Merge pull request 'feat(shutdown): configure graceful node shutdown, and never scale a Delete-policy StatefulSet' (#71) from feat/graceful-cluster-shutdown into main
Reviewed-on: #71
This commit was merged in pull request #71.
This commit is contained in:
commit
83d3568150
7 files changed
+630
No files matched your search
@@ -0,0 +1,106 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
date: 2026-10-17
|
||||
branch: feat/graceful-cluster-shutdown
|
||||
title: "Graceful node shutdown was never configured, and scaling a StatefulSet deleted its PVC"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
## What changed
|
||||
|
||||
All three nodes had to be powered off to move them onto a UPS. There was **no procedure for it**:
|
||||
`infra/cluster.sh stop` is `virsh`-based and only ever applied to the decommissioned dev cluster, so
|
||||
the whole sequence was improvised live. Two defects came out of doing it.
|
||||
|
||||
**1. Kubelet graceful node shutdown was unconfigured on every prod node.** No `shutdownGracePeriod`
|
||||
anywhere in `infra/ansible/`, so `shutdown -h` stopped k3s, containerd went with it, and every pod
|
||||
was SIGKILLed where it stood — 9 CloudNativePG instances mid-checkpoint, the UniFi VM, and 25
|
||||
attached Longhorn volumes. `roles/k3s_server` now writes `kubelet-arg` into
|
||||
`/etc/rancher/k3s/config.yaml` with `shutdown-grace-period=90s` and
|
||||
`shutdown-grace-period-critical-pods=20s`.
|
||||
|
||||
The half that is easy to miss and silently defeats the other half: **graceful node shutdown is
|
||||
enforced by logind, not by the kubelet.** The kubelet holds an inhibitor *delay* lock and systemd
|
||||
waits at most `InhibitDelayMaxSec` — **default 5 seconds** — before proceeding regardless. A grace
|
||||
period above that cap is truncated with no error, so the feature looks configured and still
|
||||
hard-kills pods. The role now ships a `logind.conf.d` drop-in setting it to 120, and **asserts**
|
||||
`k3s_logind_inhibit_delay_max_sec >= k3s_kubelet_shutdown_grace_period` rather than documenting the
|
||||
relationship, because the failure is invisible.
|
||||
|
||||
**2. Scaling a StatefulSet to 0 DELETED its PVC and Longhorn volume.** `monitoring/loki` carries
|
||||
`persistentVolumeClaimRetentionPolicy: {whenDeleted: Delete, whenScaled: Delete}`, so the quiesce's
|
||||
`scale --replicas=0` destroyed `storage-loki-0` outright. Loki stores with `type: filesystem`, so
|
||||
that PVC was the only copy of its log data. This is the defect in this change set that actually
|
||||
destroyed something, and it was mine.
|
||||
|
||||
New `infra/maintenance/quiesce.sh` (`quiesce` | `resume` | `status`) encodes the sequence that
|
||||
worked, and **refuses to scale any StatefulSet whose `whenScaled` is `Delete`** — it leaves it
|
||||
running, accepts that its volume hard-detaches at poweroff, and prints which volumes to expect
|
||||
`degraded`. A rebuild is a vastly better outcome than a deletion. Workload discovery is computed
|
||||
from the live cluster (every Deployment/StatefulSet whose pods mount a PVC, Longhorn or TrueNAS NFS)
|
||||
rather than hardcoded, so a newly onboarded service is covered without anyone remembering to add it.
|
||||
|
||||
`runbooks/cluster-maintenance-shutdown.md` (new, registered in `runbooks/kustomization.yaml`) is the
|
||||
operator page: shutdown order, the TrueNAS-after-nodes constraint, power-on order, the
|
||||
un-hibernate-Postgres step Flux will not do for you, and a "what looks broken but is fine" section
|
||||
separating the `4/19`-Kustomizations-Ready cascade, the degraded-and-rebuilding volume and the
|
||||
self-recovering `keycloak-operator` from the one thing that genuinely needs a human (a stuck
|
||||
`oauth2-proxy` replica).
|
||||
|
||||
## What I verified
|
||||
|
||||
* **Graceful shutdown was genuinely absent**, not merely undocumented: `grep -rn
|
||||
'shutdownGracePeriod|graceful-node-shutdown'` over `infra/ansible/` returns nothing, and no
|
||||
`logind` or `InhibitDelay` setting exists anywhere in the tree.
|
||||
* **The whole shutdown/restart cycle was executed end to end on prod 2026-10-17** and the cluster
|
||||
came back: 3/3 nodes Ready with etcd `healthz` ok, 19/19 Flux Kustomizations Ready,
|
||||
`platform-config`'s `lastAppliedRevision` equal to the GitRepository artifact revision, all 3
|
||||
CNPG clusters `healthy` with primaries elected, the UniFi VM `Running`, PiHole resolving
|
||||
(`home.keithjackson.dev` → `192.168.2.20` via `192.168.2.23`), and the Gateway serving
|
||||
`200/200/401` for apex/gitea/plex.
|
||||
* **The PVC-deletion mechanism is confirmed, not inferred:** `kubectl get sts loki -o
|
||||
jsonpath={.spec.persistentVolumeClaimRetentionPolicy}` returns
|
||||
`{"whenDeleted":"Delete","whenScaled":"Delete"}`, the PVC was `NotFound` after the cycle, and the
|
||||
Longhorn volume count had gone 25 → 24.
|
||||
* **The damage was repaired and verified:** `scale sts loki --replicas=1` (restoring the replica
|
||||
count the chart declares) recreated `storage-loki-0` as a fresh 50Gi Bound PVC, `loki-0` reached
|
||||
`2/2 Running`, and the volume count returned to 25.
|
||||
* **The guard works against the live cluster**, tested both ways: `sts_deletes_pvc_on_scale
|
||||
monitoring loki` returns true (would be skipped) and `pihole pihole` returns false (safe to
|
||||
scale).
|
||||
* **The script's read-only paths run clean on prod:** `status` reports correctly, and the discovery
|
||||
function returns the 13 workloads currently holding a PVC.
|
||||
* `bash -n` clean; the two edited Ansible YAML files parse.
|
||||
|
||||
## What I did NOT verify
|
||||
|
||||
* **The kubelet change has NEVER BEEN APPLIED OR TESTED.** This is the significant gap. I did not
|
||||
run the role, did not restart k3s, and have **not** observed a node actually drain on
|
||||
`shutdown -h`. Everything about it is reasoning from kubelet/systemd semantics plus the measured
|
||||
absence of the setting. Applying it needs a **rolling** k3s restart (`serial: 1` — kube-vip keeps
|
||||
the API up, etcd holds at 2/3), which is an operator action (CLAUDE.md §5). **Verify by draining
|
||||
one node for real:** apply, then `shutdown -h now` on a single node and watch whether pods
|
||||
terminate gracefully instead of vanishing.
|
||||
* **Whether 90s/20s are the right numbers.** Chosen to comfortably cover a Postgres fast shutdown
|
||||
and a Longhorn flush; not measured against either. The budget is spent on every reboot, so if a
|
||||
node takes noticeably longer to go down, this is why.
|
||||
* **Whether k3s accepts `kubelet-arg` in `config.yaml` as written.** The file already carries
|
||||
`kube-apiserver-arg` as a list and `kubelet-arg` is the documented sibling, but I did not render
|
||||
or apply it, so a typo would surface only at k3s restart — and a bad `config.yaml` is exactly the
|
||||
kind of thing that makes k3s fail to come up. **Review this one before applying.**
|
||||
* **The `assert` task's `regex_replace` on the grace period** assumes a plain `90s`-style value; a
|
||||
value expressed as `1m30s` would parse to the nonsense integer `130`. Fine for the committed
|
||||
defaults, wrong if someone writes a compound duration.
|
||||
* **`resume`'s Flux-reconcile wait has never run**, and neither has `quiesce` as a script — the
|
||||
2026-10-17 cycle was done with the equivalent commands by hand, so the script encodes a sequence
|
||||
that worked but has not itself been executed end to end. Only `status` and the discovery and guard
|
||||
functions have run.
|
||||
* **Loki's lost log window is gone for good.** Up to 72h of logs (its `retention_period`), destroyed
|
||||
by my scale-down. Nothing recovers it; Velero's schedules cover the namespace but the PVC was
|
||||
deleted, not corrupted, and I did not attempt a restore because the data self-expires anyway.
|
||||
* **No other `whenScaled: Delete` StatefulSet was audited.** The guard now catches them generically,
|
||||
but I did not enumerate which other workloads carry the policy, so I cannot say loki was the only
|
||||
one at risk. The runbook gives the one-liner to list them.
|
||||
* **TrueNAS and the router are entirely outside this change.** TrueNAS is not in the Ansible
|
||||
inventory and refuses SSH, so its shutdown stays a web-UI step with no automation and no check.
|
||||
* **No runtime conformance.** `vars.CLUSTER_AVAILABLE` is still unset, so CI proves the L0/L1
|
||||
offline subset only.
|
||||
* I did not re-measure branch protection or runner state (CLAUDE.md §2b).
|
||||
Reference in new issue
Block a user