CKA Troubleshooting Practice Question
Which command shows the logs of a pod that has crashed and restarted?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
kubectl logs pod-name --previous
kubectl logs --previous shows logs from the previous container instance.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
kubectl logs pod-name --previous
Why this is correct
The --previous flag retrieves log output from the previous terminated container instance. After a pod crashes and the container restarts, the newly started container starts with a fresh log file, so only --previous exposes the output from the failed run that triggered the restart. This is the standard way to diagnose why a container exited.
- ✗
kubectl logs pod-name
Why it's wrong here
Without --previous, kubectl logs pod-name displays only the logs from the currently running container instance. If the container has already crashed and been restarted, the original log output is no longer attached to the current container, so this command typically returns empty or only the short-lived new run's logs, making it insufficient for crash diagnosis.
- ✗
kubectl logs pod-name -c container-name
Why it's wrong here
The -c container-name flag lets you target logs from a specific container in a multi-container pod, but it does not change the underlying log source. It still reads the current container's live log stream; for a crashed and restarted container, you must combine -c with --previous to retrieve the old log output. Thus this command alone doesn't show the pre-crash logs.
- ✗
kubectl describe pod pod-name
Why it's wrong here
kubectl describe pod pod-name displays pod metadata, status, events, restart count, and last container termination reason, but it never outputs the actual content of container logs. It can tell you that the container has restarted (e.g., CrashLoopBackOff) and why the last termination occurred, but the log lines themselves are only accessible via kubectl logs. Therefore it is not a log-inspection command.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Key term
kubectl Command Reference
kubectl is the command-line tool used to interact with and manage Kubernetes clusters by sending commands to the Kubernetes API.
Key term
Log Analysis
Log analysis is the process of reviewing and interpreting system-generated records to understand what happened in an application or infrastructure.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CKA practice question is part of Courseiva's free CNCF certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CKA exam.