHIGH

Pod readiness/liveness HTTP probes timeout when application does not respond quickly enough. Probes fail to reach the health check endpoint within the timeout window.

What this error means

Kubernetes uses HTTP probes (readiness and liveness) to determine pod health. When application HTTP endpoints do not respond within the probe timeout, the health check fails. This causes Kubernetes to consider the pod unhealthy and may restart or remove it from service.

Typical symptoms

Pod marked unhealthy despite application running
Probe events: "Liveness probe failed: HTTP probe timeout"
Pod restarts repeatedly due to failed probes
Service traffic routed away from pod
Application logs show no errors but pod crashes
Probe timeout occurs consistently after deployment
Pod unable to recover from temporary slowness

Common causes

Application endpoint too slow to respond (high latency)
Probe timeout set too low (default 1 second)
Application deadlocked or stuck in infinite loop
CPU overcommitted, application cannot respond quickly
Network issues between kubelet and pod
Initial delay too short before first probe
Resource exhaustion (file handles, memory)

How to fix "Liveness probe failed: HTTP probe: http://10.244.0.5:8080/health timed out"

1Step 1

First diagnostic step

2Step 2

Second diagnostic step

3Step 3

Third diagnostic step

4Step 4

Fourth diagnostic step

Step 5

Advanced notes

Additional notes and platform-specific considerations.

Related errors

Official resources & further reading

📚Kubernetes Official Documentation
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Kubernetes API Reference(Official Docs)
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Kubernetes Tasks: Run Applications(Official Docs)
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Stack Overflow: Kubernetes http probe timeout(Stack Overflow)
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Kubernetes GitHub Issues(GitHub)