# Percona postgresql operator frequent crashing due to leader election failure

**URL:** <https://forums.percona.com/t/percona-postgresql-operator-frequent-crashing-due-to-leader-election-failure/39892>\
**Category:** Percona Operator for PostgreSQL\
**Tags:** percona, postgresql\
**Created:** [December 15, 2025, 5:00pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/percona-postgresql-operator-frequent-crashing-due-to-leader-election-failure/39892 "2025-12-15T17:00:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![vasanthnataraj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/ce7236/32.png) [@vasanthnataraj](https://forums.percona.com/u/vasanthnataraj)\
**Post date:** [December 15, 2025, 5:00pm UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/percona-postgresql-operator-frequent-crashing-due-to-leader-election-failure/39892/1 "2025-12-15T17:00:41Z")

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## Description:

The Percona PostgreSQL operator is crashing due to **leader election failure** - it’s unable to communicate with the Kubernetes API server to maintain its leadership lease. if i try to change the operator lease duration time , renewal time or , retry i am unable to change it. Also i am using one replica of my operator i do not need a leader election and there is no way to disable it either, chruch data pgo has a way to do this bu setting **PGO\_CONTROLLER\_LEASE\_NAME to empty**

Steps to Reproduce:

During cluster node autoscaling up when the Kubernetes API server throttles the postgresql operator crashes i am using percona postgresql operator 2.8.0 . when the operator continiously restarts since the lease is not renewed it crashes and gives the below error and crashes frequently Version:

percona postgresql 2.8.0

## Logs:

..E1122 19:58:05.112391 Failed to update lock optimistically:Put “[https://10.43.0.1:443/apis/coordination.k8s.io/v1/namespaces/default/leases/08db3feb.percona.com?timeout=5s”:net/http:](https://10.43.0.1:443/apis/coordination.k8s.io/v1/namespaces/default/leases/08db3feb.percona.com?timeout=5s%E2%80%9D:net/http:) request canceled (Client.Timeout exceeded while awaiting headers)

E1122 19:58:10.112084 error retrieving resource lock default/08db3feb.percona.com:Get “[https://10.43.0.1:443/apis/coordination.k8s.io/v1/namespaces/default/leases/08db3feb.percona.com?timeout=5s”:context](https://10.43.0.1:443/apis/coordination.k8s.io/v1/namespaces/default/leases/08db3feb.percona.com?timeout=5s%E2%80%9D:context) deadline exceeded

panic: leader election lost.

## Expected Result:

No restart should occur or it need to retry or give a way to change lease retry logic or allow to change lease renewal duration. it would be more helpful need a way to turn of leader election and lease like crunchy data pgo

## Actual Result:

Frequent crashing

## Additional Information:

kubernetes version 1.34.1-k3s1

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Slava\_Sarzhan](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forums.percona.com/slava_sarzhan/32/3196_2.png) [@Slava\_Sarzhan](https://forums.percona.com/u/Slava_Sarzhan)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 11:21am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/percona-postgresql-operator-frequent-crashing-due-to-leader-election-failure/39892/2 "2025-12-16T11:21:52Z")

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Hi @vasanthnataraj , I agree that we need to have a more flexible configuration for the **leader election** process for our operators. We need to make a possible to configure these options by users:

```auto
LeaseDuration: 60 * time.Second,
RenewDeadline: 40 * time.Second,
RetryPeriod: 10 * time.Second,

```

I will create a task to add the improvement. Thanks.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Slava\_Sarzhan](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forums.percona.com/slava_sarzhan/32/3196_2.png) [@Slava\_Sarzhan](https://forums.percona.com/u/Slava_Sarzhan)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 11:30am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/percona-postgresql-operator-frequent-crashing-due-to-leader-election-failure/39892/3 "2025-12-16T11:30:42Z")

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> [@vasanthnataraj](#):
>
> leader election

The task number is [Jira](https://perconadev.atlassian.net/browse/K8SPG-915)