livenessProbe seems not to be executed - kubernetes

Question

A container defined inside a deployment has a livenessProbe set up: by definition, it calls a remote endpoint and checks, whether response contains useful information or an empty response (which should trigger the pod's restart).
The whole definition is as follows (I removed the further checks for better clarity of the markup):
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: fc-backend-deployment
labels:
name: fc-backend-deployment
app: fc-test
spec:
replicas: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
name: fc-backend-pod
app: fc-test
template:
metadata:
name: fc-backend-pod
labels:
name: fc-backend-pod
app: fc-test
spec:
containers:
- name: fc-backend
image: localhost:5000/backend:1.3
ports:
- containerPort: 4044
env:
- name: NODE_ENV
value: "dev"
- name: REDIS_HOST
value: "redis"
livenessProbe:
exec:
command:
- curl -X GET $BACKEND_SERVICE_HOST:$BACKEND_SERVICE_PORT/api/v3/stats | head -c 30 > /app/out.log
initialDelaySeconds: 20
failureThreshold: 12
periodSeconds: 10
I also tried putting the command into an array:
command: ["sh", "-c", "curl -X GET $BACKEND_SERVICE_HOST:$BACKEND_SERVICE_PORT/api/v3/stats", "|", "head", "-c", "30", ">", "/app/out.log"]
and splitting into separate lines:
- /bin/bash
- -c
- curl
- -X
- GET
- $BACKEND_SERVICE_HOST:$BACKEND_SERVICE_PORT/api/v3/stats
- |
- head
- -c
- "30"
- >
- /app/out.log
and even like this:
command:
- |
curl -X GET $BACKEND_SERVICE_HOST:$BACKEND_SERVICE_PORT/api/v3/stats | head -c 30 > /app/out.log
All attempts were made with and without (/bin/ba)sh -c - with the same result.
But, as you're reading this, you already know that none of these worked.
I know it by exec'ing into running container and trying to find the /app/out.log file - it wasn't present any time I watched the directory contents. It looks like the probe gets never executed.
The command run inside running container works just fine: data gets fetched and written to the specified file.
What might be causing the probe not to get executed?

Answer 1

When using the exec type of probes, Kubernetes will not run a shell to process the command, it will just run the command directly. This means that you can only use a single command and that the | character is considered just another parameter of your curl.
To solve the problem, you need to use sh -c to exec shell code, something like the following:
livenessProbe:
exec:
command:
- sh
- -c
- >-
curl -X GET $BACKEND_SERVICE_HOST:$BACKEND_SERVICE_PORT/api/v3/stats |
head -c 30 > /app/out.log