feat(cilium): roll the agents when cilium-config changes (merged config was silently inert)
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A merged Cilium config change did nothing, and everything reported success.
The Hubble flow exporter (#50, merged 2026-10-04) never took effect:

  HelmRelease cilium   Ready=True, "Helm upgrade succeeded ... cilium.v6"
  cilium-config        hubble-export-file-path: stdout  + the allowlist, PRESENT
  cilium agent pods    all three still PRE-MERGE, startTime 2026-10-04T07:11Z
  exported flow lines  0, 0, 0
  Flux                 every Kustomization Ready=True

Cause: the chart's rollOutCiliumPods defaults to false, so Helm rewrites the
ConfigMap and leaves the DaemonSet's pod template untouched -- and cilium-agent
reads that ConfigMap only at STARTUP. Merged, believed delivered, green
everywhere, doing nothing. The same class of failure this repo already guards
against elsewhere: a green signal over something that never ran.

Confirmed by contrast rather than reasoned: the cgroup fix (#42) DID apply --
both the DaemonSet and the running pod mount /sys/fs/cgroup -- because it changed
the POD TEMPLATE, which rolls the DaemonSet on its own. That also explains why
the agents are dated 2026-10-04T07:11Z: that was #42's rollout, and nothing has
rolled them since. The inertness is specific to ConfigMap-only changes.

Set in all three value files to hold the [parity] contract.

Cost, and it is the point: every future Cilium config change now rolls the
agents instead of waiting for a manual restart. Strictly more honest -- it
applies when merged or fails visibly -- but config edits become disruptive by
default. maxUnavailable: 1 bounds it to one node at a time. The lease-holding
node briefly loses the Gateway, PiHole-DNS and Plex VIPs as it cycles, so merge
at a quiet moment.

Merging this IS one rollout (the ConfigMap checksum annotation changes the pod
template) -- which is what finally activates the Hubble exporter.

UNVERIFIED: unreconciled; `filePath: stdout` still unproven and only answerable
after the agents restart (check for flow lines immediately); and the rollout's
actual impact on LAN DNS is unmeasured.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
This commit is contained in:
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 committed 2026-10-05 21:19:13 -05:00
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@@ -32,6 +32,15 @@ enableIPv4Masquerade: true
bpf:
masquerade: true
# [parity] flow observability / isolation audit
# [parity] roll the agents when cilium-config changes. The chart default (false) rewrites the
# ConfigMap but leaves the pod template alone, and cilium-agent only reads it at STARTUP — so a
# merged config change is SILENTLY INERT. Measured 2026-10-04..05: the Hubble exporter keys were
# live in cilium-config and the HelmRelease said UpgradeSucceeded, while all three agents were
# still pre-merge pods exporting nothing for over a day. Cost: config edits now roll the agents
# (one node at a time via maxUnavailable: 1), which can briefly blip the VIPs on the lease-holding
# node. Full rationale in helmrelease.yaml.
rollOutCiliumPods: true
hubble:
enabled: true
relay: