Troubleshooting Camel K Integrations

As soon as you start using Camel K in complex integration, you may have failures in the Integrations that you need to resolve. Most of the time, the first level of troubleshooting is to check the the log or the Custom Resources which are bound to a Camel application.

In particular, after you run an application (ie, kamel run test.yaml), if this does not start up properly, you will need to verify the following resources.

Checking Integration pod

Most of the time, your Integration build cycle runs fine. Then a Deployment and therefore a Pod are started. However, there could be "application" reason why the Pod is not starting.

First of all, you need to try to check the log of the application. Try using kamel logs test or kubectl logs test-7856cb497b-smfkq. If there is some problem within your Camel application, you will typically discover it at runtime only. Checking the logs and understanding the reason of the failure there should be the easiest approach.

use logging trait to change the level of log, if needed.

Checking Integration custom resource

The custom resource that triggers the creation of a Camel application is the Integration custom resource. If something wrong happens during the build, you can look at the .status.phase and .status.conditions to understand what’s going on. For example kubectl get it -o yaml:

  status:
    conditions:
...
    - lastTransitionTime: "2023-09-29T13:53:17Z"
      lastUpdateTime: "2023-09-29T13:57:50Z"
      message: 'integration kit default/kit-ckbddjd5rv6c73cr99fg is in state "Error".
        Failure: Get "https://1.2.3.4/v2/": dial tcp 1.2.3.4:443: i/o timeout; Get
        "http://1.2.3.4/v2/": dial tcp 1.2.3.4:80: i/o timeout'
      reason: IntegrationKitAvailable
      status: "False"
      type: IntegrationKitAvailable
...
    phase: Error

This tells us that we were not able to correctly connect to the configured registry, reason why the build failed. This is the place that you want to monitor often, in order to understand the level of health of your Integration. We store more conditions related to the different services Camel K offers.

Checking IntegrationKit custom resource

The IntegrationKit is the second custom resource you want to look at if your Integration failed. Most of the time, the errors happening here are bubbled up into the Integration, but the IntegrationKit analysis can give you more information (kubectl get ik kit-ckbddjd5rv6c73cr99fg -o yaml).

Checking Build custom resource

The Build is the another custom resource you want to look at if your Integration failed. This has even more level of details, giving a resume of each execution of the pipeline tasks used to build and publish the IntegrationKit. Run kubectl get build kit-ckbddjd5rv6c73cr99fg -o yaml and you will be able to see a higher level of details, above all if you’re running with the builder pod strategy (which creates the build into a separate pod).

Checking other custom resources

If you’re still in trouble, other resources that can help you understand a little better the situation of your configuration are IntegrationPlatform (kubectl get IntegrationPlatform) and CamelCatalog (kubectl get CamelCatalog). If they are in phase error, for any reason, you will discover that looking at their status.

Checking Camel K operator or builder pod log

Finally, after checking the status and conditions of all the custom resources, you can look at the health of the Camel K operator watching its log (ie, kubectl logs camel-k-operator-7856cb497b-smfkq).

If you’re running the build with pod strategy, then, it may be interesting for you looking at the execution of the builder pod: kubectl logs camel-k-kit-ckbddjd5rv6c73cr99fg. Make sure to look at all pipeline containers pods to have a complete view of where the error could be.

use --log-level parameter to change the level of operator log, if needed.

Get verbose Maven traces

Camel K uses Maven behind the scenes for building the Camel application. By default, we’re setting the log level to minimum in order to avoid polluting Operator or builder Pods logs. Whether you’re running the build from the operator (default build strategy routine) or from a builder Pod ( build strategy pod), you can turn the Maven log to be more verbose and be able to get some reason why the Maven build is failing. In order to do that you need to change the configuration of your IntegrationPlatform and set the following Maven configuration:

...
  spec:
    build:
      maven:
        cliOptions:
        - -eX
...

With this configuration you will tell Maven to execute verbosely and provide some low level detail of any building error (ie, a missing dependency or the like). Accessing the operator or builder Pod logs will give you a better diagnose why some Camel application can’t build.

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