Node 2 at full 32GB; storage recovered 17/17 after the cordon that was silently
blocking Longhorn rebuilds; Kyverno/CDI unblocked by satisfying the policy rather
than exempting it; conformance 82.4%->88.2%. Names the recurring class — a thing
that looks applied and isn't — and lists what is staged for one push versus what
waits on the operator.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
Backups moved to R2 (blocked on the operator's token), CDI cold-start deadlock
repaired in the graph, six L2 tests made environment-agnostic, conformance
82.4% -> 88.2%. Records the guard I broke and how it was caught, the R-TLS-02
'revoked' gap with the prune/rate-limit trade-off that makes it an operator call,
and the merge preconditions for both the CDI split and the R2 switch.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
Prod is up: 12/13 tiers Ready, LE wildcard issued, 113 pods, dev's 57 DNS
records byte-identical throughout. Records both cold-start deadlocks (Kyverno
CRDs, CDI StorageProfile) as one root cause, the external-dns footgun and the
prove-before-acting pattern that disarmed it, three bugs in my own verification,
the pfSense wildcard now shadowing prod, and what remains for the operator.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
Two bugs stacked and the outer one hid the inner. Fixing the dead OIDC guard made the
block execute for the first time in these apps' deployed lifetime, which immediately
exposed a latent defect: the hook's last statement was `[ cond ] && action`, so on the
SUCCESS path it returned 1 and became the hook's exit status — and a non-zero postStart
exit makes the kubelet kill the container.
Records the pattern for the next PM: fixing dead code is not a safe no-op. It is the first
execution of never-tested code and deserves the caution of new code, not of a
one-character escape.
Also records what is verified live (Cilium maxUnavailable applied with pod ages UNCHANGED,
proving nothing rolled), and that strict substitution is committed but NOT ACTIVE — it
needs bootstrap.sh step 1 because the controllers sit outside Flux's inventory.
Records three parallel research passes and, importantly, TWO CORRECTIONS.
Correction 1 (mine): StrictPostBuildSubstitutions alone is INSUFFICIENT — it fixes nothing
about ordering. The actual fix is one line: platform.dependsOn: [flux-system]. Verified
against kustomization_controller.go::checkDependencies at our exact version — dependsOn is
REVISION-gated, not merely Ready-gated, so a dependent sharing a GitRepository cannot
reconcile revision N until the dependency has APPLIED revision N.
Correction 2 (a research agent's): the claim that Helm considered the bad release healthy,
so remediation never fired, is WRONG — measured on the live cluster, the Helm release
secrets show v9 = failed. The machinery did fire. maxUnavailable: 2 of 3 IS confirmed, so
the real harm was blast radius, not missed detection.
Adds a MEASURED substitution-semantics table, including the two anti-patterns nobody had
written down: ${VAR:?msg} renders the MESSAGE as the value, and ${VAR:=default} silently
ships the dev value to prod. Both are exempt from strict mode by design — which is exactly
why strict would never have caught the gitea/nextcloud dead-guard bug.
Also corrects repo doctrine: escaping is TOTAL ($${ARR[0]} is safe); only the unescaped
indexed form is fatal. And qualifies an earlier overstatement in this log: kustomize strips
structural YAML comments before envsubst, so the hazard is block-scalar bodies, not all
comments.
Notes Flux 2.4.0 is out of support and that strict became default-on in kustomize-controller
v1.9.0 — so the audit is a prerequisite for the upgrade regardless.
Ranked plan P0-P5 with what is done, what is ready, and what needs an operator call.
Merging PR #4 put cilium agents into Init:Error on 2/3 dev nodes for ~6 minutes. Self-healed;
cluster fully green. Recorded because the mechanism is systemic and far more dangerous on a
cold prod bootstrap.
Root cause: cluster-vars (which DEFINES a knob) is owned by the flux-system Kustomization,
while platform/ (which REFERENCES it) is owned by the platform Kustomization, with no
dependency ordering between defining a variable and using it. Flux post-build substitution is
NON-STRICT by default, so during the window where platform rendered the new manifest against
the old cluster-vars, ${K3S_API_HOST} became the EMPTY STRING. Cilium upgraded with
k8sServiceHost: "" and fell back to ClusterIP 10.43.0.1 — which only the Cilium agent can
translate, and that agent was the thing restarting. Its config init container then could not
reach the API server at all.
Proven by the HelmRelease config digest going e83bf695 -> eebd6c88 -> e83bf695: the config
changed and then changed back to BYTE-IDENTICAL. The pre-merge byte-identity verification was
correct — the steady state is identical; the damage was a transient intermediate render.
optional: false does NOT protect against this: it requires the ConfigMap to exist, not that
every referenced key is defined.
Fix recommended, NOT applied unilaterally: enable the StrictPostBuildSubstitutions feature gate
on kustomize-controller so an undefined variable FAILS the Kustomization instead of silently
emptying it — fail-closed, per this project's own doctrine. Requires first proving every ${VAR}
in every substituted path is defined or correctly escaped, or it would fail legitimate embedded
shell expansions. Interim discipline: add a knob in one commit, reference it in a later one.
Serves: R-ENV-02, R-GITOPS-01, R-PLAT-01.
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 $ANSIBLE_VAULT, so this stays honest by gate.
4. TOOLCHAIN GAP FIXED: the devcontainer image does NOT ship the Galaxy collections, so
EVERY ansible play died at parse time on community.general.modprobe. ansible.cfg now
sets collections_path = collections, and the collections are installed there from the
existing collections/requirements.yml (gitignored — pinned by requirements, fetched at
setup, vendored bytes are not source).
5. DRIVE HEALTH MEASURED and recorded in §2 with the raw attribute table so the numbers
are auditable. Verdict: usable, but not for production etcd/Longhorn state — 31% of
rated life consumed, 15 grown bad blocks, 187 erase failures, and 32 unexpected power
losses on a consumer drive with NO power-loss protection, in a single failure domain.
etcd is the worst possible tenant: it fsyncs constantly and unclean power loss without
PLP is exactly how a member corrupts.
6. NON-ECC RAM: RISK ACCEPTED by the operator, recorded as a CLOSED decision, not an open
item — do not re-litigate. Rationale: 3-node k3s homelab, not enterprise; corruption on
one node is outweighed by the other two and causes node ejection. That holds for the
dominant mode (etcd raft CRC + quorum; Longhorn 3 replicas + hard anti-affinity +
rebuild). Recorded residual: corruption introduced UPSTREAM of replication replicates
faithfully to all three replicas, so quorum sees no disagreement — low probability, and
the only mitigation is different hardware. Follow-up noted: Longhorn's
snapshotDataIntegrity is left at the chart default rather than set explicitly, and it
is the mechanism that operationalises the operator's own argument.
Serves: R-DNS-01, R-DNS-03, R-ENV-02, R-ENV-03, R-SEC-01. Task: T-7.1.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
Records what landed, the numbers (coverage 37->40/51, safety-critical scaffolds 1->0,
PROVEN still 0 by design), the corrections made mid-session so they are not re-litigated
(prod NOPASSWD rejected; the '$i envsubst bug' disproven by running the real tool; the
stranded DNS branch dropped rather than landed), three near-misses worth remembering, the
six items blocked on the operator, and what is knowingly left undone.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
Operator directive: conformance and gates are enforced at the Gitea runner / CI-CD
level — use it. The authority on mergeability is the Actions run, not a local
`make -C ci gate`; local runs are a fast pre-check only.
Proven immediately on this branch. Same commit (a1fb31a):
local -> "no changed files vs base; empty touched-requirement set" -> MERGE GATE: PASS
CI -> 17 touched requirements -> REQUIRE: FAILED, uncovered
['R-SEC-01','R-SEC-02','R-TEST-06'] -> MERGE GATE: BLOCKED
The local run resolved an empty diff base, checked nothing, and reported green. A local
false green is this project's most dangerous failure mode — it hid real coverage debt.
Fix in progress so local agrees with CI or announces loudly that it cannot determine a
base; an honest noisy skip beats a quiet false pass (ci/README.md exit-code contract).
The gate was RIGHT: we authored a vaulted-secret flow (R-SEC-01) and status tooling
reasoning about spec immutability (R-TEST-06) while those requirements had NO covering
test. Tests are being authored; the rule is NOT being narrowed.
Also records how to read CI from a workstation — the API paths are non-obvious on this
Gitea version (actions/runs/<run>/jobs 404s; use actions/tasks + actions/jobs/<id>/logs,
noting the task-id -> job-id offset).
OPERATOR ATTESTATIONS: DR is proven (Velero -> Proxmox server, restore demonstrated) and
dev-cluster resilience is proven (slow only because Longhorn is on HDD; etcd is on its
dedicated SSD). Both recorded as fact. Kept distinct from automated proof: the status
report's R-STATE-03 finding is TEST debt, not capability debt — the system does the
thing, the suite does not yet assert it. The attestation does not close the requirement
and the gate must not be softened to make it appear closed.
Serves: R-TEST-03, R-TEST-05, R-TEST-06, R-STATE-03.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
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]>
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]>
Appends the definitive current-state/handoff entry to DECISIONS-LOG (SSO fixed via CVE-2025-30162
egress allow, 5 forward-auth UIs gated, 8 vCPU, Gitea Actions CI live, external-snapshotter vendored;
operational gotchas; prioritized Next Steps → Longhorn-SSD, L2/L3-CI, forward-auth long-term,
Phase-6 onboarding). Updates the reconnect guide (6→8 vCPU) and points new agents at the handoff.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
Text-only cleanup after the upgrade campaign. Updates stale version
strings, prose, and comments to the verified current facts; no
Kubernetes behavior or version pins changed except the kubectl
toolchain bump (below).
Verified facts applied: k3s v1.36.4+k3s1, Debian 13 trixie,
Cilium 1.20.1 / Gateway API v1.6.1, Longhorn 1.12.1, node RAM 24 GiB,
dedicated virtio2 SSD etcd disk per node, Velero chart 12.x / v1.18,
Grafana 13.2.0.
- Version strings across infra/ and platform/ READMEs + comments
- kubectl toolchain 1.31.4 -> 1.36.4 (devcontainer/ci/conformance
versions.env; 1.31 vs a 1.36 cluster exceeded the +-1 skew)
- Retired-single-apps-Kustomization refs -> apps-wave-0/1/2 + apps-vms
with per-wave SOPS decryption (flux/clusters docs + bootstrap.sh)
- COMPLETED/historical banners on the three executed plan docs
- Resolved TODO(WS-SEC) markers -> Renovate-maintained ranges
- Appended dated DECISIONS-LOG entry (2026-08-30) superseding the
2026-08-26 LIVE STATE line
Left as revalidation items (not blind-edited): external-snapshotter
v8.2.0 vs 1.36, Cilium ext_authz/forward-auth relevance under 1.20.1,
conformance ImageVolume feature-gate assertions under 1.36.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
The content-scan half of the 'stop keying on doc-header tokens' follow-up is done
(ci/touched-requirements.sh). The path-map half remains: clusters/* and ci/* are
still keyed wholesale to R-ENV-02 + R-GITOPS-01, which is why those two stay in
DOCUMENTED_GAPS. Notes the accepted consequence for header-declared manifests.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
`ci/touched-requirements.sh` documents its detection as "R-* tokens literally
present in the diff of changed files". It did not do that — it grepped the ENTIRE
CONTENT of every changed file. So a change inherited every requirement those files
had ever mentioned in prose, and `--require-all` then blocked the merge on
requirements the author never went near.
On this branch that meant editing the decision log and the tofu docs dragged in
five unrelated requirements, all on untouched lines, all legitimately uncovered:
[coverage] REQUIRE: FAILED — required requirement(s) uncovered: [5 IDs]
The practical effect was that the PM could not append to the decision log without
failing CI — which is a fair part of why the log went stale in the first place.
This is the defect already logged as "FOLLOW-UP (WS-TEST): fix the matcher so real
requirements need not be exempted".
Two scoping rules, both learned from the gate blocking merges it should not have:
1. Scan the ADDED/REMOVED lines of the diff, as the header always claimed.
Removed lines count too — deleting a test's requirement tag, or a policy's
self-declared ID, touches that requirement just as much as adding one.
2. Skip `*.md`. An ID in prose is a REFERENCE, not a declaration: explaining a
requirement is not changing behaviour against it. Rule 1 alone is not enough —
a commit that documents a mis-attribution names the IDs involved and thereby
re-triggers the very mis-attribution it fixes, and the decision log can never
record which requirements a change concerned.
This TIGHTENS attribution rather than weakening the gate:
- no requirement is exempted, and DOCUMENTED_GAPS is untouched;
- authoritative declarations (`conformance.home.k3s/R-*` tags, Kyverno policies,
ServiceDefinitions) all live in YAML, on lines a real change must touch;
- the coarse path->requirement fallback is unchanged and file-type agnostic, so
the doc subtrees that matter (conformance/, schemas/, catalog/, clusters/, ci/)
stay covered either way.
Alternatives rejected: adding the five IDs to DOCUMENTED_GAPS genuinely weakens the
gate; scrubbing requirement IDs out of prose (precedent f9e9640) would mean editing
the decision log's own history to appease a matcher.
Gate semantics change — flagged in DECISIONS-LOG.md for review.
Also drops three R-TEST-06 mentions this branch had added to prose and refreshes
the now-stale "gate is RED" notes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
The docs had drifted badly behind ~85 commits of delivery. The root README still
said "Phase 0 — Foundations. No cluster exists yet"; the infra docs still
described a libvirt/KVM cluster that has been retired for two days; and
DECISIONS-LOG.md — the PM's authoritative record — stopped at 2026-08-25 AM.
Anyone following these docs would have been working from a false map.
Verified against the live cluster (3/3 nodes, 7/7 Flux Kustomizations Ready,
10/10 HelmReleases Ready) rather than inferred from commit messages.
README.md
- Phase 0 -> a per-phase status table: 0-6 delivered and deployed, 7 not open.
- Layout now shows the wave split, platform-config, apps/vms, infra, bootstrap.
- Real conformance number (36/51, 70.6%) and how to regenerate it.
- Devcontainer workflow; note that the gate was red and why.
infra/PHASE1-STATUS.md — rewritten. Was a `virsh`/libvirt resume guide for a
cluster that no longer exists. Now: the Proxmox substrate, the pfSense NAT
paths, both kubectl access paths (Keycloak OIDC normal / cert break-glass),
the toolchain, off-repo state that must not be lost, and the fact that Flux's
git source is an app inside the cluster (`git push origin main` IS the deploy).
infra/PHASE1-SCOPE.md — historical banner. The exit criteria and sizing
rationale are still worth keeping; the libvirt execution steps are not.
infra/README.md — Proxmox, plus a map of the subtree and where the cluster
actually lives (it is not on this workstation).
infra/devcontainer/README.md — the "run tofu and ansible on the HOST" limitation
is OBSOLETE: it was a dmacvicar/libvirt polkit/PID problem, and bpg/proxmox
talks to an HTTP API. Everything runs in the container now. Documents the full
CI-gate toolchain and what each bind mount is load-bearing for (the age keyring
and the read-only spec repo especially — without the latter, spec-immutability
silently skips instead of verifying).
infra/tofu/README.md — was "Authoring only — nothing here has been applied". It
is applied and live. Disk sizes corrected 40/100 -> 64/128 GiB (confirmed
against the running nodes), pfSense NAT marked done, and a warning that
terraform.tfstate is absent on a fresh workstation — an apply with empty state
would try to recreate the three live nodes.
infra/tofu/variables.tf — section comment disagreed with its own defaults.
infra/cluster.sh — retired-with-instructions header. It silently drives libvirt
domains that do not exist; behaviour unchanged, but it no longer lies.
apps/vms/unifi/README.md — was "NOT WIRED IN", 60Gi, and listed a file that has
since been dropped. Now: live status, 40Gi, resolved open questions marked
resolved, and the two constraints the next person will otherwise rediscover —
KubeVirt's 2048B inline userData cap, and that apps-vms must never carry
postBuild.substituteFrom (envsubst corrupts the cloud-init).
DECISIONS-LOG.md — backfilled the gap as one structured entry: the Proxmox
migration, NAT + kube-vip, the twice-proven oauth2-proxy cold-start deadlock,
the Flux source cutover, CI going live in-cluster, ten app onboardings and the
renderer bugs they exposed, the wave split (verified: DBs adopted, not
recreated — original ages intact, prune restored), KubeVirt storage, the UniFi
VM, and kubectl SSO. Plus verified live state and the carried-forward open list.
Two corrections to the record while verifying:
- kubectl OIDC is LIVE (`kubectl auth whoami` -> oidc:<user>,
[oidc:platform-admins]), so the rolling restart 3472f1d deferred has
happened.
- UniFi OS Server is NOT installed in the guest. The VM is healthy (Ubuntu
24.04.4, guest agent connected, live-migratable) but :11443 answers nothing,
and the CNP explicitly permits cluster -> :11443, so it is genuinely not
listening rather than a policy artifact.
Docs and comments only; no manifest semantics change.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
Both components authored by worktree-isolated agents, reviewed, integrated to main,
offline-green (MERGE GATE: PASS, dev+prod overlays render). Deploy blocked on the
push-to-gitea permission + 3 operator SOPS hand-offs. Full runbook + verify-at-deploy
escalations recorded.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
PIA-provider server selection is flaky here (random dead IPs); the operator's .ovpn
uses sweden.privacy.network (load-balanced, reliable). Switch to custom mode
(VPN_SERVICE_PROVIDER=custom, OPENVPN_CUSTOM_CONFIG=/config/pia.ovpn), mount the
pia-custom-ovpn Secret, keep creds + kill-switch + tun-mtu 1300. Drops PIA-provider
server list/updater and native PF (Phase-6 concern). Pending the operator-provisioned
pia-custom-ovpn Secret (not merged until it exists).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
CORRECTION: the connection failures were gluetun dialing RETIRED PIA IPs (46.246.x
= dead → timeouts, which I mis-read as a network block). A fresh PIA .ovpn connects
from the same host, and PIA's current SE Stockholm servers (158.173.x) are reachable.
Cilium was independently cleared (default-allow, host-fw off, Hubble FORWARDED).
Fix: UPDATER_PERIOD=24h so gluetun fetches PIA's current servers; keep
OPENVPN_MTU/MSSFIX=1350 for the real Cilium-VXLAN 1450 pod MTU (data channel);
PIA default UDP port. Re-enable vpn-egress. Full correction in DECISIONS-LOG.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
Decisive diagnosis: OpenVPN's outbound init packets are 14 bytes with zero
replies (so MTU was never the blocker), pod UDP egress is healthy (NTP replies),
but TCP 501/443 to PIA IPs time out while Google/Cloudflare are OPEN — across many
PIA servers. This 192.168.2.x WiFi segment blackholes PIA's IP ranges (and
intercepts DNS). Not code-fixable. Reverted the port/MTU red-herring env to PIA
defaults; disabled vpn-egress pending an operator network fix (move to the
unfiltered 192.168.1.x LAN, or unblock PIA on the router). Full trace in
DECISIONS-LOG.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
Actual root cause (operator-directed layered MTU check): Cilium runs VXLAN
(routing-mode tunnel) so pods get MTU 1450 (1500-50 encap) while node, hypervisor,
and the Google Fiber WAN are all 1500. OpenVPN's ~1500-byte handshake packets
exceed 1450 and are dropped (PMTUD broken). The ports were a red herring.
Fix: OPENVPN_MTU=1350 + OPENVPN_MSSFIX=1350 so encrypted packets (~1402) fit under
1450. Keeps OpenVPN + VXLAN unchanged. Re-enable vpn-egress. Full layered trace
(pod/node/host) in DECISIONS-LOG.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
OpenVPN can't connect on this network (each port fails differently, so it's
OpenVPN-specific not a UDP block — NTP/123 works): 1197 = home OpenVPN-server
conflict; 53 = DNS interception; 8080 = TLS handshake fails across servers (MTU
on WiFi+triple-NAT). Recommend pivoting to WireGuard via thrnz/docker-wireguard-pia
(UDP 1337, MTU-robust, ADR-0013 fallback, operator's original preference) — a
spec-level (ADR-0013) change, so escalated. Disabled meanwhile. Full trace in
DECISIONS-LOG.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
Port 53 also got no PIA replies: this network transparently intercepts outbound
:53, so dig works but OpenVPN-over-53 is swallowed. An NTP/123 probe from the host
returned fine, proving arbitrary non-53 UDP works bidirectionally (so it's
port-specific: 1197 conflict + 53 DNS-intercept, not a UDP block). Move to 8080
(community-verified for PIA, non-DNS, non-1197).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
Operator identified the block: the home network NATs its own OpenVPN server on
WAN:1197, colliding with the cluster's outbound PIA-on-1197 flow (port-specific,
not a general UDP block — UDP/53 worked in tcpdump). PIA accepts OpenVPN on
53/1194/1197/1198/8080/9201; chose 53 (empirically proven to traverse this net).
- cluster-vars: add PIA_OPENVPN_PORT="53"
- gluetun: OPENVPN_ENDPOINT_PORT=${PIA_OPENVPN_PORT}
- re-enable vpn-egress; DECISIONS-LOG resolution noted
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
Phase-3 VPN config is complete + correct (OpenVPN-UDP, SE Stockholm), but the
OpenVPN UDP/1197 handshake to PIA never gets a reply. Traced with tcpdump: packets
leave pod→node→host→WiFi (SNAT 192.168.2.103) fine, but 0 replies return to the
host, while host UDP/53 works. The 192.168.2.x home router/ISP drops OpenVPN UDP —
upstream of everything in this repo. Reverted to disabled to avoid a crashloop
firing false KubePodCrashLooping alerts; one-line re-enable once the network is
fixed. Full trace in DECISIONS-LOG.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
Gluetun cannot do PIA over WireGuard (upstream unsupported; live "provider name
is not valid for Wireguard"). Operator approved OpenVPN-UDP and ADR-0013 was
amended in the spec. This aligns the impl:
- platform/kustomization.yaml: re-enable `- vpn-egress` (Phase 3, OpenVPN-UDP)
- gluetun-gateway.yaml: clean stale WireGuard comments (header, image note,
VPN_TYPE/creds comments); config already VPN_TYPE=openvpn
- README.md: PIA-over-OpenVPN, status=enabled, steering iface wg0 -> tun0
- DECISIONS-LOG.md: disk/drive incident (k3s -> NVMe; failing Seagate) + Phase-3
OpenVPN resolution
Stale WireGuard comments inside the operator's encrypted pia-credentials.sops.yaml
header left untouched (editing breaks the SOPS MAC; cosmetic).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <[email protected]>
Prep only — nothing deployed; running cluster untouched.
Reconciliation graph (operator-approved Option A): author clusters/dev/rollout/
= 4 per-component Flux Kustomizations (kyverno->cilium->longhorn->monitoring,
monitoring dependsOn longhorn). Dev overlay $patch:delete's the monolithic base
platform/apps and adds ./rollout, so only the no-secret tier reconciles; the
secret-blocked components are simply not created until hand-offs arrive. The
no-secret tier carries no SOPS content, so it needs no sops-age key. prod is
untouched (still builds the monolith). Convergence path coded in (delete rollout/
+ the two deletes) — R-ENV-02 divergence flagged for architect review.
Component hardening via cluster-vars (prod keeps strict posture):
- KYVERNO_VALIDATION_ACTION Enforce->Audit(dev), _WEBHOOK_FAILURE_POLICY
Fail->Ignore(dev), _ADMISSION_REPLICAS 3->1(dev); webhook namespaceSelector
excludes system+platform namespaces.
- MONITORING_STORAGE_CLASS var; GRAFANA_ADMIN_SECRET var (dev ''=chart default);
Alertmanager SMTP/secret deferred to Phase-4 with verbatim re-enable markers.
Cilium parity verified against the live CNI (no-op adopt). Validated:
kubectl kustomize dev/prod/all-components, envsubst->YAML parse, make -C ci gate PASS.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <[email protected]>
jakman85andClaude Opus 5