Configuration Defects in Kubernetes

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Zhang, Yue, Paul, Uchswas, d'Amorim, Marcelo, Rahman, Akond
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Zhang, Yue
Paul, Uchswas
d'Amorim, Marcelo
Rahman, Akond
author_facet Zhang, Yue
Paul, Uchswas
d'Amorim, Marcelo
Rahman, Akond
contents Kubernetes is a tool that facilitates rapid deployment of software. Unfortunately, configuring Kubernetes is prone to errors. Configuration defects are not uncommon and can result in serious consequences. This paper reports an empirical study about configuration defects in Kubernetes with the goal of helping practitioners detect and prevent these defects. We study 719 defects that we extract from 2,260 Kubernetes configuration scripts using open source repositories. Using qualitative analysis, we identify 15 categories of defects. We find 8 publicly available static analysis tools to be capable of detecting 8 of the 15 defect categories. We find that the highest precision and recall of those tools are for defects related to data fields. We develop a linter to detect two categories of defects that cause serious consequences, which none of the studied tools are able to detect. Our linter revealed 26 previously-unknown defects that have been confirmed by practitioners, 19 of which have already been fixed. We conclude our paper by providing recommendations on how defect detection and repair techniques can be used for Kubernetes configuration scripts. The datasets and source code used for the paper are publicly available online.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_05062
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Configuration Defects in Kubernetes
Zhang, Yue
Paul, Uchswas
d'Amorim, Marcelo
Rahman, Akond
Software Engineering
Kubernetes is a tool that facilitates rapid deployment of software. Unfortunately, configuring Kubernetes is prone to errors. Configuration defects are not uncommon and can result in serious consequences. This paper reports an empirical study about configuration defects in Kubernetes with the goal of helping practitioners detect and prevent these defects. We study 719 defects that we extract from 2,260 Kubernetes configuration scripts using open source repositories. Using qualitative analysis, we identify 15 categories of defects. We find 8 publicly available static analysis tools to be capable of detecting 8 of the 15 defect categories. We find that the highest precision and recall of those tools are for defects related to data fields. We develop a linter to detect two categories of defects that cause serious consequences, which none of the studied tools are able to detect. Our linter revealed 26 previously-unknown defects that have been confirmed by practitioners, 19 of which have already been fixed. We conclude our paper by providing recommendations on how defect detection and repair techniques can be used for Kubernetes configuration scripts. The datasets and source code used for the paper are publicly available online.
title Configuration Defects in Kubernetes
topic Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.05062