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Troubleshooting logging in GKE | Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Troubleshooting logging in GKE

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This page helps you resolve issues with the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) logging pipeline itself, such as logs not appearing in Cloud Logging. For more information about how to use logs to troubleshoot your workloads and clusters, see Introduction to GKE troubleshooting.

Missing cluster logs in Cloud Logging Tip: You can use gcpdiag to automate GKE logging investigation. Verify logging is enabled in the project
  1. List enabled services:

    gcloud services list --enabled --filter="NAME=logging.googleapis.com"
    

    The following output indicates that logging is enabled for the project:

    NAME                    TITLE
    logging.googleapis.com  Cloud Logging API
    

    Optional: Check the logs in Logs Viewer to determine who disabled the API and when they disabled the API:

    protoPayload.methodName="google.api.serviceusage.v1.ServiceUsage.DisableService"
    protoPayload.response.services="logging.googleapis.com"
    
  2. If logging is disabled, enable logging:

    gcloud services enable logging.googleapis.com
    
Verify logging is enabled on the cluster
  1. List the clusters:

    gcloud container clusters list \
        --project=PROJECT_ID \
        '--format=value(name,loggingConfig.componentConfig.enableComponents)' \
        --sort-by=name | column -t
    

    Replace the following:

    The output is similar to the following:

    cluster-1              SYSTEM_COMPONENTS
    cluster-2              SYSTEM_COMPONENTS;WORKLOADS
    cluster-3
    

    If the value for your cluster is empty, logging is disabled. For example, cluster-3 in this output has logging disabled.

  2. Enable cluster logging if set to NONE:

    gcloud container clusters update CLUSTER_NAME  \
        --logging=SYSTEM,WORKLOAD \
        --location=COMPUTE_LOCATION
    

    Replace the following:

After verifying that you've enabled logging in your project and on the cluster, consider using Gemini Cloud Assist Investigations to gain additional insights into your logs, and resolve issues. For more information about different ways to initiate an investigation by using the Logs Explorer, see Troubleshoot issues with Gemini Cloud Assist Investigations in the Gemini documentation.

Verify nodes in the node pools have Cloud Logging access scope

One of the following scopes is required for nodes to write logs to Cloud Logging:

  1. Check the scopes configured on each node pool in the cluster:

    gcloud container node-pools list --cluster=CLUSTER_NAME \
        --format="table(name,config.oauthScopes)" \
        --location COMPUTE_LOCATION
    

    Replace the following:

    Migrate your workloads from the old node pool to the newly created node pool and monitor the progress.

  2. Create new node pools with the correct logging scope:

    gcloud container node-pools create NODE_POOL_NAME \
        --cluster=CLUSTER_NAME \
        --location=COMPUTE_LOCATION \
        --scopes="gke-default"
    

    Replace the following:

Identify clusters with node service accounts that are missing critical permissions

To identify clusters with node service accounts missing critical permissions, use GKE recommendations of NODE_SA_MISSING_PERMISSIONS recommender subtype:

Note: This recommendation might take up to 24 hours to appear. For detailed instructions, see how to view insights and recommendations.

To implement this recommendation, grant the roles/container.defaultNodeServiceAccount role to the node's service account.

You can run a script that searches node pools in your project's Standard and Autopilot clusters for any node service accounts that don't have the required permissions for GKE. This script uses the gcloud CLI and the jq utility. To view the script, expand the following section:

View the script

#!/bin/bash

# Set your project ID
project_id=PROJECT_ID
project_number=$(gcloud projects describe "$project_id" --format="value(projectNumber)")
declare -a all_service_accounts
declare -a sa_missing_permissions

# Function to check if a service account has a specific permission
# $1: project_id
# $2: service_account
# $3: permission
service_account_has_permission() {
  local project_id="$1"
  local service_account="$2"
  local permission="$3"

  local roles=$(gcloud projects get-iam-policy "$project_id" \
          --flatten="bindings[].members" \
          --format="table[no-heading](bindings.role)" \
          --filter="bindings.members:\"$service_account\"")

  for role in $roles; do
    if role_has_permission "$role" "$permission"; then
      echo "Yes" # Has permission
      return
    fi
  done

  echo "No" # Does not have permission
}

# Function to check if a role has the specific permission
# $1: role
# $2: permission
role_has_permission() {
  local role="$1"
  local permission="$2"
  gcloud iam roles describe "$role" --format="json" | \
  jq -r ".includedPermissions" | \
  grep -q "$permission"
}

# Function to add $1 into the service account array all_service_accounts
# $1: service account
add_service_account() {
  local service_account="$1"
  all_service_accounts+=( ${service_account} )
}

# Function to add service accounts into the global array all_service_accounts for a Standard GKE cluster
# $1: project_id
# $2: location
# $3: cluster_name
add_service_accounts_for_standard() {
  local project_id="$1"
  local cluster_location="$2"
  local cluster_name="$3"

  while read nodepool; do
    nodepool_name=$(echo "$nodepool" | awk '{print $1}')
    if [[ "$nodepool_name" == "" ]]; then
      # skip the empty line which is from running `gcloud container node-pools list` in GCP console
      continue
    fi
    while read nodepool_details; do
      service_account=$(echo "$nodepool_details" | awk '{print $1}')

      if [[ "$service_account" == "default" ]]; then
        service_account="${project_number}-compute@developer.gserviceaccount.com"
      fi
      if [[ -n "$service_account" ]]; then
        printf "%-60s| %-40s| %-40s| %-10s| %-20s\n" $service_account $project_id  $cluster_name $cluster_location $nodepool_name
        add_service_account "${service_account}"
      else
        echo "cannot find service account for node pool $project_id\t$cluster_name\t$cluster_location\t$nodepool_details"
      fi
    done <<< "$(gcloud container node-pools describe "$nodepool_name" --cluster "$cluster_name" --zone "$cluster_location" --project "$project_id" --format="table[no-heading](config.serviceAccount)")"
  done <<< "$(gcloud container node-pools list --cluster "$cluster_name" --zone "$cluster_location" --project "$project_id" --format="table[no-heading](name)")"

}

# Function to add service accounts into the global array all_service_accounts for an Autopilot GKE cluster
# Autopilot cluster only has one node service account.
# $1: project_id
# $2: location
# $3: cluster_name
add_service_account_for_autopilot(){
  local project_id="$1"
  local cluster_location="$2"
  local cluster_name="$3"

  while read service_account; do
      if [[ "$service_account" == "default" ]]; then
        service_account="${project_number}-compute@developer.gserviceaccount.com"
      fi
      if [[ -n "$service_account" ]]; then
        printf "%-60s| %-40s| %-40s| %-10s| %-20s\n" $service_account $project_id  $cluster_name $cluster_location $nodepool_name
        add_service_account "${service_account}"
      else
        echo "cannot find service account" for cluster  "$project_id\t$cluster_name\t$cluster_location\t"
      fi
  done <<< "$(gcloud container clusters describe "$cluster_name" --location "$cluster_location" --project "$project_id" --format="table[no-heading](autoscaling.autoprovisioningNodePoolDefaults.serviceAccount)")"
}


# Function to check whether the cluster is an Autopilot cluster or not
# $1: project_id
# $2: location
# $3: cluster_name
is_autopilot_cluster() {
  local project_id="$1"
  local cluster_location="$2"
  local cluster_name="$3"
  autopilot=$(gcloud container clusters describe "$cluster_name" --location "$cluster_location" --format="table[no-heading](autopilot.enabled)")
  echo "$autopilot"
}


echo "--- 1. List all service accounts in all GKE node pools"
printf "%-60s| %-40s| %-40s| %-10s| %-20s\n" "service_account" "project_id" "cluster_name" "cluster_location" "nodepool_name"
while read cluster; do
  cluster_name=$(echo "$cluster" | awk '{print $1}')
  cluster_location=$(echo "$cluster" | awk '{print $2}')
  # how to find a cluster is a Standard cluster or an Autopilot cluster
  autopilot=$(is_autopilot_cluster "$project_id" "$cluster_location" "$cluster_name")
  if [[ "$autopilot" == "True" ]]; then
    add_service_account_for_autopilot "$project_id" "$cluster_location"  "$cluster_name"
  else
    add_service_accounts_for_standard "$project_id" "$cluster_location"  "$cluster_name"
  fi
done <<< "$(gcloud container clusters list --project "$project_id" --format="value(name,location)")"

echo "--- 2. Check if service accounts have permissions"
unique_service_accounts=($(echo "${all_service_accounts[@]}" | tr ' ' '\n' | sort -u | tr '\n' ' '))

echo "Service accounts: ${unique_service_accounts[@]}"
printf "%-60s| %-40s| %-40s| %-20s\n" "service_account" "has_logging_permission" "has_monitoring_permission" "has_performance_hpa_metric_write_permission"
for sa in "${unique_service_accounts[@]}"; do
  logging_permission=$(service_account_has_permission "$project_id" "$sa" "logging.logEntries.create")
  time_series_create_permission=$(service_account_has_permission "$project_id" "$sa" "monitoring.timeSeries.create")
  metric_descriptors_create_permission=$(service_account_has_permission "$project_id" "$sa" "monitoring.metricDescriptors.create")
  if [[ "$time_series_create_permission" == "No" || "$metric_descriptors_create_permission" == "No" ]]; then
    monitoring_permission="No"
  else
    monitoring_permission="Yes"
  fi
  performance_hpa_metric_write_permission=$(service_account_has_permission "$project_id" "$sa" "autoscaling.sites.writeMetrics")
  printf "%-60s| %-40s| %-40s| %-20s\n" $sa $logging_permission $monitoring_permission $performance_hpa_metric_write_permission

  if [[ "$logging_permission" == "No" || "$monitoring_permission" == "No" || "$performance_hpa_metric_write_permission" == "No" ]]; then
    sa_missing_permissions+=( ${sa} )
  fi
done

echo "--- 3. List all service accounts that don't have the above permissions"
if [[ "${#sa_missing_permissions[@]}" -gt 0 ]]; then
  printf "Grant roles/container.defaultNodeServiceAccount to the following service accounts: %s\n" "${sa_missing_permissions[@]}"
else
  echo "All service accounts have the above permissions"
fi
Identify node service accounts that are missing critical permissions in a cluster Important: The Google Cloud console displays a Grant Critical Permissions to Node Service Account message if a GKE node service account in a cluster doesn't have all of the permissions that the cluster needs for tasks like logging and monitoring. To resolve this issue, identify the service accounts that don't have the required permissions. Then, grant the `roles/container.defaultNodeServiceAccount` role to those service accounts. For instructions, see Identify node service accounts that don't have required permissions.

GKE uses IAM service accounts that are attached to your nodes to run system tasks like logging and monitoring. At a minimum, these node service accounts must have the Kubernetes Engine Default Node Service Account (roles/container.defaultNodeServiceAccount) role on your project. By default, GKE uses the Compute Engine default service account, which is automatically created in your project, as the node service account.

If your organization enforces the iam.automaticIamGrantsForDefaultServiceAccounts organization policy constraint, the default Compute Engine service account in your project might not automatically get the required permissions for GKE.

Note: If your organization was created on or after May 3, 2024, this constraint is enforced by default.
  1. Find the name of the service account that your nodes use:

    Console
    1. Go to the Kubernetes clusters page:

      Go to Kubernetes clusters

    2. In the cluster list, click the name of the cluster that you want to inspect.
    3. Depending on the cluster mode of operation, do one of the following:
      • For Autopilot mode clusters, in the Security section, find the Service account field.
      • For Standard mode clusters, do the following:
        1. Click the Nodes tab.
        2. In the Node pools table, click a node pool name. The Node pool details page opens.
        3. In the Security section, find the Service account field.

    If the value in the Service account field is default, your nodes use the Compute Engine default service account. If the value in this field is not default, your nodes use a custom service account. To grant the required role to a custom service account, see Use least privilege IAM service accounts.

    gcloud

    For Autopilot mode clusters, run the following command:

    gcloud container clusters describe CLUSTER_NAME \
        --location=LOCATION \
        --flatten=autoscaling.autoprovisioningNodePoolDefaults.serviceAccount

    For Standard mode clusters, run the following command:

    gcloud container clusters describe CLUSTER_NAME \
        --location=LOCATION \
        --format="table(nodePools.name,nodePools.config.serviceAccount)"

    If the output is default, your nodes use the Compute Engine default service account. If the output is not default, your nodes use a custom service account. To grant the required role to a custom service account, see Use least privilege IAM service accounts.

  2. To grant the roles/container.defaultNodeServiceAccount role to the Compute Engine default service account, complete the following steps:

    console
    1. Go to the Welcome page:

      Go to Welcome

    2. In the Project number field, click content_copy Copy to clipboard.
    3. Go to the IAM page:

      Go to IAM

    4. Click person_add Grant access.
    5. In the New principals field, specify the following value:
      PROJECT_NUMBER-compute@developer.gserviceaccount.com
      Replace PROJECT_NUMBER with the project number that you copied.
    6. In the Select a role menu, select the Kubernetes Engine Default Node Service Account role.
    7. Click Save.
    gcloud
    1. Find your Google Cloud project number:
      gcloud projects describe PROJECT_ID \
          --format="value(projectNumber)"

      Replace PROJECT_ID with your project ID.

      The output is similar to the following:

      12345678901
      
    2. Grant the roles/container.defaultNodeServiceAccount role to the Compute Engine default service account:
      gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding PROJECT_ID \
          --member="serviceAccount:PROJECT_NUMBER-compute@developer.gserviceaccount.com" \
          --role="roles/container.defaultNodeServiceAccount"

      Replace PROJECT_NUMBER with the project number from the previous step.

A script to identify missing permissions for GKE Node Service Account

You can run a script that searches node pools in your project's Standard and Autopilot clusters for any node service accounts that don't have the required permissions for GKE. This script uses the gcloud CLI and the jq utility. To view the script, expand the following section:

View the script

#!/bin/bash

# Set your project ID
project_id=PROJECT_ID
project_number=$(gcloud projects describe "$project_id" --format="value(projectNumber)")
declare -a all_service_accounts
declare -a sa_missing_permissions

# Function to check if a service account has a specific permission
# $1: project_id
# $2: service_account
# $3: permission
service_account_has_permission() {
  local project_id="$1"
  local service_account="$2"
  local permission="$3"

  local roles=$(gcloud projects get-iam-policy "$project_id" \
          --flatten="bindings[].members" \
          --format="table[no-heading](bindings.role)" \
          --filter="bindings.members:\"$service_account\"")

  for role in $roles; do
    if role_has_permission "$role" "$permission"; then
      echo "Yes" # Has permission
      return
    fi
  done

  echo "No" # Does not have permission
}

# Function to check if a role has the specific permission
# $1: role
# $2: permission
role_has_permission() {
  local role="$1"
  local permission="$2"
  gcloud iam roles describe "$role" --format="json" | \
  jq -r ".includedPermissions" | \
  grep -q "$permission"
}

# Function to add $1 into the service account array all_service_accounts
# $1: service account
add_service_account() {
  local service_account="$1"
  all_service_accounts+=( ${service_account} )
}

# Function to add service accounts into the global array all_service_accounts for a Standard GKE cluster
# $1: project_id
# $2: location
# $3: cluster_name
add_service_accounts_for_standard() {
  local project_id="$1"
  local cluster_location="$2"
  local cluster_name="$3"

  while read nodepool; do
    nodepool_name=$(echo "$nodepool" | awk '{print $1}')
    if [[ "$nodepool_name" == "" ]]; then
      # skip the empty line which is from running `gcloud container node-pools list` in GCP console
      continue
    fi
    while read nodepool_details; do
      service_account=$(echo "$nodepool_details" | awk '{print $1}')

      if [[ "$service_account" == "default" ]]; then
        service_account="${project_number}-compute@developer.gserviceaccount.com"
      fi
      if [[ -n "$service_account" ]]; then
        printf "%-60s| %-40s| %-40s| %-10s| %-20s\n" $service_account $project_id  $cluster_name $cluster_location $nodepool_name
        add_service_account "${service_account}"
      else
        echo "cannot find service account for node pool $project_id\t$cluster_name\t$cluster_location\t$nodepool_details"
      fi
    done <<< "$(gcloud container node-pools describe "$nodepool_name" --cluster "$cluster_name" --zone "$cluster_location" --project "$project_id" --format="table[no-heading](config.serviceAccount)")"
  done <<< "$(gcloud container node-pools list --cluster "$cluster_name" --zone "$cluster_location" --project "$project_id" --format="table[no-heading](name)")"

}

# Function to add service accounts into the global array all_service_accounts for an Autopilot GKE cluster
# Autopilot cluster only has one node service account.
# $1: project_id
# $2: location
# $3: cluster_name
add_service_account_for_autopilot(){
  local project_id="$1"
  local cluster_location="$2"
  local cluster_name="$3"

  while read service_account; do
      if [[ "$service_account" == "default" ]]; then
        service_account="${project_number}-compute@developer.gserviceaccount.com"
      fi
      if [[ -n "$service_account" ]]; then
        printf "%-60s| %-40s| %-40s| %-10s| %-20s\n" $service_account $project_id  $cluster_name $cluster_location $nodepool_name
        add_service_account "${service_account}"
      else
        echo "cannot find service account" for cluster  "$project_id\t$cluster_name\t$cluster_location\t"
      fi
  done <<< "$(gcloud container clusters describe "$cluster_name" --location "$cluster_location" --project "$project_id" --format="table[no-heading](autoscaling.autoprovisioningNodePoolDefaults.serviceAccount)")"
}


# Function to check whether the cluster is an Autopilot cluster or not
# $1: project_id
# $2: location
# $3: cluster_name
is_autopilot_cluster() {
  local project_id="$1"
  local cluster_location="$2"
  local cluster_name="$3"
  autopilot=$(gcloud container clusters describe "$cluster_name" --location "$cluster_location" --format="table[no-heading](autopilot.enabled)")
  echo "$autopilot"
}


echo "--- 1. List all service accounts in all GKE node pools"
printf "%-60s| %-40s| %-40s| %-10s| %-20s\n" "service_account" "project_id" "cluster_name" "cluster_location" "nodepool_name"
while read cluster; do
  cluster_name=$(echo "$cluster" | awk '{print $1}')
  cluster_location=$(echo "$cluster" | awk '{print $2}')
  # how to find a cluster is a Standard cluster or an Autopilot cluster
  autopilot=$(is_autopilot_cluster "$project_id" "$cluster_location" "$cluster_name")
  if [[ "$autopilot" == "True" ]]; then
    add_service_account_for_autopilot "$project_id" "$cluster_location"  "$cluster_name"
  else
    add_service_accounts_for_standard "$project_id" "$cluster_location"  "$cluster_name"
  fi
done <<< "$(gcloud container clusters list --project "$project_id" --format="value(name,location)")"

echo "--- 2. Check if service accounts have permissions"
unique_service_accounts=($(echo "${all_service_accounts[@]}" | tr ' ' '\n' | sort -u | tr '\n' ' '))

echo "Service accounts: ${unique_service_accounts[@]}"
printf "%-60s| %-40s| %-40s| %-20s\n" "service_account" "has_logging_permission" "has_monitoring_permission" "has_performance_hpa_metric_write_permission"
for sa in "${unique_service_accounts[@]}"; do
  logging_permission=$(service_account_has_permission "$project_id" "$sa" "logging.logEntries.create")
  time_series_create_permission=$(service_account_has_permission "$project_id" "$sa" "monitoring.timeSeries.create")
  metric_descriptors_create_permission=$(service_account_has_permission "$project_id" "$sa" "monitoring.metricDescriptors.create")
  if [[ "$time_series_create_permission" == "No" || "$metric_descriptors_create_permission" == "No" ]]; then
    monitoring_permission="No"
  else
    monitoring_permission="Yes"
  fi
  performance_hpa_metric_write_permission=$(service_account_has_permission "$project_id" "$sa" "autoscaling.sites.writeMetrics")
  printf "%-60s| %-40s| %-40s| %-20s\n" $sa $logging_permission $monitoring_permission $performance_hpa_metric_write_permission

  if [[ "$logging_permission" == "No" || "$monitoring_permission" == "No" || "$performance_hpa_metric_write_permission" == "No" ]]; then
    sa_missing_permissions+=( ${sa} )
  fi
done

echo "--- 3. List all service accounts that don't have the above permissions"
if [[ "${#sa_missing_permissions[@]}" -gt 0 ]]; then
  printf "Grant roles/container.defaultNodeServiceAccount to the following service accounts: %s\n" "${sa_missing_permissions[@]}"
else
  echo "All service accounts have the above permissions"
fi
Verify that Cloud Logging write API quotas have not been reached

Confirm that you have not reached API write quotas for Cloud Logging.

  1. Go to the Quotas page in the Google Cloud console.

    Go to Quotas

  2. Filter the table by "Cloud Logging API".

  3. Confirm that you have not reached any of the quotas.

Debugging GKE logging issues with gcpdiag

If you are missing or getting incomplete logs from your GKE cluster, use the

gcpdiag

tool for troubleshooting.

gcpdiag is an open source tool. It is not an officially supported Google Cloud product. You can use the gcpdiag tool to help you identify and fix Google Cloud project issues. For more information, see the gcpdiag project on GitHub.

When logs from the GKE cluster are missing or incomplete, investigate potential causes by focusing on the following core configuration settings that are essential for proper logging functions:

Docker

You can run gcpdiag using a wrapper that starts gcpdiag in a Docker container. Docker or Podman must be installed.

  1. Copy and run the following command on your local workstation.
    curl https://gcpdiag.dev/gcpdiag.sh >gcpdiag && chmod +x gcpdiag
  2. Execute the gcpdiag command.
    ./gcpdiag runbook gke/logs \
        --parameter project_id=PROJECT_ID \
        --parameter name=GKE_NAME \
        --parameter location=LOCATION

View available parameters for this runbook.

Replace the following:

Useful flags:

For a list and description of all gcpdiag tool flags, see the gcpdiag usage instructions.

What's next

Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Last updated 2025-08-12 UTC.

[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Hard to understand","hardToUnderstand","thumb-down"],["Incorrect information or sample code","incorrectInformationOrSampleCode","thumb-down"],["Missing the information/samples I need","missingTheInformationSamplesINeed","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-12 UTC."],[],[]]


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