docs(auth): root-cause jackett's session loss; add the oauth2-proxy-session runbook

Reported as "GET works, PUT/POST to add indexers fail, reloading never helps,
and I am never re-prompted". Diagnosis lands here; the MANIFEST FIX DOES NOT,
deliberately -- see the blocker below.

ROOT CAUSE, measured from two pods' logs interleaved to the second:

  15:31:06  jackett  [AuthSuccess]
  15:31:29  radarr   "cookie signature not valid, removing session"
  15:31:32  jackett  "No valid authentication in request"   <- 3s later

Six oauth2-proxy instances (seven pods) emit the DEFAULT cookie name
`_oauth2_proxy` on `.home.keithjackson.dev` holding seven DIFFERENT
cookie-secrets (compared in-cluster by sha256; all distinct). `removing
session` is ClearSession, which expires the cookie on radarr's own zone-wide
--cookie-domain, so jackett's session is DELETED by a process in another
namespace, 26s after a clean login whose `expires` was 5 minutes out. 8 such
lines in radarr's log, 1 in jackett's, 0 elsewhere. It was never expiry and it
was never Jackett -- and it is why reloading does not help: the operator's
Radarr tab re-clears the cookie seconds after each new login.

Two contributing mechanisms, also measured:
  * session lifetime == Keycloak access-token lifetime, 300.000s exactly, with
    refresh_token:true on the same line and --cookie-refresh unset (default 0).
  * XHRs answered 302 not 401: oauth2-proxy's AJAX guard needs an exact
    `Accept: application/json`, which Jackett's jQuery does not send. On /api/
    paths: 33 x 302 vs 2 x 401. A browser following a 302 re-issues a POST as a
    GET and DROPS THE BODY -- 4 of 6 POSTs never reached Jackett at all.

WHY NO MANIFEST FIX HERE. apps/wave-0/jackett.yaml is a GENERATED GOLDEN. The
sidecar args come from one shared function, _oauth2_sidecar_container() in
catalog/render.py; catalog/jackett.yaml declares only auth.mode/auth.groups and
the auth schema is additionalProperties:false, so there is NO per-app override
hook. Hand-editing the rendered file is rejected by the gate exactly as
designed ("GOLDEN DRIFT ... render-golden: FAIL"). Changing the renderer
instead rewrites all five rendered apps -- measured:

  CHANGED: apps/wave-0/{jackett,pihole,qbittorrent}.yaml
  CHANGED: apps/wave-1/{radarr,sonarr}.yaml

and render-golden requires all five be regenerated in the same commit. Four of
them are owned by fix/oauth2-proxy-cookie-collision-fleet right now. The cookie
fix is ONE change, not five; it needs re-cutting as a single renderer commit
rather than two branches rewriting the same generated block.

Validated the intended argument list against the pinned image and the real
issuer before stopping: it printed back `name:_oauth2_proxy_jackett ...
domains:jackett.home.keithjackson.dev ... refresh:after 2m30s` and
`API route - Path: ^/api/`. Two corrections fell out of that: --api-route is
SINGULAR (--api-routes does not exist and the proxy refuses to start), and
--session-cookie-minimal is mutually exclusive with --cookie-refresh
("cookie_refresh > 0 requires oauth tokens in sessions"), so dropping
--pass-access-token does NOT shrink the cookie -- it is a least-privilege
change, not a size one.

Adds runbooks/oauth2-proxy-session.md: the four sidecar log lines that tell the
auth layers apart (including the upstream `-` that means the proxy answered a
request the app never saw), the cross-log collision diagnosis, and the
generated-golden warning with its blast radius. Registered in the
configMapGenerator AND runbooks/README.md so the URL resolves.

Jackett is NOT fixed by this commit and will keep losing its session to Radarr
until the renderer change ships.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
This commit is contained in:
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 committed 2026-09-30 12:47:42 -05:00
1 parent 0fbf544d5e
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@@ -0,0 +1,199 @@
---
date: 2026-09-30
branch: fix/jackett-oauth2-proxy-session
title: Jackett — radarr's oauth2-proxy deletes jackett's session cookie; the fix cannot be made per-app
---
## What changed
Reported as *"GET requests work, but most PUT/POST requests to add indexers fail. Reloading the page
never fixes it, and I am never re-prompted for login if it is a login issue."*
**This branch lands the diagnosis and a runbook. It does NOT land the manifest fix, and that is a
deliberate stop, not an omission** — see *The fix has one home and it is shared*, below.
Three mechanisms, all measured.
**1. Cookie collision — and on Jackett it is the live failure, not a latent one.** Six oauth2-proxy
instances (seven pods) emit oauth2-proxy's **default** cookie name `_oauth2_proxy` scoped to
`.home.keithjackson.dev` while holding seven **different** cookie-secrets. The ping-pong is in two
pods' own logs, interleaved to the second:
15:23:17 radarr [AuthSuccess] -> radarr writes _oauth2_proxy
15:23:44 jackett "cookie signature not valid, removing session" -> re-login #1
15:23:58 radarr "cookie signature not valid, removing session" -> radarr DELETES jackett's
15:27:17 jackett [AuthSuccess] -> re-login #2
15:27:59 radarr "cookie signature not valid, removing session"
15:31:06 jackett [AuthSuccess] -> re-login #3
15:31:29 radarr "cookie signature not valid, removing session" <- deletes it again
15:31:32 jackett "No valid authentication in request" <- 3 SECONDS later, no cookie
`removing session` is oauth2-proxy calling ClearSession, which expires the cookie on **its own**
`--cookie-domain` — the whole zone. So jackett's session is not merely overwritten, it is **deleted
by a process in another namespace**, 26 s after a clean login whose own `expires` was five minutes
out. That is the answer to the open question in the brief ("26 s is well inside the 5-minute window,
so plain expiry does not explain it"): it was never expiry, and it was never Jackett.
It also explains the half of the report that looked like user error. **Reloading genuinely does not
help**, because the operator's Radarr tab re-clears the cookie seconds after each new login.
**2. Session lifetime pinned to a 5-minute access token.** Measured from the sidecar's own
`[AuthSuccess]`: `created:15:31:06.391860254` / `expires:` + **300.000 s** exactly, with
`refresh_token:true` on the same line. `--cookie-refresh` is unset and its default is `0`
(disabled), so the proxy holds a refresh token it has no mandate to spend.
**3. XHRs answered with 302 instead of 401 — why none of it was visible.** oauth2-proxy's built-in
AJAX guard fires only on an **exact** `Accept: application/json`, which Jackett's jQuery does not
consistently send. Measured on `/api/` paths in this pod's log: **33 × 302 against 2 × 401**, and the
split runs straight through Jackett's own POSTs (`/api/v2.0/server/adminpassword` → 401,
`/api/v2.0/server/update` → 302). A 302 on an unauthenticated XHR is followed invisibly by the
browser, satisfied silently by the live Keycloak SSO session, and resolves with HTML where the
JavaScript expected JSON — no prompt, no error. On a write it is worse: a browser following a 302
re-issues a POST as a **GET and drops the body**, so the indexer configuration is discarded with
nothing logged as a failure anywhere.
### The fix has one home, and it is shared — this is the blocker
The brief assigned me `apps/wave-0/jackett.yaml` as exclusively mine, and assigned the other four
apps to a sibling branch. **That split is not implementable, and I found out by trying it.**
`apps/wave-0/jackett.yaml` is a **generated golden**. The sidecar's argument list is built by one
shared function, `_oauth2_sidecar_container()` in `catalog/render.py`. `catalog/jackett.yaml`
declares only `auth.mode` and `auth.groups`, and the `auth` schema is `additionalProperties: false`
— **there is no per-app override hook**. I wrote the fix into the rendered file first; the merge
gate rejected it exactly as designed:
[fail] GOLDEN DRIFT: apps/wave-0/jackett.yaml does not match the canonical render
[fail] stage render-golden: FAIL -> MERGE GATE: BLOCKED (rc 1)
So I made the change at its real source instead and **measured the blast radius** before committing
to it. A change confined to that one function rewrites the sidecar block in **all five** rendered
apps, and `render-golden` requires all five be regenerated in the same commit:
CHANGED: apps/wave-0/jackett.yaml
CHANGED: apps/wave-0/pihole.yaml
CHANGED: apps/wave-0/qbittorrent.yaml
CHANGED: apps/wave-1/radarr.yaml
CHANGED: apps/wave-1/sonarr.yaml
Four of those five are the files I was explicitly told not to touch, and all four are being edited
right now on `fix/oauth2-proxy-cookie-collision-fleet`. **The gate and the ownership boundary are in
direct contradiction**: I cannot fix Jackett's sidecar without regenerating four files another
branch owns, and two branches rewriting the same generated block across five files is precisely the
cross-branch conflict this repo's §7 exists to prevent.
I stopped rather than force it. **The cookie fix is one change, not five**, and it should be re-cut
as a single renderer commit on one branch. The intended content, validated below:
--cookie-name=_oauth2_proxy_{name} # per-app, derived
--cookie-domain={host} # host-scoped, derived
--whitelist-domain=.{ZONE} # unchanged: redirect targets, not cookie scope
--cookie-refresh=2m30s # half the measured 300 s token lifetime
(drop --pass-access-token, --set-xauthrequest)
`--api-route=^/api/` is the one flag I would **not** apply renderer-wide on this evidence: I
measured the 302/401 split on Jackett only, and PiHole's UI does not serve `/api/` at all. It needs
either a per-app hook or four more measurements.
**Crafty is unaffected by all of this** — its sidecar is hand-written in
`platform/crafty/deployment.yaml`, not rendered, which is why it could be and was fixed alone on
2026-09-29.
### What this branch does land
`runbooks/oauth2-proxy-session.md` — the four sidecar log lines that tell Keycloak, the sidecar and
the app's own login apart (including the upstream `-` field that means the proxy answered a request
the app never saw), the cookie-collision cross-log diagnosis, the 5-minute-session check, the
302-vs-401 trap, and the generated-golden warning with its measured blast radius. Registered in the
runbooks `configMapGenerator` **and** listed in `runbooks/README.md`, so the URL resolves rather
than the file merely existing.
## What I verified
- **The collision is the live failure.** `[stored_session.go:94] Error loading cookied session:
cookie signature not valid, removing session` — **1 occurrence in jackett's log (15:23:44), 8 in
radarr's** (15:22:49, 15:23:58, 15:27:59, **15:31:29**, 15:32:29 ×4), and **zero** in pihole,
qbittorrent, sonarr, crafty and both shared-proxy replicas. The 15:31:29 → 15:31:32 pair is the
operator's whole report.
- **Six instances / seven pods are in the collision set** — the brief said five; the shared
forward-auth proxy in namespace `oauth2-proxy` is the sixth and runs 2 replicas. Read from live
pod specs: jackett, pihole, qbittorrent, radarr, sonarr and `oauth2-proxy` all have **no**
`--cookie-name` argument and `--cookie-domain=.home.keithjackson.dev`. Only crafty is fixed.
- **All seven cookie-secrets differ.** Compared in-cluster by sha256, first 12 hex only, values
never printed: `d9c5…`/`0b3b…`/`b025…`/`bb6a…`/`25f4…`/`e679…`/`911a…`. So no two of these proxies
can read each other's cookie — the precondition for the eviction.
- **The 5-minute lifetime**, from four `[AuthSuccess]` lines: `expires − created = 300.000 s`, with
`refresh_token:true` and `groups:[platform-admins]`. Live args confirm `--cookie-refresh` absent.
- **The 302/401 split** on `/api/` paths in this pod's log: 33 × 302, 18 × 200, 2 × 401, 2 × 204.
- **4 of the 6 POSTs never reached Jackett** — the access log's upstream field is `-`, not `/`:
`adminpassword` → 401, `adminpassword` → 401, `server/update` → 302, `server/update` → 302. The
two that did reach it (`adminpassword`, `indexers/1337x/config`) carry the authenticated email.
- **The proposed argument list starts, against the pinned image and the real issuer.** Ran
`quay.io/oauth2-proxy/oauth2-proxy:v7.8.1` locally with the full proposed args; OIDC discovery
against `keycloak.home.keithjackson.dev` succeeded and it printed back its own reading:
`Cookie settings: name:_oauth2_proxy_jackett secure(https):true httponly:true expiry:168h0m0s
domains:jackett.home.keithjackson.dev path:/ samesite: refresh:after 2m30s` and
`API route - Path: ^/api/`.
- **`--api-route` is singular.** The brief specified `--api-routes`, which does not exist in v7.8.1;
the proxy would have refused to start. Read off `--help`.
- **`--session-cookie-minimal` is mutually exclusive with `--cookie-refresh`** — provoked, not
assumed: `invalid configuration: cookie_refresh > 0 requires oauth tokens in sessions.
session_cookie_minimal cannot be set`. This kills the brief's premise that dropping
`--pass-access-token` shrinks the cookie: only `--session-cookie-minimal` strips tokens from the
session, and it is unavailable while refresh is on. Dropping those two flags is justified on
**least privilege and inertness**, not size.
- **`--set-xauthrequest` is inert here**: HTTPRoute `jackett-9117` backendRef is
`Service/jackett port 4180`, there is no ext-authz attachment on the `shared` Gateway, so
`/oauth2/auth` is never called.
- **`apps/**` is generated and the fix cannot be scoped to one app** — both halves measured, not
inferred: the gate's `render-golden` stage rejected the hand-edit, and re-rendering after a
renderer-only change listed all five apps as changed (transcript above).
- **Gate:** exit code and stage list in the next section.
## What I did NOT verify
- **The operator's problem is NOT FIXED by this branch.** Only the diagnosis and the runbook land.
Jackett's sidecar is unchanged and will keep losing its session to Radarr until the renderer
change ships. **This is the single most important line in this entry.**
- **No browser round-trip.** Every mechanism is measured from logs and specs and the argument list
is proven to start, but nobody has added an indexer through the proposed configuration. The human
test is below, for whoever lands the renderer change.
- **Nothing was applied.** No `kubectl apply/edit/patch`, no `flux reconcile`. The running pod is
still `jackett-c5bfcbfb8-c75f9` (2/2 Running, 17 d, 0 restarts — unchanged by this session's
read-only probes). Note that when the fix does land, merging is what deploys, and it will restart
the pod (`strategy: Recreate` on an RWO Longhorn volume), briefly interrupting Radarr's and
Sonarr's direct `:9117` access.
- **Cookie size and chunking: UNMEASURED, and I will not claim either way.** I could not read a
`Set-Cookie` header without a browser. I found no `_oauth2_proxy_0`/`_1` chunk evidence and no
4 kB warning in 36,287 log lines — but I did **not** establish that v7.8.1 emits such a warning at
this log level, so that absence is not evidence. If sessions still misbehave after the fix lands,
this is the next thing to measure, with `--session-store-type=redis` as the escape hatch, since
`--session-cookie-minimal` is ruled out (above).
- **`--cookie-refresh=2m30s` has never executed a refresh here.** It depends on Keycloak accepting
the refresh token and on the realm's SSO Session Idle/Max, none of which I read (that needs admin
credentials). If Keycloak's *refresh* token is also short-lived, the five-minute logout persists
and the realm is where to look next.
- **`--api-route` is measured for Jackett only.** PiHole and qBittorrent were not measured, and
PiHole's UI does not serve `/api/`. Do not apply it renderer-wide on my evidence.
- **The four sibling apps still collide with each other** regardless of what happens to Jackett.
The same operator report should be expected from any of pihole / qbittorrent / radarr / sonarr.
- **L2/L3 conformance did not run** (`CLUSTER_AVAILABLE` unset), so nothing about runtime behaviour
is certified by the gate.
- **The runbook's commands were not all executed verbatim.** The log-reading ones I ran; the
per-namespace `for` loops are edited from the scripted forms I actually used.
### The human test — for whoever lands the renderer fix
After it merges and the pod rolls (watch for a **new** pod name at 2/2):
1. **Sign in** at `https://jackett.home.keithjackson.dev/UI/Dashboard`.
2. **Open Radarr in a second tab** and sign in there too. **This is the step that breaks Jackett
today** — it is the 15:31:29 line. Return to the Jackett tab.
3. **Add an indexer** — *+ Add indexer*, pick one, *Configure*, *Okay*. It must save.
4. **Wait six minutes on the open dashboard, then save another.** That is the `--cookie-refresh`
test; the session currently dies at five.
5. **If something does still fail, it must now fail LOUDLY** — DevTools → Network, a broken `/api/`
call shows **401**, not a 302 followed by HTML. A silent success-looking no-op means the change
did not take; check the running pod's args before assuming anything else.
6. **A plain page reload must still sign you in silently** (`/UI/Dashboard` is outside `^/api/`).
A 401 page on reload means the regex is too broad — that is a regression.
+8
View File
@@ -115,6 +115,14 @@ Each affected runbook says so on its own page and gives the by-hand equivalent.
plex.tv/claim — so it is a timed sequence, scripted as `infra/plex/claim-ship.sh`:
token → `sops` → PR → gate → merge → **forced** `flux reconcile` → pod roll (~2m45s measured).
Includes why a changed Secret does not restart anything, and why an expired token is harmless.
- **`oauth2-proxy-session`** — a gated UI loads but its saves quietly do nothing, and you are never
re-prompted to log in. Tells the three stacked auth layers apart from the sidecar's own access log
(the four lines that matter, including the upstream `-` that means the proxy answered a request the
app never saw). Covers the cookie collision between per-app sidecars sharing the default
`_oauth2_proxy` name on `.home.keithjackson.dev` — which deletes sessions belonging to apps in
*other* namespaces and is only legible with two logs side by side — the 5-minute access-token
session with no `--cookie-refresh`, and why an XHR answered with a 302 instead of a 401 loses a
POST body silently.
- **`crafty-admin-credential`** — you signed into Keycloak and Crafty *still* asks for a password.
Expected: Crafty 4 has no OIDC, so its own local login sits behind the oauth2-proxy gate as a second
factor. The page tells the two layers apart from the sidecar log, and explains that the bootstrap
+5
View File
@@ -85,6 +85,11 @@ configMapGenerator:
- node-io=node-io.md
- node-memory=node-memory.md
- node-memory-swap=node-memory-swap.md
# Operator procedure, not alert-linked. Reading the per-app oauth2-proxy sidecar log to tell
# Keycloak, the sidecar and the app's own login apart. Cookie collision between two sidecars
# presents as random session loss in ONE app's log and is only legible with both side by side,
# so the page has to be reachable at 3am without going looking for it in git.
- oauth2-proxy-session=oauth2-proxy-session.md
# Operator procedure, not an alert page (no alert links to it — the
# alert-runbooks-resolvable check treats that as advisory). It is served
# because the plex.tv claim window is short and is not a thing to go looking
+168
View File
@@ -0,0 +1,168 @@
# oauth2-proxy-session — telling the auth layers apart from the sidecar log
**Not alert-driven.** This is an operator procedure for the per-app oauth2-proxy sidecars
(`jackett`, `pihole`, `qbittorrent`, `radarr`, `sonarr`, `crafty`) and the shared forward-auth
proxy in namespace `oauth2-proxy`. Use it when a gated UI behaves as though you are signed in and
signed out at the same time: the page loads, but its buttons and saves quietly do nothing.
> The sidecar log contains **email addresses, session UUIDs and full callback URLs including an
> OAuth `code`**. Read it, do not paste it. (Repo rule §6: secrets never enter a transcript.)
## What this means here
Every gated app on `home.keithjackson.dev` has **at least two** independent authentications
stacked on it, and the symptom rarely names the one that refused:
1. **Keycloak** — the `homelab` realm issues the token. Failures here are visible: you see a login
form, or an error page from Keycloak's own hostname.
2. **The oauth2-proxy sidecar** — validates the session cookie and the group claim
(`media-users` / `platform-admins`). **This is the layer that fails silently**, and the rest of
this page is about reading it.
3. **The app's own login**, where it has one — Crafty and Radarr/Sonarr each present a local login
*behind* the Keycloak gate. See `runbooks/crafty-admin-credential.md` for that layer.
The sidecar's access log distinguishes all three, if you know the four lines to look for. Get it:
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c 'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n jackett logs \
-l app.kubernetes.io/name=jackett -c oauth2-proxy --tail=-1'
Substitute the namespace and label for the app you are chasing. Always pass `--context k3s-prod`:
`dev.sh` merges both clusters and picks a current-context **per invocation**, and that default has
already changed once. Do not run two `dev.sh` invocations at the same time.
### The four lines, and what each one means
| Log line | What actually happened | Which layer |
|---|---|---|
| `[AuthSuccess] Authenticated via OAuth2: Session{... groups:[...]}` | Keycloak issued a token and the proxy accepted it. **The IdP is fine.** | Keycloak ✔ |
| `[oauthproxy.go:1026] No valid authentication in request. Initiating login.` | **No session cookie was presented at all.** Either you never had one, or something *deleted* it — see below. | sidecar |
| `[stored_session.go:94] Error loading cookied session: cookie signature not valid, removing session` | A cookie **of the right name** arrived that this proxy **could not decrypt**. Almost always a *different* proxy's cookie. Note `removing session`: this proxy then **deletes** it. | sidecar, cookie collision |
| an upstream path of `-` instead of `/` in an access-log line | the **proxy answered the request itself**; it never reached the app. Compare `POST - "/api/..."` against `POST / "/api/..."`. | sidecar |
That last column is the one people miss. The upstream field sits between the method and the quoted
path. `-` means the proxy handled it (a redirect, a 401, its own `/oauth2/*` endpoints); `/` means
it was proxied to the app. Count them:
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c 'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n jackett logs \
-l app.kubernetes.io/name=jackett -c oauth2-proxy --tail=-1 \
| grep -v "\"/ping\"" | grep -E " (POST|PUT|DELETE) " | cut -c1-140'
If your writes show `-`, the app never saw them. On 2026-09-30, **4 of the 6 POSTs** in jackett's
log had `-`.
## First commands
**1. Did Keycloak ever succeed?** No `AuthSuccess` at all means this is not a cookie problem —
go to `runbooks/keycloak-down.md` or `runbooks/keycloak-client-secrets.md`.
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c 'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n <ns> logs \
-l app.kubernetes.io/name=<app> -c oauth2-proxy --tail=-1 | grep -c AuthSuccess'
**2. How long does a session last?** Subtract `created` from `expires` on an `AuthSuccess` line.
If it is exactly **5m**, the session's lifetime is Keycloak's access-token lifetime and the proxy
is not refreshing it:
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c 'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n <ns> logs \
-l app.kubernetes.io/name=<app> -c oauth2-proxy --tail=-1 \
| grep AuthSuccess | tail -1 | grep -o "created:[^ ]* [^ ]*\|expires:[^ ]* [^ ]*"'
The same line says `refresh_token:true` — the proxy is *holding* a refresh token. It will only
spend it if `--cookie-refresh` is set; the default is `0`, meaning disabled.
**3. Is this a cookie collision?** Two checks, and you want both.
*Names and scopes* — every instance that emits the default name `_oauth2_proxy` on the shared
`.home.keithjackson.dev` domain is in the collision set with every other one:
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c 'kubectl --context k3s-prod get pods -A -o json \
| grep -E "cookie-name|cookie-domain"'
An instance with **no** `--cookie-name` argument is using the default. That is the failure — the
flag being absent, not wrong.
*The smoking gun* — search **every** proxy, not just the one you are debugging, for the removal
line, and put the timestamps next to each other:
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c 'for ns in jackett pihole qbittorrent radarr sonarr crafty; do \
echo "== $ns"; kubectl --context k3s-prod -n $ns logs -l app.kubernetes.io/name=$ns \
-c oauth2-proxy --tail=-1 2>/dev/null | grep stored_session; done'
**4. Do the cookie-secrets actually differ?** They should — but confirm the collision is between
instances that genuinely cannot read each other. Compare **hashes**, never values:
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c 'for ns in jackett pihole qbittorrent radarr sonarr crafty; do \
printf "%s " "$ns"; kubectl --context k3s-prod -n $ns get secret $ns-oauth2-proxy \
-o jsonpath="{.data.cookie-secret}" | sha256sum | cut -c1-12; done'
Never print `.data` or `.stringData` itself. A password has been leaked into a transcript here
before.
## Likely causes, most likely first
1. **Cookie collision between two per-app proxies.** Several instances emit the default
`_oauth2_proxy` on `.home.keithjackson.dev` with different `cookie-secret`s. Whoever
authenticates last overwrites the rest; the losers log `cookie signature not valid, removing
session` and — because `removing session` clears the cookie on *their* `--cookie-domain`, which
is the whole zone — **delete a session belonging to an app in another namespace**. The victim
then logs `No valid authentication` with no cookie at all, seconds after a clean login, while
its own `expires` is still minutes away. **Read both logs side by side; one app's log alone
makes this look like random session loss.** Fix: a unique `--cookie-name` and a host-scoped
`--cookie-domain` on the per-app sidecar. The shared forward-auth proxy keeps the zone-wide
scope — cross-host auth is its job.
2. **Session pinned to a 5-minute access token with no refresh.** `--cookie-refresh` unset means
the proxy never spends the refresh token it holds, so the session expires with the access token.
Set it to about half the measured token lifetime.
3. **An XHR got a 302 instead of a 401.** The app's JavaScript follows the redirect invisibly, the
live Keycloak SSO session satisfies it without a prompt, and the XHR resolves with **HTML where
it expected JSON**. Nothing is logged as an error and the operator is never re-prompted — this
is what "it just doesn't save, and reloading doesn't help" looks like. Worse on a write: a
browser following a 302 re-issues a POST as a GET and **drops the body**, so the change is
discarded silently. oauth2-proxy's built-in AJAX guard only fires on an exact
`Accept: application/json`, which most app JavaScript does not send; make it deterministic with
`--api-route=<regex>` (**singular** — `--api-routes` does not exist and the proxy refuses to
start). Keep browser-navigable paths *out* of the regex so a plain page load still signs you in.
4. **Group membership.** An `AuthSuccess` followed by `403` is the `--allowed-group` gate, not a
session problem. Check the `groups:[...]` field on the `AuthSuccess` line.
5. **The app's own second login.** Crafty, Radarr and Sonarr each have one. `AuthSuccess` followed
by the app's own `/login` page is layer 3, not layer 2.
## When to escalate or stop
- **Stop before you `kubectl edit`/`patch`/`apply` anything.** Flux reconciles `main`; a
hand-applied flag is drift that the next reconcile reverts or, worse, adopts. Argument changes
go through a branch and a PR. Reading logs is always safe; changing the Deployment is not an
agent action.
- **Do not hand-edit `apps/**/<app>.yaml` — those files are GENERATED.** The five per-app sidecars
(jackett, pihole, qbittorrent, radarr, sonarr) get their argument list from one shared function,
`_oauth2_sidecar_container()` in `catalog/render.py`; `catalog/<app>.yaml` declares only
`auth.mode` and `auth.groups`, and the `auth` schema is `additionalProperties: false`, so there
is **no per-app override hook**. A hand-edit to the rendered file is caught by the merge gate's
`render-golden` stage ("GOLDEN DRIFT ... does not match the canonical render") and would be
erased by the next render anyway. Change the renderer, then regenerate:
python3 catalog/render.py --all catalog -o apps --wave-layout --no-image-automation
**Budget for the blast radius**: because the function is shared, any change to it rewrites the
sidecar block in **all five** rendered apps, and the gate requires all five be regenerated in
the same commit. There is no way to change one app's sidecar arguments alone. Measured
2026-09-30. Coordinate before starting — this is a single change, not five.
- **Crafty is the exception** and is not rendered from the catalog: its sidecar is hand-written in
`platform/crafty/deployment.yaml`, so it can be, and was, fixed independently.
- **Validate an argument change before you open the PR**, not after. The pinned image will tell
you what it understood, without touching the cluster:
podman run --rm quay.io/oauth2-proxy/oauth2-proxy:v7.8.1 --help
Running it with your full proposed argument list prints a `Cookie settings:` line and an
`API route - Path:` line back at you, and rejects mutually exclusive flags outright
(`--session-cookie-minimal` with `--cookie-refresh`, for one). A flag typo here is a CrashLoop
on a service you have just told someone is fixed.
- **Do not rotate a `cookie-secret` to "clear" a bad session.** It signs every live session out of
that app and does nothing about the collision, which is caused by the *names* matching, not the
secrets differing.
- **Escalate to Keycloak** (`runbooks/keycloak-down.md`, `runbooks/keycloak-client-secrets.md`) if
there is no `AuthSuccess` in any proxy's log — that is an IdP or client-secret problem and no
cookie flag will help.
- **Hand off rather than guess** if you see `cookie signature not valid` on a proxy that already
has a unique `--cookie-name`. That combination should not occur; it means something is writing
that name which is not in this inventory. Record what you measured.