Change:
<ins> /* Copyright 2014 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License. */ package apiserver import ( "encoding/json" "fmt" "io/ioutil" "log" "net" "net/http" "strconv" "github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes/pkg/health" ) // TODO: this basic interface is duplicated in N places.  consolidate? type httpGet interface { Get(url string) (*http.Response, error) } type server struct { addr string port int } // validator is responsible for validating the cluster and serving type validator struct { // a list of servers to health check servers map[string]server client  httpGet } func (s *server) check(client httpGet) (health.Status, string, error) { resp, err := client.Get("http://" + net.JoinHostPort(s.addr, strconv.Itoa(s.port)) + "/healthz") if err != nil { return health.Unknown, "", err } defer resp.Body.Close() data, err := ioutil.ReadAll(resp.Body) if err != nil { return health.Unknown, string(data), err } if resp.StatusCode != http.StatusOK { return health.Unhealthy, string(data), fmt.Errorf("unhealthy http status code: %d (%s)", resp.StatusCode, resp.Status) } return health.Healthy, string(data), nil } type ServerStatus struct { Component  string        `json:"component,omitempty"` Health     string        `json:"health,omitempty"` HealthCode health.Status `json:"healthCode,omitempty"` Msg        string        `json:"msg,omitempty"` Err        string        `json:"err,omitempty"` } func (v *validator) ServeHTTP(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) { reply := []ServerStatus{} for name, server := range v.servers { status, msg, err := server.check(v.client) var errorMsg string if err != nil { errorMsg = err.Error() } else { errorMsg = "nil" } reply = append(reply, ServerStatus{name, status.String(), status, msg, errorMsg}) } data, err := json.Marshal(reply) log.Printf("FOO: %s", string(data)) if err != nil { w.WriteHeader(http.StatusInternalServerError) w.Write([]byte(err.Error())) return } w.WriteHeader(http.StatusOK) w.Write(data) } // NewValidator creates a validator for a set of servers. func NewValidator(servers map[string]string) (http.Handler, error) { result := map[string]server{} for name, value := range servers { host, port, err := net.SplitHostPort(value) if err != nil { return nil, fmt.Errorf("invalid server spec: %s (%v)", value, err) } val, err := strconv.Atoi(port) if err != nil { return nil, fmt.Errorf("invalid server spec: %s (%v)", port, err) } result[name] = server{host, val} } return &validator{ servers: result, client:  &http.Client{}, }, nil } func makeTestValidator(servers map[string]string, get httpGet) (http.Handler, error) { v, e := NewValidator(servers) if e == nil { v.(*validator).client = get } return v, e } </ins>

Discussion:
If the scheduler is not healthy, pods won't schedule and things will get stuck in pending. Right now, there is no user visible feedback (in logs or events or pod status) that indicates that this is true. We should really have at least some logging in the apiserver, and possibly more in-depth information. I'm thinking that we should add a /validatez handler to the apiserver that does a quick sanity check. Added bonus: we could rip out all of the scripted health checking in the startup scripts.
A simple status HTTP page would be useful, showing the health status of each system component. We should seriously think about self-hosting, too. It doesn't seem like it would be hard to run a couple scheduler replicas using master election, managed by a replication controller.
Yeah, I think system components should register themselves with apiserver.