# Hook-image-puller fails + user-placeholder stuck in pending

**URL:** <https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/hook-image-puller-fails-user-placeholder-stuck-in-pending/22379>\
**Category:** JupyterHub\
**Tags:** jupyterhub, help-wanted\
**Created:** [November 14, 2023, 8:43am UTC](https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/hook-image-puller-fails-user-placeholder-stuck-in-pending/22379 "2023-11-14T08:43:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Shira\_Maximov](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/user_avatar/discourse.jupyter.org/shira_maximov/32/10983_2.png) [@Shira\_Maximov](https://discourse.jupyter.org/u/Shira_Maximov)\
**Post date:** [November 14, 2023, 8:43am UTC](https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/hook-image-puller-fails-user-placeholder-stuck-in-pending/22379/1 "2023-11-14T08:43:14Z")

</div>

Hello everyone,

I’m using Jupyterhub in k8s cluster,  
We would like to optimize the time that the user are waiting for new pod,  
I’m struggling a bit with prePuller hook and with userPlaceholder:

1. prePuller configuration:

```auto
 prePuller:
    continuous:
      enabled: true
    hook:
      enabled: true
      serviceAccount:
        create: true

```

It seems the pod hook-image-awaiter has been created successfully however the logs indicates that it can’t perform a get request to the daemomst hook-image-puller:

```auto
2023/11/13 21:11:43 [DEBUG] GET https://kubernetes.default.svc:443/apis/apps/v1/namespaces/dev03/daemonsets/hook-image-puller: retrying in 10s (4 left)

```

I’ve checked that daemon set is configured:

```auto
 kubectl get daemonsets (base) ⎈ 
NAME DESIRED CURRENT READY UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE NODE SELECTOR AGE
continuous-image-puller 0 0 0 0 0 spotinst.io/node-lifecycle=od 34h
hook-image-puller 0 0 0 0 0 spotinst.io/node-lifecycle=od 11h

```

and also that the service account hook-image-awaiter was created.  
what could be the cause?

1. userPlaceholder configuration:

```auto
    userPlaceholder:
      # Specify three dummy user pods will be used as placeholders
      enabled: true
      replicas: 3
    userPods:
      nodeAffinity:
        matchNodePurpose: require

```

the pods are stuck in pending:  
with this error:

```auto
  Warning FailedScheduling 46s (x21 over 110m) default-scheduler (combined from similar events): 0/16 nodes are available: 16 node(s) didn't match Pod's node affinity/selector. preemption: 0/16 nodes are available: 16 Preemption is not helpful for scheduling.

```

also attaching the pod spec:

```auto
Priority: 500
Priority Class Name: medium-priority
Node: <none>
Labels: app=jupyterhub
                      component=user-placeholder
                      controller-revision-hash=user-placeholder-79d5467d7c
                      release=jupyterhub
                      statefulset.kubernetes.io/pod-name=user-placeholder-0
Annotations: kubernetes.io/psp: eks.privileged
Status: Pending
IP:
IPs: <none>
Controlled By: StatefulSet/user-placeholder
Containers:
  pause:
    Image: registry.k8s.io/pause:3.9
    Port: <none>
    Host Port: <none>
    Requests:
      memory: 1G
    Environment: <none>
    Mounts: <none>
Conditions:
  Type Status
  PodScheduled False
Volumes: <none>
QoS Class: Burstable
Node-Selectors: spotinst.io/node-lifecycle=od
Tolerations: hub.jupyter.org/dedicated=user:NoSchedule
                 hub.jupyter.org_dedicated=user:NoSchedule
                 node.kubernetes.io/not-ready:NoExecute op=Exists for 300s
                 node.kubernetes.io/unreachable:NoExecute op=Exists for 300s

```

Thanks!!