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
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---
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.