How To Fix A PVC Stuck in Terminating Status in Kubernetes: Troubleshooting Guide

Having trouble deleting a persistent volume claim (PVC) stuck in "terminating" status in Kubernetes/Openshift? We've got the fix. Read on to learn how to patch the PVC to allow the final unmount and delete the PVC.

The Issue

Whilst working on a Kubernetes demo for a customer, I was cleaning up my environment and deleting persistent volume claims (PVC) that were no longer need.

I noticed that one PVC was stuck in "terminating" status for quite a while.

Note: I am using the OC commands in place of kubectl due to this being a Openshift environment

The Cause

I had a quick google and found I needed to verify if the PVC is still attached to a node in the cluster.

kubectl get volumeattachment

I could see it was, and the reason behind this was the configuration for the PVC was not fully updated during the delete process.

The Fix

I found the fix on this github issue log .

You need to patch the PVC to set the "finalizers" setting to null, this allows the final unmount from the node, and the PVC can be deleted.

kubectl patch pvc {PVC_NAME} -p '{"metadata":{"finalizers":null}}'

Regards

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