Containers promise isolation, predictability, and consistency, but under the hood, they can quietly betray you.

How? - Behind their sleek abstraction layer, there is a messy reality of overlay networks, namespace quirks, and hidden time drifts that mislead logs. These subtle misbehaviors lead to hours of wasted debugging and false assumptions about what’s “really” happening in production.

In this lightning talk, we’ll explore real debugging cases where containers lied — and engineers paid the price. You’ll see how an innocent-looking pod delay turned out to be a time drift between host and container, and how a DNS issue wasn’t Kubernetes’ fault at all, but a cgroup-level ghost.

We’ll unpack what really happens when the container abstraction breaks down — and how to peek beneath the layers to catch the truth before it catches you.

Key Takeaways:
- Containers abstract but also distort what’s really happening in your system.
- Learn quick mental models to debug time drift, network ghosts, and mount illusions.
- Gain 3 concrete debugging tips you can use the next time “everything looks fine” but isn’t.