The Problem

When working with Kubernetes Ingress, we encountered a frustrating issue:
our services were returning 404 errors even though the backend pods were running fine.

After debugging, we discovered two common causes:

• ❌ Host rules misconfigured – the incoming requests didn’t match any defined host.
• ❌ TLS secret incorrectly set – SSL termination was failing because the wrong secret was referenced.

This led to Ingress not routing traffic correctly, making the application completely inaccessible.

The Solution

The fix was to update the Ingress manifest with correct host and TLS configurations.

Corrected Ingress YAML

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1 
kind: Ingress 
metadata: 
  name: my-app-ingress 
  annotations: 
    kubernetes.io/ingress.class: nginx 
spec: 
  tls: 
    - hosts: 
        - myapp.example.com 
      secretName: myapp-tls-secret 
  rules: 
    - host: myapp.example.com 
      http: 
        paths: 
          - path: / 
            pathType: Prefix 
            backend: 
              service:
                name: my-app-service 
                port: 
                  number: 80 

✅ Key Fixes:

• The host field (myapp.example.com) matches the actual domain.
• The tls.secretName points to the correct TLS secret (myapp-tls-secret).
• The service.name and port values match the backend service.

Debugging Kubernetes Ingress 404 Errors

If you run into Ingress routing issues, here are some helpful commands:

# Check Ingress details 
kubectl describe ingress my-app-ingress 

# Verify TLS secret exists 
kubectl get secret myapp-tls-secret -n default 

# Check Ingress Controller logs (example: NGINX) 
kubectl logs -n ingress-nginx deploy/ingress-nginx-controller 

Key Takeaways

• Always confirm your Ingress host rules align with the domain you’re using.
• Double-check that your TLS secret exists and is referenced properly.
• Use kubectl describe ingress to debug Ingress 404 errors quickly.
• YAML misconfigurations are the #1 cause of Ingress routing issues.

By fixing the TLS secret misconfiguration and aligning the host rules, we resolved the 404 error in Kubernetes Ingress and restored traffic routing to the backend service.

If you face Ingress issues in Kubernetes, always start by reviewing:
✅ Hosts
✅ TLS secrets
✅ Service mappings

These small changes can save hours of troubleshooting and keep your deployments smooth.

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