Commit Graph
25 Commits
Author SHA1 Message Date
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 df1d2ab44d docs(prod): node 1's drive was replaced — and §2's exit condition still is not met
Records the 2026-09-07 I/O-starvation incident and the drive swap: the C400 was
replaced with a Samsung 850 EVO, and under the same load class (an active
18-replica Longhorn rebuild, with node 1 as the write target) I/O pressure fell
from full avg300 11.36 to 3.79 — from ~4x worse than its peers into node 3's band.

Updates the three §0 cells that had become false (disk model, drive health, kernel
— all three nodes now run 7.1.8, not 6.12) and adds §0c rather than rewriting the
'NOT hardware-symmetric' analysis, which is still the correct reasoning about the
state it described.

Two things the rebuild taught, recorded so the next one is cheaper: Longhorn
refuses a replaced disk with DiskFilesystemChanged and needs disable -> remove ->
re-add in that order, and the inventory's [k3s_prod_primary] decides BOTH
--cluster-init and k3s_api_host, so rebuilding the founder without moving that
designation would have founded a second cluster.

The replacement does NOT close §2: etcd and Longhorn still share one SATA spindle.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
2026-09-07 22:50:45 -05:00
jakman85 863af01062 docs: the §2 shared-device measurement came back, and it does not hold
gate / gate (push) Has been cancelled
gate / conformance (push) Has been cancelled
infra/PROD-PROVISIONING.md §2 recorded the etcd/Longhorn shared-partition risk as
"accepted to be MEASURED, not assumed", with an exit condition. The measurement
arrived on 2026-09-07 in production, 2 d 7 h after bring-up, as an outage.

§2 now carries "THE MEASUREMENT CAME BACK": the journal evidence, the three-node
IO PSI table (11.36 / 0.75 / 1.29), and the honest verdict that the section's own
premise — "every prod node is SSD or NVMe, where rebuild I/O costs latency rather
than collapsing it" — was right about node 2 and wrong about node 1. A 2011 C400
with 61,440 reallocated sectors and no power-loss protection is not the "SSD" that
reasoning assumed, and §0 had already named the three-way drive asymmetry as the
fault line. The exit condition is OPEN and the second bullet (dedicated device)
applies; that remains the operator's.

Also records what the three software mitigations in this branch do and do not buy,
including the point that no cgroup or scheduler control arbitrates the ext4 journal
both tenants share — and the gap that etcd's own fsync histograms, which the exit
condition literally asks for, are not collected because kubeEtcd is disabled for
k3s. PSI is the signal that exists.

DECISIONS-LOG gains the full entry: the four I/O mechanisms found INERT on these
nodes (IOSchedulingClass, IOSchedulingPriority, io.latency, bare IOWeight), the
finding that concurrentReplicaRebuildPerNodeLimit was already set and already held
during the outage, the third instance of config that looked applied and was not
(orphanAutoDeletion), and the three things still requiring the operator.

infra/ansible/README.md: CORRECTED a stale claim that k3s-prod-2/-3 "stay commented
out" of the inventory. They have been live in [k3s_prod_secondary] since
2026-09-03. That sentence is exactly the kind used to reason about blast radius —
`-e k3s_hosts=k3s_prod` targets THREE hosts, not one — so it is replaced with the
--list-hosts command that settles it. The new etcd-io-priority play is added to the
run order, the layer table and the prod command list.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
(cherry picked from commit a00a27a2567ea6a805c8c196b75df2c92a7c63a4)
2026-09-07 02:46:26 -05:00
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 c8c1d2935d feat(dns): per-environment BASE_DOMAIN — prod moves to its own subdomain
gate / gate (push) Has been cancelled
gate / conformance (push) Has been cancelled
INCIDENT FIX. Prod's external-dns DELETED EVERY ONE OF DEV'S PUBLIC DNS RECORDS. Both
clusters ran policy: sync against the SAME Cloudflare zone with the SAME implicit
txtOwnerId (`default`), so prod believed it owned dev's records, found no matching sources,
and removed them plus their TXT registry entries. Dev recovered ~30s after prod was scaled
to 0; verified restored against Cloudflare directly (my first check went through a pfSense
override and falsely showed healthy — local resolvers are not evidence about public DNS).

THE MISS WAS MINE, and it was a failure of imagination in how I briefed every agent. I put
"never touch dev" in brief after brief and enforced it — separate kubeconfigs, verified
--limit, sha-checked dev's kubeconfig before and after. Every one of those guards held. NONE
of them covered SHARED EXTERNAL RESOURCES. Prod reconciling its OWN correctly-authored
manifests reached across a third party and destroyed dev's state. Cluster-to-cluster
isolation was verified; the dependency that mattered was cluster-to-Cloudflare.

Operator's architecture: dev -> *.dev.home.keithjackson.dev, prod ->
*.prod.home.keithjackson.dev, apex CNAME <svc>.home -> <svc>.prod.home.

PHASE 1 ONLY (this commit): prod moves to its own subdomain. DEV IS NOT MIGRATED and its
effective hostname stays home.keithjackson.dev, so dev renders byte-identically and nothing
live moves. That alone ends the collision and unblocks prod. Phase 2 (dev -> dev.home. +
apex CNAMEs) is deferred to when the operator is present: it relocates Keycloak's issuer and
12 clients' redirect URIs, forces a rolling k3s restart and kubectl SSO re-issue for every
user, and moves gitea.home. — which is BOTH the GitOps source and the current push target.

BASE_DOMAIN WAS A DEAD KNOB — it existed in cluster-vars but the status report flagged it as
referenced by nothing, because hostnames were hardcoded throughout. Now real: 141 refs.
Searched the AUTHORITATIVE reconciled set by resolving each Flux spec.path transitively via
conformance/lib/status.py — the same resolver the L0 gate uses, so "what Flux reconciles"
has one definition. 185 occurrences across 47 files in 154 reconciled files. Tokenized:
Gateway listeners, the wildcard Certificate, coredns-custom, external-dns, Keycloak
instance/realm (26 redirect URIs), oauth2-proxy, Grafana OIDC, all HTTPRoutes, Homepage's 15
links, 30 runbook_urls, unifi cloud-init, render.py's ZONE constant (which drove
--oidc-issuer-url/--cookie-domain/--whitelist-domain on every forward-auth sidecar) and 11
catalog/ ServiceDefinitions re-rendered canonically. Left alone: 43 comment/prose
occurrences and non-reconciled paths.

TWO THAT CANNOT BE TOKENIZED, flagged not forced:
  - headlamp's OIDC URLs live inside a SOPS-encrypted Secret; re-encrypting rewrites the MAC
    over every value and the OFFLINE harness cannot verify it (kustomize does not decrypt),
    so an error would break live-dev SSO with no pre-flight proof. Prod needs its own copy
    anyway — client secrets are realm-scoped.
  - kube-apiserver --oidc-issuer-url is a k3s SERVER FLAG, not a manifest, so Flux can never
    reach it. Done on the inventory seam instead (k3s_base_domain -> k3s_oidc_issuer_url,
    overridden in group_vars/k3s_prod). Verified per host: dev keeps the default, prod gets
    prod.home.

EXTERNAL-DNS OWNER, the actual incident cause: txtOwnerId is now explicit per environment —
dev renders exactly `default` (the chart default it was already using, so its existing
records stay recognised) and prod gets `prod`. The BASE default is a NON-COLLIDING SENTINEL,
deliberately not `default`, so a future environment that forgets the knob owns nothing and
can delete nothing rather than silently inheriting dev's identity.

I OVERRODE ONE AGENT DECISION against our own prior finding: it narrowed prod's
domainFilters to prod.home.keithjackson.dev as defence in depth. FINDING F-DNS1
(DECISIONS-LOG 2026-08-17) already proved a subdomain filter DROPS THE PARENT ZONE —
ExternalDNS generates the record then skips it with "no hosted zone matching record DNS
Name". Prod would have published NOTHING. Set to the ZONE (keithjackson.dev) like dev.
Isolation comes from the subdomain split plus txtOwnerId, which is what the incident
actually needed and what a domain filter cannot provide.

DEV PROVEN UNCHANGED: 11 of 12 substituting paths byte-identical; the 12th differs by
exactly one line, `+ txtOwnerId: default` — the value dev was already using implicitly.
POSITIVE CONTROLS confirm the harness is not blind: perturbing BASE_DOMAIN moves 10 of 12
hashes (the 2 that don't provably contain no hostname), perturbing the owner id moves
exactly 1. Prod's rendered output has ZERO home.keithjackson.dev references outside prod.,
and its cert renders *.prod.home.keithjackson.dev — no overlap with dev's.

L0 substitution assertions 106 -> 254; BASE_DOMAIN is no longer flagged dead. Gate PASS.

PROD REMAINS SUSPENDED (platform + 10 downstream tiers) pending review; nothing applied.

Serves: R-ENV-02, R-DNS-01, R-DNS-02, R-DNS-03, R-TLS-01.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-09-04 22:43:54 -05:00
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 9b8979a427 feat(prod): temp Gitea source + wireless disabled + flux bootstrap path
Autonomous prod bring-up, operator away. Three changes that together clear the last
blockers before `flux bootstrap`.

=== 1. TEMPORARY BOOTSTRAP GITEA — the last hard blocker, cleared ===
clusters/prod's source URL could not work: Gitea runs ON the dev cluster (the one slated for
decommission) and split-horizon DNS resolves gitea.home.keithjackson.dev to PROD's OWN
gateway. Stood up the existing bootstrap/gitea/bootstrap-gitea.sh on the operator's
workstation with HOST_NAT_IP=192.168.2.132; all three prod nodes verified reachable
(Gitea 1.22.6 via the API), no firewall change needed — prod is on the same /24, no NAT.

clusters/prod now points at http://192.168.2.132:3000/... under a boxed TEMPORARY banner
with a 5-step cutover checklist ending 'delete this whole block — dev's stanza is what done
looks like'. Repo verified PUBLIC with anonymous read two independent ways (API
"private":false; git ls-remote unauthenticated with GIT_TERMINAL_PROMPT=0), so NO secretRef
is needed — documented so a future auth failure is not misread as a network fault.

bootstrap-gitea.sh's header corrected: it documented HOST_NAT_IP=10.73.0.1, the RETIRED
libvirt NAT, and forbade agent use; the operator has now directed this for prod.

=== 2. WIRELESS DISABLED ON PROD (operator-reported) ===
k3s-prod-3 was on ethernet AND wireless, and the wifi DHCP client was overwriting
/etc/resolv.conf. Root cause of the silence: node_baseline's DNS `contended` detection
checked resolvconf and NetworkManager but NOT dhcpcd, so the role wrote resolvers, reported
success, and dhcpcd reverted them on lease renewal — the exact 'green run that fixed
nothing' the contended branch exists to prevent.

Now IaC, not a one-off: survey wireless hardware, **REFUSE to disable it if the path to the
node runs over the wireless interface** (the guard that meant an agent dying mid-apply cost
nothing), blacklist the driver so it never reloads, stop dhcpcd only where it holds a
wireless interface and nothing else, take links down and unload modules with NO reboot, then
report the resulting state. dhcpcd is now in the contended set without weakening fail-closed.

Applied and verified: node 3's wlp1s0 is GONE from /sys/class/net, dhcpcd inactive and its
unit not-found, ONE default route per node, all three on 8.8.8.8/1.1.1.1 resolving public
names. Safe and idempotent on nodes 1 and 2, whose wifi hardware was already down.

=== 3. flux_bootstrap PATH PARAMETERISED ===
bootstrap/flux/bootstrap.sh already read FLUX_ENV_PATH but the role never exported it, so it
ALWAYS bootstrapped clusters/dev — prod was impossible. Two behaviour-bearing lines: role
default clusters/dev + `environment: FLUX_ENV_PATH`, overridden to clusters/prod in
group_vars/k3s_prod. Proven per host with a read-only Ansible probe: prod hosts resolve
clusters/prod, localhost/hypervisor resolves clusters/dev. Only two definitions repo-wide.

DEV PROVEN BYTE-IDENTICAL for the source change: all 12 substituting Flux paths rendered for
both trees, 27/27 SHA-256 artefacts identical, with TWO POSITIVE CONTROLS (an overlay-level
canary and a deep-path content canary) confirming the harness detects change — and both
canaries proven restored. Honest scope note recorded: kustomize strips comments, so the
harness proves the built stream, not source comments.

L0 substitution check: 106 assertions, 0 hazards. ci/l0.sh and ci/lint.sh exit 0.

=== STILL BLOCKING A FULL PROD RECONCILE (operator decisions) ===
- S3_BACKUP_ENDPOINT remains TBD-PROD-*: prod CANNOT reach dev's versitygw at
  192.168.1.9:9000 (verified UNREACHABLE from all three — the pfSense boundary), and a prod
  backup target is a deferred operator decision. Deliberately NOT invented: a DR target on a
  workstation container would create false confidence. Velero/CNPG backups will fail loudly.
- Prod's public resolvers mean the API server's oidc-issuer-url resolves PUBLICLY, so kubectl
  SSO will not work on prod until split-horizon is solved for it (§4).
- The temp Gitea is a single container on the operator's workstation — a single point of
  failure for prod reconciliation, acceptable for bring-up only.

Serves: R-GITOPS-01, R-DNS-01, R-DNS-03, R-ENV-02, R-ENV-03. Task: T-7.1.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-09-04 18:53:17 -05:00
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 05baae90ec feat(prod): kernel fix + disk layout — prod nodes ready for k3s
Prod is being stood up now, without waiting for node 2's RAM upgrade. Three coupled
changes, all applied and verified on all three nodes.

=== 1. KERNEL >= 6.13 — now a PREREQUISITE, not a nice-to-have ===
A k3s SERVER that intermittently boots with 2.6 GiB is not a degraded node; it fails under
etcd plus its workload share, unpredictably, on any reboot. Fixed before k3s goes on.

roles/node_baseline gains a `kernel`-tagged block: asserts the suite matches the node's
Debian release, writes a deb822 trixie-backports source, installs, reads back the exact
version, writes a provenance/rollback note to the node. Scoped by
node_baseline_backports_kernel (default FALSE, true only in group_vars/k3s_prod) — chosen
over a hostname test so a fourth prod node inherits it from group membership. Verified:
--check against dev skips all 8 tasks on all 3 hosts. Two deliberate calls: `state: latest`
not `present` (linux-image-amd64 was already installed from main, so `present` would have
silently fixed nothing), and NO preferences.d pin (backports' NotAutomatic +
ButAutomaticUpgrades already gives 100/500; an explicit Pin-Priority: 100 would switch OFF
automatic security upgrades for the very kernel being installed).

Installed 7.1.8+deb13-amd64 on all three; 6.12.107 kept bootable.

THE DECISIVE PROOF: node 2 booted at MEMATTR=0xbeeb0018 — the EXACT address that gave it
2.6 GiB twice — and now reserves 634,904K instead of 13,958,980K. MemTotal 15.4 GiB. Same
address, handled correctly; not a lucky draw.

§0b's claim that a fixed kernel prints 'FW_BUG Corrupted...' is CONDITIONAL and was
corrected: >=6.13 has three rejection gates and only the third prints that line; all three
nodes hit gate 1 (version > 2). Proof instead is boot-independent — decompressing
/boot/vmlinuz on all three yields the FW_BUG and descriptor-size strings verbatim; neither
exists in 6.12.

TWO MORE BUGS IN MY OWN HEALTH CHECK, found because the fix couldn't otherwise be shown:
  - MEMATTR_VERSION_RE matched (\d+) but the kernel prints that field with %d — SIGNED. Node
    2's real value was -1569980416, which did not match, so state fell through to `clean` and
    the node reported PASS "the kernel accepted it without complaint". A FALSE PASS on the
    exact bug the check exists to find. Now (-?\d+).
  - bad_version was WARN unconditionally, so a FIXED node would have stayed WARN forever.
    Now keys on memattr_kernel_fixed: same line, WARN below 6.13, PASS at/above.

=== 2. DISK LAYOUT — Longhorn claimed, per-node paths DISCOVERED not hardcoded ===
Operator decision: reuse the ~424 GB partition; accept the shared-device I/O risk (dev's
etcd/Longhorn contention was on a spinning HDD, prod is SSD/NVMe).

Device paths differ per node (sda5 / nvme0n1p5 / sda5), so the role DISCOVERS the partition
via `findmnt --mountpoint` on a declared claim mountpoint rather than trusting inventory.
Per-host host_vars would have frozen today's hardware into inventory, where it goes stale on
the first re-image and the stale value's failure mode is mkfs on the WRONG partition.
Eleven fail-closed asserts before any write: real block device, not backing / /boot /usr
/var /home /tmp or active swap (built from the node's OWN gathered facts, never a hardcoded
list), already ext4, no foreign label, >= 100 GiB, and empty. Relabel, never reformat.
/srv verified empty first on every node (ls -A -> lost+found only; du 20K; the "5.1% used"
was ext4's default 5% root reserve).

=== 3. k3s DATA-DIR MOVED — /var was 11.8 GiB and would have killed etcd ===
Measured on the fully-deployed dev cluster: containerd 21-25 GB/node, /var total 58-70 GB.
Prod's /var is 11.8 GiB and held BOTH etcd and the image store, so prod would have filled
/var during its first image pulls — and a full /var means etcd cannot write its WAL. Cluster
death, not degradation, arriving during bring-up. Invisible when the disk decision was made,
because "etcd on root" sounded like the 30 GiB / rather than a separate 12 GiB /var.

Now: p5 -> /data (LABEL=k3s-data), with /data/longhorn and /data/k3s. Neutral names chosen
deliberately — the partition now has two tenants, and reusing /srv would make "claimed" and
"unclaimed" indistinguishable to the idempotency pivot, while a bare `data` label would make
a stranger's `data` volume look already-claimed and weaken an assert.

The transition off the existing LABEL=longhorn mount is DECLARED, not inferred
(node_baseline_data_retired_fs_label/_retired_mount, defaults ""), because changing the label
makes a claimed node answer "no" to the pivot and walk into the greenfield path. Self-retiring
once blkid -L k3s-data succeeds. THREE independent gates keep live dev out: retired vars
default ""; gated on longhorn_source == claim-mountpoint (dev is `device`); and the emptiness
assert fails closed on dev's 18 volumes even if both were defeated.

k3s_data_dir is one variable read by two roles (k3s_server --data-dir; node_baseline derives
the etcd mount). Role default is k3s's own default, so dev is unchanged and keeps its
dedicated etcd device. node_baseline_etcd_source becomes `shared-data-partition` and is
LOAD-BEARING: the role asserts per run that the filesystem backing the etcd dir really IS the
data partition — had the mount silently failed, etcd plus 21-25 GB of images would land back
on the OS filesystem invisibly until the disk filled.

LONGHORN_DATA_PATH is a new cluster-vars knob (R-ENV-02): base and DEV /var/lib/longhorn,
prod /data/longhorn.

DEV PROVEN UNCHANGED, which is the property that mattered — the live cluster has 18 Longhorn
volumes on that path. All 12 substituting Flux paths rendered through
`kubectl kustomize | flux envsubst --strict` for both trees: 12/12 per-file SHA-256 identical
and an identical aggregate SHA over every rendered dev byte. With a POSITIVE CONTROL showing
the same harness detects prod changing on exactly one line — an all-identical result is
worthless if the harness cannot see change. Live check after: dev's default-data-path setting
still /var/lib/longhorn, 18 volumes attached, 0 Kustomizations unready.

Idempotent: run 2 is changed=0 on all three nodes. Also fixed a real tag bug — include_tasks
does NOT propagate its own tags to included tasks (unlike import_tasks), so `--tags disks`
selected the include and ran nothing inside it while reporting success.

OPEN DEFECTS, tracked not forgotten: node 2's warm-reboot hang (one clean reboot since, NOT a
fix); and node 3 runs dhcpcd for its wifi interface, which rewrites /etc/resolv.conf on lease
renewal — the role's `contended` detection checks resolvconf and NetworkManager only, so node
3's decided resolvers will silently revert.

Gate: MERGE GATE: PASS. L0 substitution check 106 assertions.

Serves: R-ENV-01, R-ENV-02, R-ENV-03, R-STATE-01, R-STATE-02, R-PLAT-01. Task: T-7.1.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-09-04 00:39:10 -05:00
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 8e913fdd7b fix(node_health): "Failed to map" does NOT mean memory lost — plus survey results
THE MODEL WAS WRONG AND MY CHECK WITH IT. A live counter-example: k3s-prod-2 after its power
cycle shows MEMATTR=0xbeeb0018 and 'Failed to map ... @ 0xbeeb0018' — the SAME address and SAME
line as both of its 2.6 GiB boots — with MemTotal 15857732 kB, i.e. 15.1 GiB of 16 GB. FULL
MEMORY. The check reported FAIL 'THIS NODE HAS LOST MEMORY TO THE BUG' on a healthy node while
memory.physical_total correctly PASSed at 4.2%. The two checks contradicted each other.

REFINED MECHANISM — two kernel functions were conflated:
  efi_memattr_init() does the memblock_reserve(). Catastrophic loss needs tbl_size NEGATIVE
    (signed int -> sign-extended -> clamped to PHYS_ADDR_MAX). A garbage-but-POSITIVE tbl_size
    reserves a modest wrong amount and costs nothing noticeable.
  efi_memattr_apply_permissions() does the later memremap(), and THAT is what prints
    'Failed to map'. It fails for ANY sufficiently wrong size, negative or merely large-positive.
So the line proves the table was corrupt AND TRUSTED, not that memory was lost. The cost is set
by the garbage VALUE, which is why one address gave 2.6 GiB twice and 15.1 GiB once.

THIS ALSO REFUTES THE ADDRESS->OUTCOME HYPOTHESIS OUTRIGHT — not untested, disproven.

STRUCTURAL FIX so the contradiction cannot recur: the shortfall is computed ONCE into a shared
fact (node_health_mem_shortfall) with worst-wins sub-verdicts; memory.physical_total IS that
verdict and firmware.efi_memattr READS it, measuring nothing itself. FAIL is gated on the shared
verdict. 'Failed to map' + normal memory is now WARN ('the bug fired and this boot survived it').
No honesty guard was weakened; one was strengthened (the measurement clause falls back to the DIMM
shortfall when zoneinfo is unreadable, and only claims 'could NOT be measured' when neither was
read). All five paths incl. the two unproducible-live SKIPs exercised against synthetic facts.
Verdicts: prod-1 WARN, prod-2 WARN (was FAIL), prod-3 PASS, dev unaffected.

SECOND FAULT, arguably worse for prod: NODE 2 HANGS ON A WARM REBOOT, STAYING POWERED. Its
journal ends cleanly mid-shutdown ('eno1: NIC Link is Down') then stops; the box sat powered but
off-LAN for ~38 min until the operator held the power button. A node that cannot survive an
unattended warm reboot cannot be rolled in an HA cluster, and node_health cannot see a machine
that is off the network. Leading candidate: node 2 is the ONLY node with 'Recover OS after Boot
Failure = Enable' — promoted from 'coincidence' in the BIOS diff to a live availability defect.
The reboot survey is NOT viable unattended on node 2 until this is understood.

SURVEY RESULTS (40 boots): prod-1 0/20, prod-3 0/20, prod-2 0 ROUNDS (hung on its first reboot),
pooled 0/40 -> p(bad) 95% CI 0.000-0.088. NOT elimination: 0/20 still permits 17% per node, and
node 2's prior 2-of-3 is unchanged. What it did establish: addresses are node-specific and highly
concentrated (node 1 used 3 distinct addresses in 20 boots, 15 at one; no address ever shared
between nodes); MEMATTR -> parse was a PERFECT function across all 7 repeated addresses over 37
boots; and the corrupting bytes are stable PER MACHINE (node 1 always 1030, node 3 always
1463964749), so the 'shared OS boot chain' inference needs refining.

Adds playbooks/memattr-survey.yml + roles/memattr_survey — reboots opt-in, resumable, artifacts
gitignored. Documents an Ansible defect worth knowing repo-wide: a looped include_tasks under the
default 'linear' strategy is flattened per host, so hosts run SERIALLY; the first attempt rebooted
node 1 twenty times while the others idled. Fixed with strategy: free + a forks preflight assert.

Serves: R-ENV-01, R-ENV-03, R-OBS-04, R-TEST-02. Task: T-7.1.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-09-03 23:50:59 -05:00
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 b19c5db9ae feat(prod): node 3 onboarded — and it is NOT immune; BIOS-setting hypothesis disproven
k3s-prod-3 online at the planned 192.168.2.12 (serial 8CC015307N, same chassis/BIOS/CPU),
enabled in inventory, vaulted become confirmed, package floor installed. Health: 0 FAIL /
4 WARN / 14 PASS / 1 SKIP — the only node with zero FAILs. WD Blue WDS500G2B0A SATA SSD at
100% life, 3213 h, 0 grown bad blocks, 0 erase fails. Matched Crucial 2x16 GB pair — the only
node with symmetric memory.

*** NODE 3 IS NOT IMMUNE TO THE §0b BUG. *** Its firmware DOES publish a MAT
(MEMATTR=0xbeece018); the ABSENCE of a memattr diagnostic line means the kernel read a VALID
table, which is the opposite of immunity. There are THREE outcomes, not two: bail-out on a
garbage version >2, a valid parse with a sane size, and the catastrophic path. Seven boots across
three machines show the MAT address MOVES BOOT-TO-BOOT on every node with settings constant, and
each node has been seen on more than one path. Blast radius widens from two nodes to ALL THREE;
all three need the >= 6.13 kernel.

THE CORRUPTING BYTES ARE THE OS BOOT CHAIN, not firmware and not DRAM: garbage version
1463964749 = 0x5742544D appeared on node 2 AND node 3 — two different machines, identical bytes.
The overwriter is the shared shim/GRUB/EFI-stub/initrd placement writing into the page the
firmware pointed at. So initrd size, module set and boot device are part of the causal chain.

BIOS-SETTING HYPOTHESIS: DISPROVEN, and the three-way diff cannot support it even in principle.
All 240 attributes read on all three; firmware identical fleet-wide. The discriminating set (both
working nodes agree, broken differs) is seven attributes, of which:
  - Fast Boot is the ONLY live candidate, and only as a probability-shifter — HP documents it
    'skips some preboot initialization steps', which changes the heap top and hence where the MAT
    lands. Different mechanism from the previously-killed MRC-caching theory; that stays dead.
  - Legacy Boot Options is AFFIRMATIVELY INERT: 'Configure Legacy Support and Secure Boot' =
    'Legacy Support Disable and Secure Boot Enable' on ALL THREE, Option ROM Launch Policy =
    'All UEFI' on all three. No CSM is built on node 2 either. A naive diff gets this wrong.
  - the rest are coincidence. After Power Loss is ELIMINATED by node 3, which works and shares
    node 2's Power Off — though it is now a §1 checklist violation on TWO nodes.
FATAL CONFOUND: the 1=3!=2 partition is perfectly collinear with node 2 being the only
single-DIMM AND the only NVMe-booting node. Adding node 3 did not break the confound, it DOUBLED
it. No setting can be the cause anyway: node 2 booted good once and bad twice with settings held
constant.

EXPERIMENT DESIGN RECORDED because the obvious approach is statistically worthless: p(bad) is
known only to n=3, 95% CI ~0.09-0.99, so even 8 clean boots prove nothing. Elimination needs ~20
boots/arm; an odds shift needs ~50. Zero-touch first step: 20 reboots of node 2 unchanged, logging
MEMATTR address vs outcome — both failures were at exactly 0xbeeb0018 and all five successes
elsewhere, so if outcome maps onto a narrow address range the mechanism is settled without
touching anything.

ROLE BUG FIXED: node 3's WD drive reports a SMART threshold for only 1 of 25 attributes, and
smartctl OMITS the key rather than emitting 0 — summary.txt.j2 dereferenced a.thresh bare in five
places and the report task died, so no artifact was written. Added a thr() macro rendering 'n/a'
(deliberately not 0, which would read as a real ATA cannot-trip threshold). Would have hit any
drive of this class.

Also: three nodes, three different disk models, only one NVMe, and every node has a single disk
with no unpartitioned spare — so §2's identical-layout requirement is unmet on all three.

Serves: R-ENV-01, R-ENV-03, R-OBS-04. Task: T-7.1.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-09-03 22:32:25 -05:00
jakman85 6e4d311545 docs(prod): will 6.12.y get the memattr fix? Researched — not on its own
Operator asked whether waiting is viable or whether a backports kernel is permanent. Answer: it
will NOT arrive on its own, but it CAN be made to, and the ask is unusually strong.

VERIFIED:
- NOT in linux-6.12.y. Newest commit touching memattr.c on that branch is 2024-07-12. In mainline
  since v6.13 (2025-01-19) — ~19 months, ~97 point releases.
- NO stable tag and NO Fixes: tag on either commit. Structural, not an oversight: the unvalidated
  arithmetic dates to the file's creation in 2016, so it is not a regression and there is no bad
  commit to point Fixes: at. BOTH automatic feeds — Fixes:-scanning and AUTOSEL — had nothing to
  grab. AUTOSEL never surfaced it for any branch.
- NOBODY has requested it: nothing on [email protected], nothing in all 8,027 open+archived
  Debian bugs against src:linux.
- 6.12 LTS EOL is December 2028 — outlives Debian 13's support window, so not time-barred.
- Debian REBASES: trixie carries 6.12.94-1 in trixie-security ('New upstream stable update'), so an
  upstream pickup would reach us via a normal apt upgrade.

THE DECISIVE CARD: the cherry-pick is BYTE-CLEAN. Debian trixie 6.12.94-1's memattr.c hashes to
164203429fa7a..., identical to the upstream patch's pre-image blob — the file has not diverged
between v6.12 and the commit's parent. cherry-pick applies with zero conflicts and zero adjustment,
which removes the usual reason such requests get declined. The commit also meets every
stable-kernel-rules criterion: mainline, 17 insertions, 'hardware quirk', 'a real bug that bothers
people'.

PLAN: backports now as explicitly provisional; email [email protected] (rules Option 2) CC
linux-efi and Ard Biesheuvel who authored AND committed it as EFI maintainer, leading with the
clean-apply proof and the three-boot reproduction with byte-identical e820; Debian BTS as secondary
under handbook §9.1.7; make the deviation permanent only if there is no movement in 4-6 weeks.

Only 8fbe4c49c0cc is needed by hand — 5d0faa8e8369 loosens a heuristic that was rejecting
LEGITIMATE tables and is not required for this symptom.

Serves: R-ENV-01, R-ENV-03. Task: T-7.1.
2026-09-01 23:04:56 -05:00
jakman85 0a733294ff docs(prod): node 1's DIMMs are not a matched pair
gate / gate (push) Has been cancelled
gate / conformance (push) Has been cancelled
Surfaced by the new node_health DIMM reporting, unrelated to the memattr bug and NOT a fault:
DIMM1 is a Micron 8ATF2G64HZ-3G2E1 (DDR4-3200), DIMM3 a Micron 16ATF2G64HZ-2G6E1 (DDR4-2667).
Both 16 GB so capacity is right, but different rank organisation and rated speed mean the pair
runs at the slower 2667.

Recorded in §0 where the symmetry decision gets made, because §2 requires the three nodes to end
up with identical layouts and the previous '2x16 GB Micron' note hid the mismatch.

Serves: R-ENV-03. Task: T-7.1.
2026-09-01 22:31:26 -05:00
jakman85 47f02c6e06 docs(prod): second independent confirmation + no cmdline workaround exists
A second research pass reached the same root cause by a different route and pinned the
arithmetic. Recording it because convergence from two independent lines is what turns this from
a good hypothesis into a settled diagnosis.

MECHANISM TO THE BYTE:
- the garbage 'version' node 2 read was 1463964749 = 0x5742544D = ASCII 'MTBW'. The kernel is
  reading unrelated data. HP publishes the MEMATTR pointer into memory /sys/firmware/memmap calls
  plain System RAM, so the pre-Linux boot chain overwrites it.
- tbl_size is a SIGNED int; num_entries * desc_size wraps mod 2^32 and goes NEGATIVE when bit 31
  lands. memblock_reserve sign-extends it and memblock_cap_size clamps to PHYS_ADDR_MAX - base,
  so EVERYTHING above 0xbeeb0018 is reserved.
- memblock_free_all then hands the allocator nothing above that line while present_pages (from
  memblock.memory) is untouched -> present 3340288 / managed 0.
- 'Failed to map EFI Memory Attributes table' is emitted LATER by efi_memattr_apply_permissions();
  it is positive PROOF the reservation already happened, a consequence rather than the cause.

CLEANEST A/B TELL, one dmesg line: NODE_DATA(0) on prod-2 ends at 0xbeeb0000 — pgdat forced
immediately BELOW the reservation — while on prod-1 it ends at 0x82f800000, the top of RAM.
Identical 0x2a980 allocation, opposite placement.

THERE IS NO KERNEL CMDLINE WORKAROUND. efi_memattr_init() is called from
efi_config_parse_tables(), and x86's efi_init() calls efi_config_init() BEFORE the
efi_runtime_disabled() bail-out — so noefi / efi=noruntime / efi=novamap do NOT prevent the
reservation. A fixed kernel is the only real fix.

EFI_MEMORY_SP / soft-reserved was the strongest competing theory and is EXCLUDED BY MEASUREMENT:
/sys/firmware/memmap/10/type reads 'System RAM'. Soft-reserved would print as 'Soft Reserved' and
is never memblock_add()ed, which would have left present at ~0 rather than 3340288.

Also records that the hardening landed exactly one release late for Debian 13 (bug present since
2016; 8fbe4c49c0cc first in v6.13; follow-up 5d0faa8e8369) and that a Debian BTS report against
src:linux is warranted — 6.12 is Debian 13's kernel for the release lifetime.

Serves: R-ENV-01, R-ENV-03. Task: T-7.1.
2026-09-01 22:16:22 -05:00
jakman85 49d82491dd docs(prod): node 2 memory SOLVED — Linux 6.12 EFI memattr bug, NOT a hardware fault
I framed this as an OPEN HARDWARE FAULT and blamed, in order: the DIMM, BIOS memory remapping,
and stale Fast Boot memory-training data. ALL THREE WERE WRONG. The hardware is fine.

ROOT CAUSE: HP's R21 firmware publishes a CORRUPT EFI Memory Attributes Table, and Linux 6.12
fails to validate it before reserving memory from its contents. drivers/firmware/efi/memattr.c
never validates num_entries or desc_size:

    if (tbl->version > 2) { pr_warn(...); goto unmap; }
    tbl_size = sizeof(*tbl) + tbl->num_entries * tbl->desc_size;
    memblock_reserve(efi_mem_attr_table, tbl_size);

Garbage version > 2 -> kernel bails, memory intact. Garbage version <= 2 -> kernel multiplies two
garbage fields and reserves GIGABYTES from the table address to the top of RAM.

THE EVIDENCE THAT SETTLES IT: the same machine — same DIMM, same BIOS, same kernel, same cmdline —
booted with the FULL 15.9 GiB two boots earlier, with a byte-identical BIOS-e820 map. Boot -2:
15,917,744K available, 615,208K reserved, 'Unexpected EFI Memory Attributes table version
1463964749'. Boots -1/0: 2.6 GiB, 13.9 GiB reserved, 'Failed to map ... @ 0xbeeb0018'. No hardware
fault is intermittent in that shape or fixed by a reboot. MemTotal = DMA(3840) + DMA32(684481)
pages = 2,753,284 kB exactly, Normal contributing zero.

BOTH PROD NODES ARE AFFECTED. k3s-prod-1 prints 'Unexpected EFI Memory Attributes table version
1030' — also garbage, but >2, so the kernel bails and it keeps its 32 GiB BY LUCK, NOT IMMUNITY.
It is one unlucky boot from the identical fault. Dev nodes publish no memattr table at all
(Proxmox OVMF) and are unaffected.

FIX: kernel >= 6.13 — upstream 8fbe4c49c0cc 'efi/memattr: Ignore table if the size is clearly
bogus', whose commit message describes this verbatim. Verified absent from v6.12 and from current
linux-6.12.y. On Debian 13: linux-image-amd64 from trixie-backports.

DO NOT buy RAM, move the DIMM, RMA the board, or run memtest expecting failures. Rebooting,
disabling Fast Boot, clearing CMOS and unplugging USB are all the same lottery — they move where
the table lands and may LOOK like fixes.

Records every killed hypothesis with its disproof so none of them get re-run.

Serves: R-ENV-01, R-ENV-03. Task: T-7.1.
2026-09-01 22:14:14 -05:00
jakman85 5ea9c93f58 docs(prod): BIOS password answer + CORRECT the 0x4 'auth failure' reading
Operator asked for the default BIOS password. ANSWER: there is none, and no factory default
exists to look up. HP business desktops ship with no Setup and no Power-On password; the
is_enabled=0 we measured IS the factory state. Recovery for a forgotten password is the PSWD
jumper — and 'stringent security' must NOT be enabled, since HP documents that it removes the
physical bypass and turns a 5-minute fix into a signed per-serial HP service case.

CORRECTION, and the kernel driver misled me: I recorded that the firmware refused our write for
lack of BIOS-admin authentication. Wrong. hp-bioscfg passes the return of HP's WMI SetBIOSSetting
through hp_wmi_error_and_message(), which is THE ERROR TABLE FOR A DIFFERENT INTERFACE (the
"SECU" commands under HP_WMI_BIOS_GUID). Per HP's Client Management Interface white paper,
SetBIOSSetting 4 = 'Failed' (generic) and 6 = 'Access Denied'. We got 4, not 6 — and the driver
has a separate BIOS_ADMIN_NOT_SET = 0x38 -> -EPERM for the no-password case, which we also did
not get. 'Invalid command type' is the driver looking 4 up in the wrong table: a genuine upstream
bug worth reporting to platform-driver-x86.

Most likely real cause (inferred, testable): with an empty password the driver emits an UNTAGGED
empty UTF-16 string, while every HP-documented caller passes Password="<utf-16/>" even when
blank — the driver only prepends that prefix for a non-empty string. Setting a password may fix
writes, but by flipping onto the tagged code path, NOT because 0x4 meant unauthorised.

Also verified from source: hp-bioscfg CANNOT set a password. current_password and new_password
both funnel into store_password_instance(), which only strscpy's into driver RAM; new_password is
write-only into a buffer nothing ever reads.

Count corrected: 241 attributes exposed, 239 with a current_value, 215 non-empty. I had quoted
215 as the total; it was the non-empty subset.

Recommendation recorded: land read-only drift detection now (zero risk, no new credential, and it
already caught real drift); treat a Setup password as a deliberate experiment on node 3 only;
hp-repsetup as fallback but it needs Secure Boot off or a self-signed module; skip Sure Admin/BCU
at this scale.

Serves: R-ENV-03, R-SEC-01. Task: T-7.1.
2026-09-01 22:10:07 -05:00
jakman85 3a88abb958 docs(prod): iGPU ruled out as the cause; CORRECT my last_pfn misreading
Operator asked whether node 2's missing memory could be reserved for integrated graphics.
TESTED, and no: /proc/iomem shows 'c8800000-cc7fffff : Graphics Stolen Memory' = EXACTLY 64 MiB,
matching the BIOS Video Memory Size=64 MB setting, and it sits BELOW the 4 GiB line. The UHD 630
(i915 bound) takes precisely what it is configured to take. It cannot account for 13.3 GiB and is
not even in the affected address range.

CORRECTION to my own analysis, prompted by checking that hypothesis properly: I cited the
'last_pfn revised DOWN from 0x42f800 to 0xc3c10' line as evidence of a memory cap. That was a
MISREADING. x86 boot prints last_pfn twice — first max_pfn from the full e820, then max_low_pfn,
the end of RAM below 4 GiB. The e820 low usable region ends at 0xc3c0ffff, so the next PFN is
exactly 0xc3c10, which is the second value observed. It matches to the byte and is normal on any
machine with more than 4 GiB. I presented a routine boot message as a smoking gun, and the
'memory remapping above 4 GB not being applied' signature claim rested partly on it.

The real anomaly is narrower than first stated: the Normal zone is 'present' but 'managed 0',
13.3 GiB is reserved, and nothing in the boot log explains by what. Ruled out so far: DIMM health,
firmware inventory, memory-remap settings (none exist on this platform), MTRR trim, iomem
registration, and now integrated graphics. Leading remaining hypothesis is stale memory-training
data cached by Fast Boot — testable with one F10 toggle.

Serves: R-ENV-03. Task: T-7.1.
2026-09-01 21:54:12 -05:00
jakman85 9f7052ab2b docs(prod): fill in node-2 inventory; drop stale investigate bullets
Records node 2's as-found hardware alongside node 1 and removes two bullets that my earlier
edit left duplicated/obsolete (the BIOS comparison is done; clear-CMOS was listed twice).

Makes the hardware ASYMMETRY explicit in the table rather than buried in prose: node 1 is a
~2011 Micron C400 SATA SSD at 69% life with 15 grown bad blocks and 187 erase failures; node 2
is a Samsung PM9A1 NVMe at 96% life, PASSED. Same chassis, same BIOS, same CPU, same partition
layout — very different storage. §2 requires an identical disk layout across all three nodes
because Longhorn replica placement assumes symmetry, so this belongs in the inventory where the
disk decision will be made.

Serves: R-ENV-03. Task: T-7.1.
2026-09-01 21:45:37 -05:00
jakman85 3c8f809aaf docs(prod): CORRECTION — BIOS attributes are read-only in practice, not writable
I recorded that the hp-bioscfg attributes were 'writable from the OS' because current_value
has mode rw and no BIOS passwords are set. That was WRONG, and the firmware said so when the
write was actually attempted:

  hp_bioscfg: Returned error 0x4, "Invalid command type"   (surfaces as printf: I/O error)

HP requires BIOS-admin authentication for programmatic changes and neither credential is
provisioned on these nodes — Setup Password is_enabled=0 (role bios-admin), SPM
key_mechanism=not provisioned. Secure Boot is also enabled. File mode is not authority; the
firmware is.

What survives the correction, and it is the useful half: READS WORK. Diffing 215 attributes
between node 1 and node 2 is exactly how the drift in §0b was found — nobody spots
'After Power Loss=Power Off' by eye. So the §1 firmware checklist IS machine-CHECKABLE today
with reads alone, and node_health should assert it.

What does NOT survive: machine-ENFORCEABLE. Converging BIOS settings automatically would
require provisioning a BIOS Setup Password on every node — a stored credential that can rewrite
firmware. That is a real security decision and the operator's call, not something to default to.

Consequence for the node-2 memory fault: setting Fast Boot=Disable and After Power Loss=Power On
must be done in F10 on the box. Updated §0b and §1 accordingly.

Serves: R-ENV-03. Task: T-7.1.
2026-09-01 21:45:15 -05:00
jakman85 11b21f7347 docs(prod): BIOS settings compared programmatically via hp-bioscfg
Both nodes load the hp-bioscfg driver, exposing 215 BIOS attributes read/write at
/sys/class/firmware-attributes/. No BIOS passwords are set, so they are writable FROM THE OS.

RULED OUT as the cause of node 2's 2.6 GiB limit: firmware inventory is correct (BIOS itself
reports Memory Size=16384 MB); no memory-remap/above-4G attribute exists on this platform at
all; MTRRs are effectively identical with no trim warning; /proc/iomem registers the full
100000000-42f7fffff as System RAM and 127 memory blocks report online.

REAL DIFFERENCES FOUND (node1 works / node2 broken):
  After Power Loss          Power On  / Power Off   <- VIOLATES this document's own §1
  Fast Boot                 Disable   / Enable      <- leading hypothesis
  Legacy Boot Options       Disable   / Enable
  TPM Activation Policy     F1 to Boot / Allow user to reject
  MS+Windows UEFI CA 2023   Enable    / Disable

Leading hypothesis: HP Fast Boot reuses CACHED MEMORY-TRAINING DATA rather than retraining each
boot. A DIMM fitted while Fast Boot was on is a plausible route to memory being present,
inventoried, handed to the kernel — and then reserved. It is also the only memory-relevant
setting differing from the working node. NOT TESTED: changing it is a firmware write plus a
reboot and needs operator sanction.

BROADER FINDING for T-7.1: the §1 firmware checklist is now MACHINE-CHECKABLE rather than an
eyeball-at-F10 exercise, and machine-ENFORCEABLE too. That is precisely how node 2 came to have
After Power Loss=Power Off while node 1 has Power On — nobody could see the drift. Follow-up
recorded: extend node_health to assert the firmware checklist, add a role to converge it.

Raw BIOS dumps deliberately NOT committed — they carry serials, UUIDs and MAC addresses, same
reason node-health artifacts are gitignored. Only the findings are recorded.

Serves: R-ENV-03. Task: T-7.1.
2026-09-01 21:04:12 -05:00
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 cb69a53825 feat(prod): enable node 2 + HARDWARE FAULT — it addresses 2.6 GiB of its 16 GB
k3s-prod-2 (192.168.2.11) came online 2026-09-01. Enabled in the inventory, baseline package
floor installed, first health run completed. Vaulted become works on it unchanged.

*** OPEN FAULT: the node can only address ~2.6 GiB of a healthy, correctly-installed 16 GB
DIMM. *** Recorded in PROD-PROVISIONING §0b.

  dmidecode        16 GB Samsung M471A2K43DB1-CTD in DIMM1 @ 2667 MT/s (DIMM3 empty)
  BIOS e820        reports ~16 GiB usable, incl. 0x100000000-0x42f7fffff
  kernel           Memory: 2568544K/16546088K available (13958980K RESERVED)
  last_pfn         revised DOWN 0x42f800 (~16.7 GiB) -> 0xc3c10 (~3.06 GiB) in early boot
  zones            Normal present 3340288 pages (~12.7 GiB) but MANAGED 0
  MemTotal         2,753,284 kB = 2.6 GiB

The DIMM is NOT the problem: it is present, correctly identified, and at rated speed. The
kernel sees all 16 GB and then reserves 13.3 GiB. Everything below ~3 GiB usable, everything
above 4 GiB present-but-unmanaged — the signature of memory remapping above 4 GB not being
applied, not of failing memory. Node 1 is the control: identical chassis, identical BIOS R21
Ver. 02.26.00, identical CPU, and it addresses its full 31 GiB. Per-machine state, not a
firmware-version defect.

WARNING RECORDED: do NOT assume the incoming 32 GB fixes this. If the fault is the slot, the
board or a BIOS setting rather than the DIMM, 32 GB presents identically and the money is
wasted. Verify MemTotal after any RAM change.

ALSO FOUND — the prod nodes are NOT hardware-symmetric:
  node 1  Micron C400 512GB SATA SSD (~2011) — 69% life, 15 grown bad blocks, 187 erase
          failures, 32 unexpected power losses
  node 2  Samsung PM9A1 512GB NVMe        — 96% life, 2142 power-on hours, 34 unexpected
          power losses, overall-health PASSED
Same chassis, same BIOS, same CPU, same partition layout — very different storage. §2 requires
an identical disk layout across all three nodes because Longhorn replica placement assumes
symmetry, so this asymmetry is now a live input to the disk decision rather than a footnote.
Node 2's NVMe is the drive node 1 should have had.

Node 2 otherwise: 0 FAIL / 3 WARN / 12 PASS / 2 SKIP. Same three WARNs as node 1 (swap still
active pending full baseline, single IPv4 resolver, and the NVMe's 34 unexpected power losses),
plus the same unknowable-ECC SKIP.

Serves: R-ENV-01, R-ENV-03, R-OBS-04. Task: T-7.1.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-09-01 20:56:58 -05:00
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 6b4da27f84 feat(prod): SOPS decryption (same age key as dev) + GitOps source on main
gate / gate (push) Has been cancelled
gate / conformance (push) Has been cancelled
Operator decisions, 2026-09-01:
  1. Prod uses the SAME SOPS age key as dev.
  2. Prod tracks the SAME BRANCH as dev (`main`). Dev is a temporary instance and will be
     decommissioned once prod is deemed stable.

SOPS: eight `decryption: {provider: sops, secretRef: sops-age}` patches mirroring dev
exactly — platform, apps-wave-0/1/2, oauth2-proxy, headlamp, crafty, velero. The sops-age
Secret is still created OUT OF BAND on prod (bootstrap/sops/install-age-key.sh); the
overlay references it by name only, never inlines key material.

RECORDED CONSEQUENCE of the shared branch: once prod is live, EVERY MERGE TO main
RECONCILES BOTH CLUSTERS. There is no promotion step and no soak window — dev and prod
move together. That is a deliberate consequence of dev being temporary, not an oversight,
but it removes the "prove it on dev first" safety net that the last few days have leaned
on heavily. Worth revisiting if dev outlives its expected life.

*** BOOTSTRAP BLOCKER recorded, NOT papered over *** — the source URL cannot work on a
cold prod cluster, for two independent reasons found while wiring this:

1. SELF-HOSTING CIRCULARITY. Gitea runs ON THE DEV CLUSTER — the one slated for
   decommission. Prod syncing from it means prod's source of truth lives inside the
   cluster being retired. Gitea must move to prod (or off-cluster) BEFORE dev is torn
   down. This makes Gitea migration the FIRST task of the decommission plan, not the last.

2. SPLIT-HORIZON DNS SENDS IT TO THE WRONG PLACE. platform/coredns/coredns-custom.yaml
   answers the ENTIRE home.keithjackson.dev zone with ${GATEWAY_VIP} via a template
   plugin. On prod that is 192.168.2.20 — PROD's own gateway, where no Gitea listens. Prod
   Flux would resolve gitea.home.keithjackson.dev to itself and never reach a repository.
   This is the same split-horizon mechanism that makes dev work, inverted against us.

Bring-up therefore needs a TEMPORARY source (the bootstrap host-Gitea, or an off-cluster
mirror) with a cutover to the in-cluster URL once Gitea actually runs on prod — precisely
the sequence docs/05 describes for dev's own Phase-6 cutover. The branch is settled and
correct; only the host is blocked. Documented at the patch site and in
PROD-PROVISIONING.md §7.

Gate: MERGE GATE: PASS.

Serves: R-SEC-01, R-GITOPS-01, R-ENV-02, R-ENV-03. Task: T-7.1.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-09-01 16:27:32 -05:00
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 666a60776a fix(flux): close the substitution race — platform dependsOn root + strict substitution (P0/P1)
P0 — clusters/base/platform.yaml gains `dependsOn: [flux-system]`. This is the actual fix
for the incident, not the feature gate. Verified against kustomize-controller v1.4.0
`kustomization_controller.go :: checkDependencies` (our version): dependsOn is REVISION-
gated, not merely Ready-gated — when the dependency shares a GitRepository, the dependent
cannot reconcile revision N until the dependency has APPLIED revision N. Applying revision
N is exactly what writes a newly-added cluster-vars knob.

Graph verified mechanically, not by eye: built clusters/dev and clusters/prod and walked
the resulting objects. `platform` was the ONLY Kustomization without a dependsOn, and all
11 substituting Kustomizations chain transitively through it (platform-config -> platform;
the waves, apps-vms, oauth2-proxy, headlamp, homepage, crafty, velero -> platform-config).
The "not chaining through platform" set is EMPTY, so this one edge protects the whole
graph. DFS over the full edge set after the edit: no cycles. The root (clusters/dev/
sync.yaml) runs wait: false, which is what makes the edge deadlock-free — it reaches Ready
on apply success without health-gating its children.

Accepted trade-off, documented in-file: the root becomes a gate. A malformed manifest
anywhere under clusters/<env> — including clusters/base — now stalls platform and
everything downstream, where today it would not. Fail-closed, per doctrine.

P1 — StrictPostBuildSubstitutions. MY PREMISE WAS WRONG about where this belongs and it
matters: this repo deliberately does NOT use `flux bootstrap` (see bootstrap/flux/README).
There is no gotk-components.yaml in git, and the live kustomize-controller Deployment
carries NO Flux ownership labels — it was installed imperatively by `flux install` from
bootstrap.sh and is not in Flux's inventory. `flux-system` self-manages the CR graph, NOT
the controllers. Nothing under clusters/** can reach a controller flag.

So it uses Flux's documented mechanism for hand-installed clusters: a new
bootstrap/flux/components/kustomization.yaml wrapping `gotk-components.yaml` with a
JSON-6902 patch appending --feature-gates=StrictPostBuildSubstitutions=true to
kustomize-controller. JSON-6902 `add /args/-` deliberately, NOT strategic merge — a
container's args is atomic and a merge patch would replace all five install-generated
args. bootstrap.sh step 1 now renders (`flux install --export` into a temp dir, apply the
patch, ASSERT the gate string is present so a future Flux bump that breaks the patch
target fails loudly) then applies. FLUX_INSTALL_PLAIN=1 is a loud escape hatch. Nothing is
vendored, so components can never drift from the pinned FLUX_VERSION.

Rejected: vendoring gotk-components.yaml under the root's path (the root's prune: true
would put Flux's own controllers and CRDs in a prune inventory), and shipping a partial
Deployment as a Flux-managed resource (a future prune would delete kustomize-controller).

ROLLOUT ORDER MATTERS. P0 arrives automatically on the next reconcile. P1 does NOT arrive
on a git push — the controller Deployment is outside Flux's inventory, so an operator must
re-run bootstrap.sh step 1, which restarts kustomize-controller (~10-20s; Flux is
level-triggered so an interrupted reconcile is simply retried). P0 must be reconciled
BEFORE P1 is rolled out: with the gate on but the ordering edge absent, the same race
turns a transient empty render into a transient hard Kustomization failure.

ALSO FIXES A PHASE-7 BLOCKER THIS CHANGE WOULD OTHERWISE HAVE CREATED. clusters/prod had
no root Kustomization — dev/sync.yaml even carried the note "a prod overlay needs its own
sync.yaml -> ./clusters/prod". With the new dependsOn, a prod bootstrap would have left
platform blocked forever on a flux-system Kustomization that does not exist, and nothing
downstream would ever reconcile. clusters/prod/sync.yaml is now authored, mirroring dev.

Two further prod-overlay gaps found and DOCUMENTED, not guessed (PROD-PROVISIONING §7):
prod has no SOPS `decryption` patch (every encrypted Secret would fail to decrypt — needs
the prod age-key decision, a security choice not a copy), and no GitRepository source URL
patch (needs a decision on whether prod tracks the same branch as dev, which would make a
dev-facing merge reconcile prod).

Substitution gate re-run: check OK, 102 assertions, 0 hazards. Gate: MERGE GATE: PASS.

Serves: R-ENV-02, R-GITOPS-01, R-PLAT-01, R-ENV-03.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-09-01 01:45:04 -05:00
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 ff0533106b feat(prod): operator decisions — node DNS, service VIPs, become vault, collections path
gate / gate (push) Has been cancelled
gate / conformance (push) Has been cancelled
1. PROD NODE DNS = 8.8.8.8 + 1.1.1.1 (operator, 2026-09-01). Two INDEPENDENT public
   upstreams, so the single-upstream SPOF that broke containerd pulls and CoreDNS
   forwarding on dev cannot recur. Prod deliberately differs from dev, which is
   PiHole-first because dev needs the local jackson.lan zone.

   SCOPE CORRECTED IN THE COMMENTS. Three resolvers answer *.home.keithjackson.dev and
   only one is configured here:
     pods  -> CoreDNS -> platform/coredns/coredns-custom.yaml, whose `template` plugin
              answers the WHOLE zone with ${GATEWAY_VIP}. Self-contained in-cluster;
              PiHole is NOT in this path. Prod is already correct (.20).
     LAN   -> PiHole. Not a cluster concern.
     nodes -> THIS FILE.
   The one thing public node DNS breaks: the k3s API SERVER is a node process carrying
   oidc-issuer-url=https://keycloak.home.keithjackson.dev/realms/homelab and reaches the
   issuer through the NODE resolver, so prod would get the PUBLIC record instead of the
   prod Gateway VIP — breaking kubectl OIDC SSO. Dev avoids this only because its node
   resolver IS PiHole. Not blocking (prod has no cluster or Keycloak yet); options are
   recorded in PROD-PROVISIONING.md §4 for the operator to pick.

2. SERVICE VIPs DECIDED: UNIFI_L4_VIP 192.168.2.21, CRAFTY_L4_VIP 192.168.2.22 — the
   first two addresses after GATEWAY_VIP (.20), mirroring dev's .53/.54/.55 ordering
   within the .20-.30 pool. S3_BACKUP_ENDPOINT stays TBD-PROD-* : no prod backup target
   exists, and dev's versitygw is across the pfSense boundary on the dev host, so it is
   not DR for prod.

3. PROD BECOME VAULT committed, ansible-vault encrypted, matching the hypervisor and
   proxmox_hosts pattern. Verified working: `ansible k3s_prod -m command -a 'id -un'
   --become` returns root. The L0 no-plaintext-secrets check asserts every ansible
   vault.yml starts with $ANSIBLE_VAULT, so this stays honest by gate.

4. TOOLCHAIN GAP FIXED: the devcontainer image does NOT ship the Galaxy collections, so
   EVERY ansible play died at parse time on community.general.modprobe. ansible.cfg now
   sets collections_path = collections, and the collections are installed there from the
   existing collections/requirements.yml (gitignored — pinned by requirements, fetched at
   setup, vendored bytes are not source).

5. DRIVE HEALTH MEASURED and recorded in §2 with the raw attribute table so the numbers
   are auditable. Verdict: usable, but not for production etcd/Longhorn state — 31% of
   rated life consumed, 15 grown bad blocks, 187 erase failures, and 32 unexpected power
   losses on a consumer drive with NO power-loss protection, in a single failure domain.
   etcd is the worst possible tenant: it fsyncs constantly and unclean power loss without
   PLP is exactly how a member corrupts.

6. NON-ECC RAM: RISK ACCEPTED by the operator, recorded as a CLOSED decision, not an open
   item — do not re-litigate. Rationale: 3-node k3s homelab, not enterprise; corruption on
   one node is outweighed by the other two and causes node ejection. That holds for the
   dominant mode (etcd raft CRC + quorum; Longhorn 3 replicas + hard anti-affinity +
   rebuild). Recorded residual: corruption introduced UPSTREAM of replication replicates
   faithfully to all three replicas, so quorum sees no disagreement — low probability, and
   the only mitigation is different hardware. Follow-up noted: Longhorn's
   snapshotDataIntegrity is left at the chart default rather than set explicitly, and it
   is the mechanism that operationalises the operator's own argument.

Serves: R-DNS-01, R-DNS-03, R-ENV-02, R-ENV-03, R-SEC-01. Task: T-7.1.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-09-01 00:40:29 -05:00
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 c1f24e4a6d fix(dns): resilient node resolvers — mechanism-detecting, per-environment (R-DNS-01/03)
Re-authors the fix stranded on origin/fix/node-dns-resilient-upstream (7a34590). That
commit was NOT landed: it wrote a netplan drop-in and ran `netplan apply`, but netplan
does not exist on these nodes any more (Debian 13 trixie generic cloud image; not in
node_baseline_packages). Landing it would have failed the handler with command-not-found
and BROKEN node-baseline.yml on every node — worse than not landing it. Its dev-LAN
literals also sat in role defaults, which prod inherits, pointing prod nodes at a PiHole
on a network they cannot reach.

The underlying problem is real and verified: a SINGLE upstream resolver is a hard SPOF.
PiHole answers jackson.lan instantly but its external recursion flaps — 0/25 for public
names (registry-1.docker.io, quay.io, ghcr.io) while gitea.jackson.lan resolved 5/5 —
breaking containerd image pulls and CoreDNS `forward . /etc/resolv.conf`.

MECHANISM DETECTION (new `dns` tag in node_baseline). Five read-only probes feed one
set_fact yielding three outcomes, because the two environments no longer share a resolver
stack (dev-1 is behind resolved's 127.0.0.53 stub; prod-1 has a direct resolv.conf and no
cloud-init at all):
  * systemd-resolved — resolved running AND owning /etc/resolv.conf (proven by the
    symlink pointing into /run/systemd/resolve/, or by every nameserver being a resolved
    loopback). Writes resolved.conf.d/99-k3s-dns.conf with an ordered DNS=, Domains=, and
    FallbackDNS= EXPLICITLY EMPTIED so systemd's compiled-in public resolvers can never
    silently bypass the local zone and ad-blocking.
  * resolv-conf-file — plain directly-managed file (prod's shape). Ordered nameserver
    lines + options timeout:2 attempts:2, backup: true. Deliberately NO `rotate`, which
    would destroy PiHole-first ordering.
  * contended — resolvconf/openresolv present or NetworkManager active. Writes NOTHING
    and fails loudly: a change that silently gets reverted is worse than no change.
Resolved-running-but-not-owning-resolv.conf correctly falls through to the file branch.
Ordering is the policy that keeps the local zone working — the second server is only
consulted after the first fails, so a gateway NXDOMAIN can never beat PiHole to a
jackson.lan answer.

SEAMS. Dev values in role defaults ([192.168.1.18, 192.168.1.1], search jackson.lan);
prod values in inventory/group_vars/k3s_prod/vars.yml. NOT cluster-vars — that ConfigMap
is consumed by Flux postBuild for platform/ and apps/, and no Ansible code reads it.

PROD'S SECOND UPSTREAM IS AN OPEN OPERATOR DECISION and is left as a loud
BLOCKED-pending-second-upstream placeholder, the same precedent as the node_baseline disk
devices, with a dns-tagged assert that stops the play before any file is written. A
public resolver was NOT invented as a default: it would bypass the local zone, which is a
decision, not a default. PROD-PROVISIONING.md §4 was rewritten (the old bullet pointed at
the now-dropped branch) to state the choice, including that prod routing to the dev
PiHole is unverified across the pfSense boundary.

tofu: servers = [var.dns_server, var.network_gateway] — the one hunk of the old branch
worth taking as-is. Dev-only by nature.

ALSO FIXES A FALSE WARN THIS WOULD OTHERWISE CREATE: node_health_collect.py parsed
/etc/resolv.conf only, so on dev it read the 127.0.0.53 stub and would report a permanent
single-upstream WARN even after a correct fix. It now asks resolvectl for the real
upstreams when it sees the stub — and if that fails, nameservers is NULL with the reason
recorded, never the stub and never a guess. assess.yml turns null into SKIP, not WARN and
not PASS. The honesty discipline is preserved exactly.

Verified with NO play run against any node: syntax-check + yamllint + tofu fmt clean;
--tags packages still selects ONLY the apt task (the prod package-floor escape hatch
bypasses DNS entirely); --list-hosts unchanged; -c local simulation driving the REAL
detection expression and REAL file bodies extracted from the role by script (so the test
cannot drift) passes all 5 scenarios — dev stub -> systemd-resolved, prod shape ->
resolv-conf-file, NetworkManager and resolvconf -> contended; dev defaults pass the
assert byte-identically while prod overrides fail it by name; collector unit-tested
against 8 resolver shapes.

Serves: R-DNS-01, R-DNS-03, R-ENV-02, R-ENV-03.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-09-01 00:11:49 -05:00
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 e623d27e2d feat(ansible): parameterise target groups so prod reuses the roles unchanged (R-ENV-02)
roles/k3s_server, roles/cilium and every node-host playbook hardcoded the dev group
names k3s_primary/k3s_secondary/k3s_servers, so the prod inventory groups could not be
selected at all. That broke the R-ENV-02 promise that prod reuses the SAME roles, and
blocked PROD-PROVISIONING.md §6 outright.

TWO KNOBS, deliberately separate — Ansible templates a play's `hosts:` BEFORE any host
context exists, so group_vars is unreadable there, while roles run WITH host context:
  * which hosts a play RUNS ON — k3s_hosts, k3s_primary_hosts/k3s_secondary_hosts
    (k3s.yml's split), vpn_egress_gateway_hosts; each `| default(<dev group>)`, set by -e
    only. Follows node-health.yml's established `<name>_hosts | default(dev)` pattern.
  * which group a ROLE means by "my primary"/"my servers" — k3s_primary_group,
    k3s_servers_group in group_vars/all.yml (dev), overridden in group_vars/k3s_prod.
    Follows the k3s_api_host convention already in this repo. No per-run flag.

DEV IS UNCHANGED — the key evidence. --list-hosts/--list-tasks/--syntax-check captured
for all 9 playbooks at HEAD and after: sorted host lists IDENTICAL for all 9, same
primary/secondary split, same 6-play site.yml. (Raw --list-hosts PRINT ORDER varies run
to run; proven to be Ansible's own set ordering by running UNMODIFIED HEAD cilium.yml
four times -> 3,1,2 / 1,3,2 / 1,2,3 / 1,2,3. Hence sorted comparison.) --list-tasks
differs in exactly two files, only by added TAGS annotations and one new assert; no task
reordered, renamed or removed. Var resolution verified per environment with -c local:
dev -> k3s_primary/192.168.1.50/sans .50,.49,127.0.0.1,.51,.52; prod ->
k3s_prod_primary/192.168.2.10/vip .9/sans .10,.9,127.0.0.1,.11,.12.

BREAKS THE SMARTMONTOOLS CIRCULAR DEPENDENCY. node_baseline tasks are now tagged
packages/system/disks, so the package install can run alone:
  ansible-playbook playbooks/node-baseline.yml -e k3s_hosts=k3s_prod --tags packages
Skipping is the guard — no disks-tagged task is selected, so the
BLOCKED-pending-disk-decision paths are never templated, let alone passed to mkfs.
Belt-and-braces, a new disks-tagged assert fires first in a FULL run and names §2
explicitly instead of failing obscurely at mkfs. `tags: never` was deliberately NOT used
(it would change the default run).

FOOTGUN FOUND AND FIXED: roles/cilium, cluster_verify and flux_bootstrap all hardcoded
.cache/dev.kubeconfig — the exact file infra/devcontainer/dev.sh exports as $KUBECONFIG.
Once prod became targetable, a prod cilium/verify run would have SILENTLY OVERWRITTEN it,
leaving the operator's kubectl quietly answering from PROD. Now cluster_kubeconfig_name
(dev.kubeconfig -> prod.kubeconfig). Dev path byte-identical.

KNOWN, DOCUMENTED, NOT FIXED HERE: flux-bootstrap.yml retargets but roles/flux_bootstrap
shells out to bootstrap/flux/bootstrap.sh with a hardcoded --path=clusters/dev — a
bootstrap/ subtree change, not a target-group change (§6, cross-referenced to §7).
vpn.egress.gateway.yml is parameterised but prod has no egress group yet and would need
its own vaulted PIA credentials. --check against prod is still impossible until the prod
vault exists — even the packages-only run needs it.

Nothing was run against the dev cluster: --list-hosts/--list-tasks/--syntax-check, plus
debug/assert with -c local, only.

Serves: R-ENV-01, R-ENV-02, R-ENV-03. Task: T-7.1.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-08-31 23:53:36 -05:00
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 a1fb31a7ef docs(prod): record the decided prod address plan; packages-in-role correction
PROD-PROVISIONING.md §4 now carries the full operator-decided address table (nodes
.10/.11/.12, control-plane VIP .9, ingress Gateway VIP .20, Cilium LB pool .20-.30) with
the two invariants that make it safe: the control-plane VIP sits outside the LB pool so
kube-vip and LB-IPAM cannot contend, and GATEWAY_VIP is the FIRST address of the pool
because the shared Gateway pins nothing and LB-IPAM hands it the first free address.

§5 no longer tells the operator to hand-install smartmontools — package installation is
the node_baseline role's job (operator ruling). §0 gains the node 2/3 addresses.

Task: T-7.1. Gate: MERGE GATE: PASS.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-08-31 22:44:10 -05:00
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 e3c44368c8 docs(prod): correct sudo posture to vaulted become; record status-surface ruling
Two operator corrections:

1. PROD DOES NOT GET NOPASSWD SUDO. My initial checklist recommended mirroring dev's
   passwordless sudo onto prod — rejected, correctly. Dev's NOPASSWD is a convenience
   that must not propagate to production. Prod instead keeps a real sudo boundary and
   drives Ansible `become` with an ansible-vault-encrypted `ansible_become_password` in
   inventory/group_vars/k3s_prod/vault.yml, mirroring the EXISTING hypervisor and
   proxmox_hosts groups. The decrypting passphrase stays outside the repo at
   ~/.config/home-k3s/ansible-vault-pass (ansible.cfg :: vault_password_file), so plays
   still run unattended with no plaintext secret in git.

2. THE TASK BOARD IS NOT THE STATUS SURFACE — THE REPOSITORY IS. Operator ruling closes
   the escalation raised in the previous commit. Requirement/spec status is to be DERIVED
   from repo state (what is authored, reconciled, and covered by a green requirement-tagged
   test), not from a hand-maintained board. The spec board is left as a historical seed;
   no agent edits it and no SPEC_PIN churn is spent on it. ci/spec-immutability.sh keeps
   its full strictness — no path exception was added, since weakening an R-TEST-06 gate
   for a bookkeeping file would be a defect, not a fix. A repo-derived spec status report
   becomes the artifact of record alongside the coverage report and this log.

Serves: R-ENV-03 (prod provisioning posture), R-SEC-01 (no plaintext secrets), R-TEST-06.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-08-31 22:29:39 -05:00
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 574088dfeb docs(prod): open Phase 7 (prep only) + T-7.1 bare-metal provisioning checklist
The operator added the first production node (k3s-prod-1, 192.168.2.10 — HP EliteDesk
800 G5 Mini, i7-9700T/31GiB, Debian 13, VT-x + /dev/kvm) and opened roadmap Phase 7 for
PREP WORK ONLY: no k3s install until the R-ENV-02 blockers close and the gate is green.

Records the Phase-7 entry-gate position honestly: the operator has declared hardware
ready, but "Phases 1-6 proven in dev/test" is NOT met (37/51 conformance; R-ENV-01/02/03
themselves uncovered). Proceeding is an explicit, accepted risk — not an oversight.

Adds infra/PROD-PROVISIONING.md (T-7.1, design-only): firmware/BIOS, disk layout, OS,
network, access, Ansible reuse, repo blockers, build sequence, Phase-7 exit criteria.

Key findings recorded in DECISIONS-LOG:
- R-ENV-02 is violated in the base — dev LAN addresses hardcoded into base manifests
  (cilium k8sServiceHost, the Cilium LB pool, crafty/UniFi LB IPs, 3 S3 backup
  endpoints). Prod is on 192.168.2.x, so prod would build WRONG today.
- clusters/prod never sets GATEWAY_VIP -> would inherit the base default 10.73.0.240,
  an address on the RETIRED libvirt network.
- No NOPASSWD sudo on the prod node -> all Ansible fails at its first become.
- node_baseline device defaults are virtio (/dev/vdb,vdc) and absent on bare metal.
- ESCALATION: agents/task-board.md is structurally unmaintainable — AGENTS.md designates
  it the one agent-editable surface, but ci/spec-immutability.sh fails the gate on ANY
  spec-repo dirt with no path exception. Explains the all-todo board after six phases.
  NOT worked around: exempting it would weaken an R-TEST-06 gate. Operator decision.

Operator decisions: Phase 7 open (prep only); wait for all 3 nodes before cluster-init;
check drive health before choosing the single-SSD disk layout.

Serves: R-ENV-01, R-ENV-02, R-ENV-03, R-PLAT-01/03. Task: T-7.1.
Gate: MERGE GATE: PASS.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-08-31 22:17:51 -05:00