Can not delete pods in Kubernetes

I did face same issue. Run command:

kubectl get deployment

you will get respective deployment to your pod. Copy it and then run command:

kubectl delete deployment xyz

then check. No new pods will be created.

The link provided by the op may be unavailable. See the update section

As you specified you created your dgraph server using this https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dgraph-io/dgraph/master/contrib/config/kubernetes/dgraph-single.yaml, So just use this one to delete the resources you created:

$ kubectl delete -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dgraph-io/dgraph/master/contrib/config/kubernetes/dgraph-single.yaml

Update

Basically, this is an explanation for the reason.

Kubernetes has some workloads (those contain PodTemplate in their manifest). These are:

• Pods
• Controllers (basically Pod controllers)
  • ReplicationController
  • ReplicaSet
  • Deployment
  • StatefulSet
  • DaemonSet
  • Job
  • CronJob

See, who controls whom:

• ReplicationController -> Pod(s)
• ReplicaSet -> Pod(s)
• Deployment -> ReplicaSet(s) -> Pod(s)
• StatefulSet -> Pod(s)
• DaemonSet -> Pod(s)
• Job -> Pod
• CronJob -> Job(s) -> Pod

a -> b means a creates and controls b and the value of field .metadata.ownerReference in b's manifest is the reference of a. For example,

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  ...
  ownerReferences:
  - apiVersion: apps/v1
    controller: true
    blockOwnerDeletion: true
    kind: ReplicaSet
    name: my-repset
    uid: d9607e19-f88f-11e6-a518-42010a800195
  ...

This way, deletion of the parent object will also delete the child object via garbase collection.

So, a's controller ensures that a's current status matches with a's spec. Say, if one deletes b, then b will be deleted. But a is still alive and a's controller sees that there is a difference between a's current status and a's spec. So a's controller recreates a new b obj to match with the a's spec.

The ops created a Deployment that created ReplicaSet that further created Pod(s). So here the soln was to delete the root obj which was the Deployment.

$ kubectl get deploy -n {namespace}

$ kubectl delete deploy {deployment name} -n {namespace}

Note Book

Another problem may arise during deletion is as follows: If there is any finalizer in the .metadata.finalizers[] section, then only after completing the task(s) performed by the associated controller, the deletion will be performed. If one wants to delete the object without performing the finalizer(s)' action(s), then he/she has to delete those finalizer(s) first. For example,

$ kubectl patch -n {namespace} deploy {deployment name} --patch '{"metadata":{"finalizers":[]}}'
$ kubectl delete -n {namespace} deploy {deployment name}