Both ServiceDefinitions guarded their Keycloak OIDC registration with an UNESCAPED
braced expansion:
if [ -z "${GITEA_OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET:-}" ]; then # gitea
if [ -z "${NEXTCLOUD_OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET:-}" ]; then # nextcloud, then exit 0
apps-wave-0/1 both declare postBuild.substituteFrom: cluster-vars, and neither name is a
cluster-vars key — so Flux's envsubst substituted them away AT RECONCILE TIME, long
before the container ever ran. Verified in the LIVE cluster: the deployed Deployments
literally contain
if [ -z "" ]; then
which is always true. The entire OIDC registration block has been skipped on EVERY boot
of both apps.
WHY NOBODY NOTICED: both apps DO have the provider registered — `gitea admin auth list`
shows keycloak/OAuth2/true and `occ user_oidc:provider` shows the keycloak provider.
Those live in each app's own database, persisted from an earlier successful registration.
SSO works today and DECISIONS-LOG is not wrong. But the idempotent re-registration is
dead, so any PVC rebuild, DB restore, or fresh cluster build comes up with NO OIDC and
only the break-glass local admin. A PROD BUILD FROM THIS REPO WOULD SILENTLY HAVE NO SSO
on gitea or nextcloud.
The irony: the surrounding code was hardened twice — see its own comments about a "silent
first-boot RACE", the verify-then-retry loops, the marker files. All of that hardening was
unreachable, because the guard above it always evaluated true.
Not a regression from the recent R-ENV-02 tokenization — introduced 2026-08-27 (8738871).
FIXED AT THE RIGHT SEAM: apps/wave-0/gitea.yaml and apps/wave-1/nextcloud.yaml are
RENDER-GENERATED, so the fix is in catalog/*.yaml and the goldens are regenerated.
Escaped to $${...}, the convention documented in clusters/base/apps-vms.yaml. Post-envsubst
the container now receives the intended `${VAR:-}` instead of `""`.
STRICT MODE WOULD NEVER HAVE CAUGHT THIS. Flux deliberately exempts default-providing
operators (-, :-, +, :+, =, :=, ?, :?) from StrictPostBuildSubstitutions, because they
"intentionally handle the unset case". So a targeted check was required.
MADE UN-REPEATABLE IN THE RENDERER: catalog/render.py gains a substitution-safety section
wired into emit(), so every render path refuses to emit a manifest containing a braced
expansion that is not exactly ${KNOWN_KEY} for a key read LIVE from cluster-vars (no
hardcoded copy to drift; unreadable => empty set => fail-closed). Dollar-runs are counted
properly ($$ is a literal $ to envsubst, so odd runs are flagged and even runs are not),
and indexed forms get their own hard-error message. Nine new --selftest assertions,
including the exact regression. Proven to bite: rendering the pre-fix catalog files from
HEAD now exits 1 with the precise diagnosis.
Sweep: the complete substituted surface was enumerated from every Kustomization's path.
catalog/ contains exactly TWO braced expansions and both were these bugs; every other
braced expansion on a substituted path is a declared cluster-vars key (zero typos, zero
undeclared names); existing $${UOS_URL} escapes verified intact.
Verified: --selftest PASS; canonical render is byte-identical to the committed apps/ for
all 10 onboarded services; the three L1 render checks pass.
NEXT RECONCILE: both pod templates change, so gitea (wave 0) and nextcloud (wave 1) roll —
strategy: Recreate on RWO Longhorn PVCs, so expect a brief single-pod outage each. The
OIDC block then executes for the first time in these apps' deployed lifetime. Both paths
are idempotent (gitea takes auth update-oauth on the existing id; nextcloud's
user_oidc:provider is create-or-update), so the expected result is a no-op re-write plus
the verify loop logging success. If the SOPS client secret ever diverged from Keycloak's,
this is when it gets corrected instead of silently left stale. Tail both pods after merge.
Serves: R-IDP-02, R-IDP-06, R-ENV-02, R-GITOPS-02.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
The Keycloak OIDC postStart registration for gitea and nextcloud ran but
never persisted, leaving `gitea admin auth list` empty and nextcloud's
user_oidc with "No providers configured" despite the apps installing/
enabling and the client secret being present.
Two distinct root causes, confirmed by running the registration manually
against the live warm pods:
- nextcloud: a QUOTING BUG, not a race. The OCC() wrapper runs
`su -c "php occ $*"`, which word-split `--scope="openid email profile"`
back into three tokens, so occ saw `email profile` as extra positional
args -> "Too many arguments to user_oidc:provider" -> exit 1, swallowed
by `|| echo failed`. Failed on EVERY boot. Fixed by running the provider
call as ONE `su -c` with the scope single-quoted so www-data's shell
keeps it a single argument; keep the OCC() wrapper only for single-token
subcommands.
- gitea: a first-boot RACE. The direct `admin auth add-oauth` persists once
the app/network is warm (verified live), but fired too early at postStart
and its failure was swallowed (`|| echo ... >&2`, exit 0).
Hardening applied to both catalog sources (rendered into apps/wave-*):
- wait (bounded ~90s) for the Keycloak discovery doc to return HTTP 200;
- nextcloud also waits for `installed: true` AND `maintenance: false`;
- register idempotently (create-or-update) then VERIFY the source/provider
actually persisted, retrying the whole cycle (guards exit-0-but-nothing-
stuck);
- on give-up, log LOUDLY to stderr AND a marker file on the persistent
volume (/data, /var/www/html) instead of swallowing — next failure is
visible;
- never crashloop: missing-secret guard retained, break-glass local admin
stays usable.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
Wires the bootstrapping-critical Gitea git host to the Keycloak `homelab` realm
as a native confidential OIDC client, moving it off the local-admin-only login
while keeping the local admin as the break-glass path (docs/15 availability
caveat; R-IDP-02/06).
Realm (source of truth): add the `gitea` confidential client to
platform/keycloak/keycloak-realm-import.yaml (modeled on grafana) + its
GITEA_CLIENT_SECRET placeholder sourced from the keycloak-realm-clients Secret.
NOTE: a KeycloakRealmImport no-ops on an already-existing realm, so the live
client was ALSO created via kcadm (id 70a6ca60-317a-42ce-8331-a60e380838ee);
the YAML keeps git authoritative for a rebuild.
Secrets (SOPS/age, never plaintext): add gitea-client-secret to
platform/keycloak/keycloak-realm-clients.sops.yaml (keycloak ns) and mirror the
same value as oidc-client-secret into apps/wave-0/gitea-bootstrap-secret.sops.yaml
(gitea ns) so the app can read it in-namespace. Both == the live client secret.
App config (catalog source + re-render): catalog/gitea.yaml gains the
GITEA_OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET env (from the mirrored Secret), [oauth2_client]
auto-registration/account-linking app.ini env, and an idempotent postStart step
that registers the "keycloak" OAuth2 login source (auto-discovery; groups claim;
platform-admins -> Gitea admin). apps/wave-0/gitea.yaml re-rendered via
`render.py --no-image-automation`.
Verified: realm import Done=True/HasErrors=False and platform-config
Ready=True/Healthy=True (unchanged); edited realm YAML passes server dry-run;
static gate (lint/l0/l1) green. Browser SSO login still needs a human check.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
Extend the ServiceDefinition contract with optional per-container `env`,
`envFrom`, and `lifecycle` fields (k8s EnvVar / EnvFromSource / Lifecycle
shapes) so headless-install / DB-backed apps configure themselves through
the SD instead of a supplementary kustomize patch.
- schema: bump 1.1.0 -> 1.2.0; add optional env/envFrom/lifecycle to the
container kind (literal + secretKeyRef/configMapKeyRef; secretRef/
configMapRef; postStart/preStop exec via $defs/execHandler). Existing
fields unchanged; all fields optional -> absent renders byte-identical.
- render.py: emit env/envFrom/lifecycle verbatim onto the Deployment app
container when present; --selftest coverage for the new fields.
- catalog/gitea.yaml: fold the headless-install env (INSTALL_LOCK, fixed
SECRET_KEY via secretKeyRef, DOMAIN/ROOT_URL, actions, break-glass admin
creds) + the idempotent postStart break-glass admin bootstrap inline.
- apps/gitea.yaml: re-rendered with env/lifecycle inline (effective pod
spec provably equivalent to base+patch).
- DELETE apps/gitea-bootstrap-patch.yaml + drop it from apps/kustomization
patches. gitea-bootstrap-secret.sops.yaml kept (still sourced by the env).
Proves the renderer feature by retiring the known TODO; unblocks env + DB
onboarding for nextcloud/semaphore/unifi/minecraft. All other rendered apps
byte-identical. Gates: selftest PASS, l0 17/17 + schema, l1 goldens, lint.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
Two defects blocked in-cluster Gitea from becoming the Flux source:
1. Storage mountPath: the renderer hard-coded /data/<name>, so Gitea's PVC
mounted at /data/data while Gitea writes all state to /data — real repos/DB
landed on the ephemeral rootfs. Add an OPTIONAL `mountPath` to the storage
schema + render.py (default stays /data/<name>, back-compat). catalog/gitea.yaml
sets data.mountPath: /data. Only gitea.yaml's rendered mount changes; every
other app renders byte-identical.
2. Headless install: the instance was un-installed (INSTALL_LOCK=false, ephemeral
SECRET_KEY, no admin, API 404). A Gitea-only supplementary manifest
(apps/gitea-bootstrap-patch.yaml) patches the rendered Deployment with
GITEA__security__INSTALL_LOCK=true, a FIXED SECRET_KEY from a persistent SOPS
secret (apps/gitea-bootstrap-secret.sops.yaml), ROOT_URL/DOMAIN, and a postStart
hook that idempotently creates a break-glass local admin. State persists on the
now-correct /data Longhorn PVC.
The env/lifecycle wiring is a supplementary kustomize patch because the
ServiceDefinition schema/renderer does not yet express env/envFrom/lifecycle —
noted as a renderer follow-up (TODO in the patch).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
jakman85andClaude Opus 5