Kubernetes 101 - Part5 - Removing namespaces stuck in terminating state

Namespaces getting stuck at terminating state is one of the common issues I have seen while working with K8s. Here is an example namespace in terminating state and you can see there are no resources under it. In this case we are removing this namespace by setting the finalizers to null.

% kg ns rohitgu-intelligence-cluster-6
NAME                             STATUS        AGE
rohitgu-intelligence-cluster-6   Terminating   188d

% kg pods,tkc,all,cluster-api -n rohitgu-intelligence-cluster-6
No resources found in rohitgu-intelligence-cluster-6 namespace.

% kg ns rohitgu-intelligence-cluster-6 -o json > rohitgu-intelligence-cluster-6-json

% jq '.spec.finalizers = [] | .metadata.finalizers = []' rohitgu-intelligence-cluster-6-json > rohitgu-intelligence-cluster-6-json-nofinalizer

% cat rohitgu-intelligence-cluster-6-json-nofinalizer
{
  "apiVersion": "v1",
  "kind": "Namespace",
  "metadata": {
    "annotations": {
      "calaxxxxx.xxxx.com/ccsrole-created": "true",
      "calaxxxxx.xxxx.com/owner": "rohitgu",
      "calaxxxxx.xxxx.com/user-namespace": "rohitgu",
      "ls_id-0": "e28442b5-ace0-4e20-b5a0-c32bc72427d9",
      "ncp/extpoolid": "domain-c1034:02cde809-99d1-423e-aac9-014889740308-ippool-10-186-120-1-10-186-123-254",
      "ncp/router_id": "t1_87d44fc8-ac60-441a-8e35-509ff31a4eba_rtr",
      "ncp/snat_ip": "10.186.120.40",
      "ncp/subnet-0": "172.29.1.144/28",
      "vmware-system-resource-pool": "resgroup-663809",
      "vmware-system-vm-folder": "group-v663810"
    },
    "creationTimestamp": "2021-08-26T09:11:39Z",
    "deletionTimestamp": "2022-03-02T07:16:27Z",
    "labels": {
      "kubernetes.io/metadata.name": "rohitgu-intelligence-cluster-6",
      "vSphereClusterID": "domain-c1034"
    },
    "name": "rohitgu-intelligence-cluster-6",
    "resourceVersion": "1133900371",
    "selfLink": "/api/v1/namespaces/rohitgu-intelligence-cluster-6",
    "uid": "87d44fc8-ac60-441a-8e35-509ff31a4eba",
    "finalizers": []
  },
  "spec": {
    "finalizers": []
  },
  "status": {
    "conditions": [
      {
        "lastTransitionTime": "2022-03-02T07:16:32Z",
        "message": "Discovery failed for some groups, 1 failing: unable to retrieve the complete list of server APIs: data.packaging.carvel.dev/v1alpha1: the server is currently unable to handle the request",
        "reason": "DiscoveryFailed",
        "status": "True",
        "type": "NamespaceDeletionDiscoveryFailure"
      },
      {
        "lastTransitionTime": "2022-03-02T07:16:56Z",
        "message": "All legacy kube types successfully parsed",
        "reason": "ParsedGroupVersions",
        "status": "False",
        "type": "NamespaceDeletionGroupVersionParsingFailure"
      },
      {
        "lastTransitionTime": "2022-03-02T07:16:56Z",
        "message": "All content successfully deleted, may be waiting on finalization",
        "reason": "ContentDeleted",
        "status": "False",
        "type": "NamespaceDeletionContentFailure"
      },
      {
        "lastTransitionTime": "2022-03-02T07:23:22Z",
        "message": "All content successfully removed",
        "reason": "ContentRemoved",
        "status": "False",
        "type": "NamespaceContentRemaining"
      },
      {
        "lastTransitionTime": "2022-03-02T07:23:22Z",
        "message": "All content-preserving finalizers finished",
        "reason": "ContentHasNoFinalizers",
        "status": "False",
        "type": "NamespaceFinalizersRemaining"
      }
    ],
    "phase": "Terminating"
  }
}

% kubectl replace --raw "/api/v1/namespaces/rohitgu-intelligence-cluster-6/finalize" -f rohitgu-intelligence-cluster-6-json-nofinalizer

% kg ns rohitgu-intelligence-cluster-6
Error from server (NotFound): namespaces "rohitgu-intelligence-cluster-6" not found

Hope it was useful. Cheers!