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jakman85andClaude Opus 5 f92707f38c feat(vpn-ingress): WireGuard remote access on udp/51820 (hostNetwork, declarative peers)
gate / gate (pull_request) Successful in 1m47s
gate / conformance (pull_request) Has been skipped
Lets the operator's Android / Linux / Windows / macOS devices dial in from
anywhere and behave like LAN machines: full reach to 192.168.2.0/24 plus
internet egress out the house WAN. Opposite direction to platform/vpn-egress,
which sends pods OUT through PIA; the two share nothing but the word "VPN".

WireGuard because it is the only option with a first-party client on all four
named platforms, and because its handshake MAC is keyed with the responder's
own public key: an unauthenticated packet gets NO reply, so udp/51820 is
indistinguishable from a closed port. That, not "it is encrypted", is what
makes an unfiltered WAN port defensible, and why there is no source allowlist.

hostNetwork: true is REQUIRED, not convenient. A pod-networked server must SNAT
clients to its own pod IP, so every remote client would carry that pod's Cilium
identity -- and a pod-sourced request to the shared Gateway VIP returns 403 from
Envoy for ALL 16 hostnames (measured 2026-10-04), because Cilium's Gateway
preserves the original source identity and enforces the destination's ingress
policy. The obvious build would have shipped a healthy-looking tunnel on which
every cluster web UI was 403 and *.home.keithjackson.dev did not even resolve.
In the host netns traffic is SNATed to the node and arrives as host/remote-node,
exactly like a LAN client. It also sidesteps the unsafe ip_forward sysctl, the
L2-announcement lease lottery, and double encapsulation (hence MTU 1420).
Permitted by restrict-host-namespaces' own carve-out for platform namespaces.
The cost is stated in networkpolicy.yaml rather than papered over: no
NetworkPolicy constrains a hostNetwork pod.

A DaemonSet so the hand-made WAN forward cannot be invalidated by a reschedule;
all three nodes answer the same keys, so failover is a one-line router change.

Peer PUBLIC keys are plaintext in peers.yaml, which makes "who can get into my
house" a reviewable PR diff. The only secret -- the server's private key -- is
an out-of-band Secret: an agent must not mint a long-lived private key, and the
two halves are joined only at pod start into a tmpfs that dies with the pod.

Ships INERT-BUT-HEALTHY with zero peers. THREE off-repo manual steps remain
(kernel module, server key, WAN forward) -- runbooks/vpn-remote-access.md.

Touches clusters/** , so ci/approval-policy.sh will block pending the
operator's /approve-override. Deliberately not posted by me (CLAUDE.md §1).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
2026-10-05 22:29:46 -05:00
16 changed files with 1412 additions and 1 deletions

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+2 -1
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@@ -21,7 +21,8 @@ infra/ node provisioning: OpenTofu (Proxmox VE) + cloud-init + Ansible,
bootstrap/ one-time cluster bootstrap: Flux install, SOPS/age key, host Gitea
platform/ platform CONTROLLERS (Flux HelmReleases / operator bases): kyverno, cilium,
longhorn, external-snapshotter, cert-manager, externaldns, gateway, coredns,
vpn-egress, monitoring, cnpg, keycloak, oauth2-proxy, kubevirt
vpn-egress, vpn-ingress, monitoring, cnpg, keycloak, oauth2-proxy, kubevirt
(vpn-egress = pods OUT via PIA; vpn-ingress = remote clients IN via WireGuard)
platform-config/ platform CONFIGS — the custom resources of the CRDs installed above
(ClusterIssuers, Gateway, Kyverno policies, KubeVirt/CDI CRs, Keycloak CRs).
Split out because CRs and the CRDs they use cannot apply in one pass.
+26
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@@ -102,6 +102,7 @@ data:
# S3_BACKUP_ENDPOINT, CNPG_BACKUP_PATH; pihole + pihole-dns: PIHOLE_DNS_VIP, LAN_CIDR, plus
# GATEWAY_VIP/UNIFI_L4_VIP/CRAFTY_L4_VIP read BY pihole to author its LAN split-horizon answers;
# plex-remote + pihole: PLEX_L4_VIP),
# vpn-ingress (WG_CLIENT_CIDR),
# velero (S3_BACKUP_ENDPOINT, S3_BACKUP_REGION,
# VELERO_BACKUP_BUCKET, VELERO_BACKUP_PREFIX), apps-vms (UNIFI_L4_VIP). A ${TOKEN} in an
# UNSUBSTITUTED path would ship the literal string into the cluster.
@@ -207,6 +208,31 @@ data:
# prod -> 192.168.2.0/24 (prod LAN; nodes .10/.11/.12)
LAN_CIDR: "192.168.1.0/24" # ingress scope for the PiHole DNS listener
# --- Remote-access VPN client subnet (platform/vpn-ingress, WireGuard) --------------------------
# The tunnel subnet handed to REMOTE VPN clients. `.1` is the server (the hostNetwork DaemonSet,
# on every node); `.2`-`.254` are devices, allocated one /32 each in
# platform/vpn-ingress/peers.yaml. Consumed twice in the pod's config-assembly script: to derive
# the server's own address, and as the `-s` match of the MASQUERADE rule that makes LAN replies
# routable.
#
# IT IS A KNOB RATHER THAN A LITERAL FOR ONE REASON: it is the only address range in this cluster
# that must be checked against EVERY OTHER range at once, so it belongs where those are declared.
# 10.90.0.0/24 was chosen to collide with none of them:
# 10.0.0.0/16 Cilium cluster-pool pod CIDR (${CLUSTER_POD_CIDR})
# 10.43.0.0/16 k3s service CIDR (measured live 2026-10-05: kubernetes svc
# clusterIP 10.43.0.1)
# 10.72.192.0/18 the PIA tunnel's pushed addresses (platform/vpn-egress)
# 192.168.1.0/24 dev LAN / pfSense LAN (${LAN_CIDR} base default)
# 192.168.2.0/24 prod LAN (${LAN_CIDR} on prod)
#
# NO PER-ENVIRONMENT OVERRIDE, and that is deliberate rather than an omission: unlike every VIP
# above, this range is NOT drawn from the LAN. It is private to the tunnel, so the same value is
# correct in both environments and a prod patch would be a no-op that implies otherwise.
#
# IF YOU CHANGE IT, every already-issued client profile breaks (its `Address` is from this range)
# and must be re-rendered — so treat it as fixed once the first device is enrolled.
WG_CLIENT_CIDR: "10.90.0.0/24" # remote VPN clients; .1 = server. NOT a LAN range
# --- Bulk (external NFS) storage host (docs/04 bulk tier) ---------------------------------------
# THE address of the Proxmox host whose ZFS datasets back every `class: bulk` volume: the media
# library (Storage/plex, 8.33 T — plex, sonarr, radarr) and the legacy Nextcloud archive
+7
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@@ -71,4 +71,11 @@ resources:
# controller must NEVER gate the platform chain; same non-gating rationale as headlamp/oauth2-proxy.
# Carries velero-cloud.sops.yaml, so clusters/dev adds a SOPS decryption patch for it (by name).
- backup.yaml # Flux Kustomization -> ./platform/velero (dependsOn platform-config)
# WireGuard remote-access VPN (north-south INGRESS, udp/51820) — POST-platform tier
# (dependsOn platform-config, wait:false). NOT the same thing as platform/vpn-egress, which sends
# pods OUT through PIA; this lets remote CLIENTS IN. Non-gating is load-bearing rather than
# conventional here: its DaemonSet cannot start until the operator creates the out-of-band
# `wg-server-key` Secret, so in the gating `platform` tier an unfinished manual step would have
# stalled every apps wave. Carries no SOPS secret, so neither overlay adds a decryption patch.
- vpn-ingress.yaml # Flux Kustomization -> ./platform/vpn-ingress (dependsOn platform-config)
- cluster-vars.yaml # overlay knob surface (base defaults)
+56
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@@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
---
# Flux Kustomization: WireGuard remote-access VPN — reconciles ./platform/vpn-ingress.
#
# POST-PLATFORM TIER (dependsOn platform-config), NON-GATING (wait:false). Not a line in
# platform/kustomization.yaml, for the standard reason plus one specific to this component:
#
# * STANDARD: a leaf must never sit in the gating `platform` tier. While `platform` is not-Ready
# NOTHING downstream reconciles — the incident behind the headlamp/oauth2-proxy/homepage moves
# (DECISIONS-LOG: "Headlamp gating stall").
# * SPECIFIC, AND THE REASON THIS IS NOT A JUDGEMENT CALL: this DaemonSet cannot start until the
# operator creates the out-of-band `wg-server-key` Secret (runbooks/vpn-remote-access.md
# step 1). That is the correct fail-closed state — an unenrolled VPN must not come up — but in
# the gating tier it would have been a self-inflicted platform-wide outage ON MERGE, with the
# cause (a missing manual step) invisible from any Flux condition.
#
# WHY dependsOn platform-config AND NOT cilium. This component needs no Gateway, no TLS cert, no
# Keycloak and no LB-IPAM pool — it has no HTTPRoute and no LoadBalancer Service, and hostNetwork
# means it does not even need a Cilium endpoint. It could legally reconcile much earlier. It is
# pinned behind platform-config anyway so that the ONE thing remote clients actually consume
# through it — split-horizon DNS and the shared Gateway — exists by the time the tunnel does.
# A tunnel that comes up before the things on the far side of it is a support call, not a feature.
#
# wait:false: nothing in the graph dependsOn this, and its pods are legitimately not-Ready whenever
# the server key is absent or the `wireguard` kernel module has not been loaded on a node. Neither
# condition should be able to gate anything else, even if a future resource is mistakenly pointed
# at it.
apiVersion: kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1
kind: Kustomization
metadata:
name: vpn-ingress
namespace: flux-system
spec:
interval: 10m
retryInterval: 2m
timeout: 5m
prune: true
wait: false
dependsOn:
- name: platform-config
sourceRef:
kind: GitRepository
name: flux-system
path: ./platform/vpn-ingress
# REQUIRED, not boilerplate: platform/vpn-ingress/daemonset.yaml renders ${WG_CLIENT_CIDR} into
# the config-assembly script. Without this block that token becomes the EMPTY STRING and the
# Kustomization still reports Ready (Flux's substitution fails OPEN — ci:
# flux-postbuild-substitution), leaving an initContainer that derives a server address of ".1/"
# and a MASQUERADE rule with no source. Both fail loudly at pod start, but the Kustomization
# would look healthy.
postBuild:
substituteFrom:
- kind: ConfigMap
name: cluster-vars
# NO `decryption:` stanza is needed in the overlays: this path carries no *.sops.yaml. The server
# key is an out-of-band Secret (platform/vpn-ingress/kustomization.yaml says what to do if that
# ever changes).
@@ -0,0 +1,225 @@
---
date: 2026-10-05
branch: feat/vpn-remote-access-wireguard
title: Remote-access VPN — WireGuard on udp/51820, hostNetwork because a pod identity would 403 every Gateway hostname
---
## What changed
New platform component `platform/vpn-ingress/`: a **WireGuard** remote-access VPN so the operator's
Android / Linux / Windows / macOS devices can dial in from anywhere on the internet and behave like
machines on the LAN — full reach to `192.168.2.0/24` plus internet egress out the house WAN.
This is the **opposite direction** to the existing `platform/vpn-egress` (pods *out* through PIA,
ADR-0015). They share nothing but the word "VPN"; both READMEs now say so, and `README.md`'s layout
block labels the two.
**Transport: WireGuard, and the security argument is the handshake's failure mode, not "it is
encrypted".** WireGuard's first handshake message carries a MAC keyed with the responder's own
public key, so a sender that does not already know it gets **no reply at all** — no error, no reset,
no banner. From the internet, udp/51820 is indistinguishable from a closed port: nothing to
brute-force, no version string, no amplification. That is what makes an unfiltered WAN port
defensible here, and it is why there is deliberately no `loadBalancerSourceRanges`-style allowlist
(which would also break roaming clients). It also has first-party clients on all four named
platforms, which OpenVPN (needs a CA + per-device certs + a CRL) and IKEv2 do not.
**`hostNetwork: true`, and this is THE decision — forced by a measured property of this cluster.**
A pod-networked WireGuard server must SNAT client traffic to its own pod IP (Cilium drops a packet
whose source is not the endpoint's address), so every remote client would have arrived wearing *that
pod's* security identity. `decisions/2026-10-04-plex-advertise-plexdirect.md` measured what that
costs: a request to the shared Gateway VIP **from inside a pod returns `403 Access denied` from
Envoy for all 16 Gateway hostnames**, because Cilium's Gateway preserves the original source
identity and enforces the *destination's* ingress policy, and every app admits `reserved:ingress`
plus named peers — never an arbitrary pod. So the obvious build would have produced a tunnel that
came up healthy, showed connected peers, routed packets, and 403'd every cluster web UI — and
`*.home.keithjackson.dev` would not even have resolved, because `apps/wave-0/pihole-dns.yaml`'s
ingress policy deliberately omits the `cluster` entity. In the host netns there is no pod identity
to carry: forwarded traffic is SNATed to the node address and arrives as `host`/`remote-node`,
byte-for-byte what a LAN client looks like. Three further problems vanish with it: `ip_forward` is
already 1 on these nodes (so no `--allowed-unsafe-sysctls` kubelet change — it is *not* a safe
sysctl); no LoadBalancer VIP, so no L2-announcement lease lottery and no `externalTrafficPolicy`
trade-off; and no double encapsulation, which is what makes `MTU = 1420` simply correct.
`hostNetwork` is permitted by `restrict-host-namespaces`' own stated carve-out (it matches
`app-namespace=true` only, and names Cilium/node-exporter as the precedent); `namespace.yaml` is
deliberately unlabelled. **The cost is stated, not buried:** a hostNetwork pod has no Cilium
endpoint, so **no NetworkPolicy constrains this workload**. `networkpolicy.yaml` says that at
length rather than shipping an `allow world → 51820` rule that would read as the control and
enforce nothing; the real boundary is WireGuard's peer authentication.
**A DaemonSet, not a Deployment.** The WAN forward names one node address by hand, off-repo (same
shape as the plex tcp/32400 forward). A floating single replica would silently invalidate it on
every reschedule; an identical listener on all three nodes makes **failover a one-line router
change** with no cluster work and no re-issued client profiles. A pinned LoadBalancer VIP was the
considered alternative and was rejected: it reintroduces the L2 lease, SNAT and an extra node hop
into the one path whose failure mode is "I am away from home and cannot get in".
**Authorisation is split so that it stays reviewable.** Peer **public** keys live in
`platform/vpn-ingress/peers.yaml` in **plaintext** — a public key grants nothing by itself, and this
makes "who can get into my house" a PR diff with `git log` as its audit trail. The only real secret,
the server's private key, is the `wg-server-key` Secret, **created out of band by the operator**: an
agent must not mint a long-lived private key (CLAUDE.md §6), and a key that passed through a session
transcript would have to be treated as compromised. The two halves are joined only at pod start, by
an init container, into a `medium: Memory` emptyDir — so the assembled config holding the key never
touches a node's disk and dies with the pod.
**There are no peers yet, and that is the correct initial state**, for the same reason. The VPN ships
INERT-BUT-HEALTHY: a zero-peer interface listens and refuses every handshake.
Files:
- `platform/vpn-ingress/` (new): `namespace.yaml`, `peers.yaml` (the plaintext peer register),
`daemonset.yaml` (hostNetwork listener + config assembly), `networkpolicy.yaml` (namespace
baseline, with the honest caveat), `kustomization.yaml`, `README.md` (the design record).
- `clusters/base/vpn-ingress.yaml` (new): its own **non-gating post-platform** Flux Kustomization
(`dependsOn platform-config`, `wait:false`). Non-gating is load-bearing rather than conventional
here: the DaemonSet *cannot* start until the operator creates the server key, so in the gating
`platform` tier an unfinished manual step would have stalled every apps wave on merge.
- `clusters/base/kustomization.yaml`: the new tier added.
- `clusters/base/cluster-vars.yaml`: new `WG_CLIENT_CIDR` (`10.90.0.0/24`), declared next to
`LAN_CIDR` because it is the one range that must be collision-checked against every other; the
comment enumerates the five it avoids. **No prod override, deliberately** — unlike every VIP, this
range is private to the tunnel, so the same value is correct in both environments and a prod patch
would imply otherwise. Substitution inventory updated.
- `infra/ansible/roles/node_baseline/defaults/main.yml`: `wireguard` added to
`node_baseline_kernel_modules`. The pod has `NET_ADMIN` but deliberately **not** `SYS_MODULE`, so
it cannot autoload the module — it CrashLoops with a clear error rather than quietly degrading to
userspace wireguard-go (which would need `/dev/net/tun`, a device a hostPath mount cannot actually
grant, as the `/dev/dri` attempt proved).
- `infra/vpn-ingress/new-peer.sh` (new): enrols a device. Generates the keypair on the operator's
machine, writes a 0600 profile **outside** the checkout (it refuses to write into the repo),
prints a QR code for phones, and prints only the public `[Peer]` stanza. It also refuses a
duplicate address, because two devices on one address does not error anywhere — the server routes
to whichever handshook last, so both appear to work intermittently.
- `runbooks/vpn-remote-access.md` (new) + its `kustomization.yaml` generator entry + `README.md`
index line: the three manual steps, the four off-LAN verification checks, revocation, and why no
connection alert exists.
- `README.md`: `vpn-ingress` added to the layout, with the egress/ingress distinction spelled out.
**THREE MANUAL STEPS REMAIN AND THE VPN DOES NOT WORK UNTIL ALL THREE ARE DONE** (all off-repo by
necessity; `runbooks/vpn-remote-access.md`): run `node_baseline` to load the kernel module, create
the `wg-server-key` Secret, and forward WAN udp/51820 to one node address on the SOHO router.
**SENSITIVE PATHS — this PR touches `clusters/**` (three files), so `ci/approval-policy.sh` will
BLOCK it.** It needs the operator's `/approve-override <reason>` posted as a PR **review** of type
"Comment". I have deliberately not posted it: CLAUDE.md §1 forbids an agent clearing this on its own
PR, and the agent account holds `owner`, so the prohibition is a rule, not a limit.
## What I verified
Live prod, read-only, 2026-10-05, plus the offline gate.
- **Toolbox gate** (`./infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c './ci/gate.sh'`): **rc 3**, with
`spec-immutability`, `decisions-log`, `lint`, `l0`, `render-golden`, `l1` and `approval-policy` all
**pass**. The rc 3 is two environmental skips — `gitea-settings` (no local `SETTINGS_API_TOKEN`)
and `conformance` L2/L3 (`CLUSTER_AVAILABLE` unset). **Not green. Reported as rc 3, not as pass.**
Run from an isolated git worktree with both CLAUDE.md §3 workarounds applied
(`DEV_KUBECONFIG=/dev/null` plus an `ENGINE` shim bind-mounting the main checkout's `.git` and
the sibling spec repo) — which is why `spec-immutability` is **green here and skipped in CI**,
where the runner has no spec checkout. `approval-policy` passing locally is an offline N/A, not a
verdict; the real verdict is the CI run below.
- **The CI gate ran on PR #55 (run 244, head `1a67fc1b`) and `approval-policy` is the ONLY failing
stage** — read from the job log, not from the red tick. Verbatim: "This PR changes the pipeline or
the security posture it rests on, and has NO approving review from anyone other than its author
('gitea-admin')", naming exactly the three files I predicted:
`clusters/base/cluster-vars.yaml`, `clusters/base/kustomization.yaml`,
`clusters/base/vpn-ingress.yaml`. Every other stage that ran reported green —
`gitea-settings`, `decisions-log`, `lint`, `l0`, `render-golden`, `l1`. So the branch is blocked
on the operator's `/approve-override <reason>` (posted as a PR **review** of type "Comment") and
on nothing else. **I have not posted it** — CLAUDE.md §1.
- **Branch protection is live, measured by CI's own `gitea-settings` stage** (it has the token this
workstation lacks): `required_approvals = 0`, `enable_status_check = true`,
`status_check_contexts = ["gate / gate (pull_request)"]`, `block_admin_merge_override = true`,
`enable_push = false`, `dismiss_stale_approvals = true`, and **1 runner online**. That is the §2b
re-measurement of CLAUDE.md §2's table for this branch, not a restatement of it.
- **`flux-postbuild-substitution` (L0) actually exercised the new wiring, and caught a real defect
in it.** On the first run it FAILED, naming `platform/vpn-ingress/daemonset.yaml:118` and
attributing it to "Flux Kustomization 'vpn-ingress' (clusters/base/vpn-ingress.yaml, path
./platform/vpn-ingress)". Two things are proven by that message: the new tier's
`postBuild.substituteFrom` declaration is correctly detected (so `${WG_CLIENT_CIDR}` will be
substituted, not shipped literally), and the check reads comments as well as values — the hazard
was a comment that spelled out the forbidden braced form literally while claiming not to use it.
Fixed; the check now passes 444/444 with 0 hazards.
- **The `wireguard` kernel module is available on these nodes by construction**: all three run
Debian 13 (trixie) on kernel `7.1.8+deb13-amd64` (measured), and WireGuard has been in-tree since
5.6, so it is present in the distro kernel and only needs loading.
- **`net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1` is already written by `node_baseline`**
(`roles/node_baseline/tasks/main.yml`, `/etc/sysctl.d/99-k3s-cilium.conf`), and **no kubelet
carries `--allowed-unsafe-sysctls`** (grepped across `roles/k3s_server`, `roles/node_baseline` and
`group_vars`: zero hits). That pair is what makes the host netns the only option that does not
require a node-restart change.
- **Cilium's datapath, measured from `cilium-config` rather than from the values file**:
`enable-ipv4-masquerade=true`, `enable-bpf-masquerade=true`, `routing-mode=tunnel`,
`tunnel-protocol=vxlan`, `ipv4-native-routing-cidr` EMPTY, Cilium `v1.20.1`. The vxlan underlay is
where `MTU = 1420` comes from, and the empty native-routing CIDR is why pod→LAN is masqueraded
today.
- **`WG_CLIENT_CIDR` collides with nothing.** Pod CIDR `10.0.0.0/16` (`CLUSTER_POD_CIDR`), service
CIDR `10.43.0.0/16` (measured: `kubernetes` Service clusterIP is `10.43.0.1`), the PIA tunnel's
`10.72.192.0/18` (`platform/vpn-egress/README.md`), and both LANs `192.168.1.0/24` /
`192.168.2.0/24`. `10.90.0.0/24` is outside all five.
- **The egress-class label matters and is set to `internet`.** Read live:
`CiliumEgressGatewayPolicy vpn-egress-steering` selects `podSelector:
homelab.keithjackson.dev/egress-class: vpn` with **no namespace scope**, so `vpn` here would have
steered every remote client's internet traffic out PIA.
- **All three nodes are untainted** (`spec.taints: None` on each), so the DaemonSet covers the
cluster with no tolerations.
- **`new-peer.sh` was run end to end** against a throwaway server key in the scratchpad (deleted
immediately after; it never existed in the repo). It rendered a correct profile — `Address
10.90.0.7/32`, `DNS 192.168.2.23`, `Endpoint wan.home.keithjackson.dev:51820`, `MTU 1420`,
`PersistentKeepalive 25`, `AllowedIPs 0.0.0.0/0` — at mode 0600, printed the matching public-key
stanza, and both argument-validation paths (missing name, out-of-range octet) refuse correctly.
The private key was redacted from every line I displayed.
- **The endpoint name is resolver-independent, which is the specific trap this avoids.**
`wan.${BASE_DOMAIN}` is an unproxied public Cloudflare A record kept current by
`platform/externaldns/ddns.yaml` (checked every 5 min), so it resolves from a cellular connection
— unlike any name PiHole answers, which a remote client cannot resolve until it is already
connected. (This is the `plex.direct` lesson applied.)
- **Velero does cover this namespace.** `platform/velero/helmrelease.yaml`'s `daily` schedule
excludes only `monitoring` and `unifi`, so `vpn-ingress` and the `wg-server-key` Secret are
captured off-cluster to R2. Read from the manifest, not from a backup listing.
## What I did NOT verify
- **THE ACTUAL FIX. Nothing in this branch has been proven to carry a single packet.** The
DaemonSet has never been reconciled, no `wg0` has ever existed, and no handshake has ever been
attempted. Three blockers are off-repo and manual (kernel module, server key, WAN forward), and
this branch removes none of them — it only makes them the *only* remaining work.
- **Outside-in reachability, at all.** This repo has **no off-LAN vantage point**, which is exactly
the gap the plex remote-access work hit. Step 6 of the runbook (a phone on cellular) is the only
honest test and it has not been run.
- **The in-pod `iptables` → host-netfilter interaction, which is my biggest single doubt.** Debian 13
uses nf_tables; the container writes MASQUERADE/FORWARD rules into the **host's** tables via the
image's own `iptables`. If that binary is the legacy backend while the host is nft, the rules can
apply to a table the kernel does not consult — and the symptom would be the nastiest available:
handshakes succeed, `wg show` looks perfect, and every forwarded connection hangs. **Check this
first if the tunnel comes up but nothing is reachable:** `iptables-save -t nat | grep MASQUERADE`
and `nft list table ip nat` on the node, from the host, not from the pod.
- **Whether `allowPrivilegeEscalation: false` is compatible with the image's s6 init.** It is the
correct posture and I set it, but this repo has already been bitten by `no-new-privileges`
misbehaving (`platform/externaldns/ddns.yaml`'s README note). If the pod fails before
`wg-quick` runs, that flag is the first thing to try flipping.
- **Whether `NET_ADMIN` alone is sufficient.** Reasoned from what `wg-quick` does (create the link,
set a sysctl, write two netfilter rules), not measured. If `iptables` complains, `NET_RAW` is the
likely addition — deliberately not granted pre-emptively.
- **The image's custom-config path.** `lscr.io/linuxserver/wireguard:1.0.20260223-r0-ls124` (tag
confirmed to exist and to be the current one, published 2026-10-01) is expected to bring up
whatever is in `/config/wg_confs/` when `PEERS` is unset. That is its documented behaviour; it has
not been run here, and the init container's assembly of that file has never executed.
- **Whether the probe is right.** `wg show wg0` is asserted to exit non-zero when the interface is
absent. Not executed.
- **Cilium's reaction to a new `wg0` in the host netns.** `platform/cilium/values.yaml` does not pin
`devices`, so Cilium auto-detects; whether it attaches to `wg0` — and whether that matters — is
unknown. `wg` interfaces are already filtered out by `node_health_collect.py`, so something in
the estate anticipates them, but that is not evidence about Cilium.
- **Zero peers means the end-to-end authorisation path is untested**, including revocation. The
first enrolment is also the first test of `peers.yaml`'s format being what `wg-quick` accepts.
- **No peer-level observability exists.** An exporter publishing
`wireguard_latest_handshake_seconds` is the top follow-up; until then "who is connected" is an
on-demand `wg show` and nothing alerts on an unexpected session. Pod-down is covered only by
kube-prometheus-stack's generic `KubePodNotReady` / `KubeDeploymentReplicasMismatch`, which I did
not confirm fire for a DaemonSet in this namespace.
- **The security consequence I am most keen for a human to review rather than take from me:** an
enrolled device reaches the three k3s nodes themselves — apiserver 6443, kubelet 10250, SSH 22 —
because "reach the entire local network" includes them. That is stated in the README and the
runbook with the narrowing recipe, but it is a posture decision, not a verified fact, and it is
the right thing to argue about on this PR.
@@ -74,12 +74,23 @@ node_baseline_backports_kernel_packages:
# kernel, and how do I undo it?" from the machine itself.
node_baseline_backports_kernel_stamp: /etc/node-baseline-backports-kernel
# Modules written to /etc/modules-load.d/k3s-cilium-longhorn.conf (persistent) AND modprobe'd now.
node_baseline_kernel_modules:
- overlay
- br_netfilter
- iscsi_tcp
- dm_crypt
- nfs
# Remote-access VPN (platform/vpn-ingress). The WireGuard DaemonSet creates its wg0 link in the
# HOST netns with CAP_NET_ADMIN only -- it is deliberately NOT granted CAP_SYS_MODULE, so it
# cannot autoload this itself: `ip link add wg0 type wireguard` fails outright when the module is
# absent, and the pod CrashLoops. Loading it here is therefore a PREREQUISITE of that component,
# not a nicety. In-tree since kernel 5.6, so Debian 13's 7.1.8 ships it and there is nothing to
# install. Naming it here also means the kernel does the crypto: without the module a WireGuard
# container's only fallback is slow userspace wireguard-go, which we do not use (and which would
# need /dev/net/tun -- a device a hostPath mount cannot actually grant, as the /dev/dri attempt
# proved: visible but EPERM from the device cgroup).
- wireguard
# --- DATA DISKS (tasks/disks.yml, tag `disks`) ----------------------------------------
# The SHAPE of a node's storage is DECLARED per environment, never inferred from whether
+195
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@@ -0,0 +1,195 @@
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# =================================================================================================
# new-peer.sh — enrol one device on the remote-access VPN (platform/vpn-ingress).
#
# Generates a WireGuard keypair ON THIS MACHINE, renders the device's client profile, optionally
# prints a QR code for a phone, and prints the one `[Peer]` stanza to paste into
# platform/vpn-ingress/peers.yaml. The private half NEVER leaves this machine: it is not sent to the
# cluster, not committed, and not written to any log.
#
# WHY A SCRIPT AND NOT A RUNBOOK STEP. Three of these fields are easy to get wrong in ways that are
# either silently insecure or silently broken, and all three are mechanical:
# * AllowedIPs on the SERVER side must be a /32. On the server, AllowedIPs is simultaneously the
# cryptokey routing table AND the inbound source filter, so a /24 here lets one device spoof
# every other device's tunnel address.
# * PersistentKeepalive must be set on the CLIENT. Without it the NAT mapping at the client's end
# expires after ~30s of idle and nothing can reach the device until it speaks first — which
# presents as "the VPN works for a minute and then half-works".
# * The endpoint must be the DDNS name, never the current WAN IP (see --endpoint below).
#
# USAGE
# ./infra/vpn-ingress/new-peer.sh <device-name> <last-octet> [--split] [--out DIR]
#
# <device-name> short, lowercase, e.g. pixel-8, thinkpad, work-laptop. Used for the filename
# and the comment that ties the key to a human-recognisable device.
# <last-octet> 2-254, the device's address inside WG_CLIENT_CIDR. Must be unused.
# --split split tunnel: route ONLY the LAN and the tunnel subnet. Default is a FULL
# tunnel (0.0.0.0/0) so the device also egresses the house WAN.
# --out DIR where to write the profile (default: a 0700 dir under $TMPDIR).
#
# ENVIRONMENT
# WG_SERVER_KEY_FILE server PRIVATE key (default ~/.config/wireguard-home/server.key); its public
# half is derived from it. Alternatively set WG_SERVER_PUBKEY directly.
# WG_ENDPOINT_HOST default wan.home.keithjackson.dev
# WG_CLIENT_CIDR default 10.90.0.0/24 (must match clusters/base/cluster-vars.yaml)
# WG_LAN_CIDR default 192.168.2.0/24 (prod LAN_CIDR)
# WG_DNS default 192.168.2.23 (prod PIHOLE_DNS_VIP)
#
# REQUIRES: wireguard-tools (`wg`). `qrencode` is optional and only used for the QR code.
# =================================================================================================
set -euo pipefail
die() { printf 'new-peer.sh: %s\n' "$*" >&2; exit 1; }
REPO_ROOT="$(cd "$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")/../.." && pwd)"
PEERS_FILE="${REPO_ROOT}/platform/vpn-ingress/peers.yaml"
# --- defaults, each mirroring a value that is DECLARED elsewhere in this repo -------------------
# These are duplicated here rather than parsed out of the YAML on purpose: this script is meant to
# run on an operator's laptop with no checkout-shaped assumptions beyond its own location, and a
# silent mis-parse would be worse than a visible default. If you change the knob, change it here.
: "${WG_CLIENT_CIDR:=10.90.0.0/24}" # clusters/base/cluster-vars.yaml
: "${WG_LAN_CIDR:=192.168.2.0/24}" # clusters/prod LAN_CIDR
: "${WG_DNS:=192.168.2.23}" # clusters/prod PIHOLE_DNS_VIP
: "${WG_SERVER_KEY_FILE:=${HOME}/.config/wireguard-home/server.key}"
# wan.<base-domain> is an UNPROXIED A record that platform/externaldns/ddns.yaml keeps pointed at
# the current WAN IP (checked every 5 min). Use it, never a literal address: this house has a
# DYNAMIC WAN IP, and a profile pinned to today's address stops working without warning and with no
# symptom on the server side. It is a PUBLIC Cloudflare record, so it also resolves from a cellular
# connection — unlike any `*.home.keithjackson.dev` name PiHole answers, which a remote client
# cannot resolve until it is already connected.
: "${WG_ENDPOINT_HOST:=wan.home.keithjackson.dev}"
: "${WG_LISTEN_PORT:=51820}"
: "${WG_MTU:=1420}"
SPLIT=0
OUT_DIR=""
NAME=""
OCTET=""
while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
case "$1" in
--split) SPLIT=1; shift ;;
--out) OUT_DIR="${2:-}"; [ -n "$OUT_DIR" ] || die "--out needs a directory"; shift 2 ;;
-h|--help) sed -n '2,40p' "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}"; exit 0 ;;
-*) die "unknown option: $1" ;;
*) if [ -z "$NAME" ]; then NAME="$1"; elif [ -z "$OCTET" ]; then OCTET="$1"; else die "unexpected argument: $1"; fi; shift ;;
esac
done
[ -n "$NAME" ] || die "need a device name. See --help"
[ -n "$OCTET" ] || die "need a last octet (2-254). See --help"
printf '%s' "$NAME" | grep -Eq '^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]{0,30}$' \
|| die "device name must be lowercase letters/digits/hyphens: got '$NAME'"
printf '%s' "$OCTET" | grep -Eq '^[0-9]+$' || die "octet must be a number: got '$OCTET'"
[ "$OCTET" -ge 2 ] && [ "$OCTET" -le 254 ] || die "octet must be 2-254 (.1 is the server): got '$OCTET'"
command -v wg >/dev/null || die "wireguard-tools not installed ('wg' not on PATH). Debian/Ubuntu: apt install wireguard-tools"
# --- the server's public key --------------------------------------------------------------------
if [ -z "${WG_SERVER_PUBKEY:-}" ]; then
[ -r "$WG_SERVER_KEY_FILE" ] || die "cannot read server key '$WG_SERVER_KEY_FILE'.
Either point WG_SERVER_KEY_FILE at it, or set WG_SERVER_PUBKEY to the public half.
If the server key does not exist yet, see runbooks/vpn-remote-access.md step 1."
WG_SERVER_PUBKEY="$(tr -d ' \r\n' < "$WG_SERVER_KEY_FILE" | wg pubkey)"
fi
CLIENT_BASE="${WG_CLIENT_CIDR%/*}"; CLIENT_BASE="${CLIENT_BASE%.*}"
CLIENT_ADDR="${CLIENT_BASE}.${OCTET}"
# --- refuse a collision, because the failure is otherwise invisible -----------------------------
# Two devices sharing an address does not error anywhere: the server routes that address to
# whichever peer handshook most recently, so BOTH devices appear to work intermittently.
if [ -r "$PEERS_FILE" ] && grep -q "AllowedIPs *= *${CLIENT_ADDR}/32" "$PEERS_FILE"; then
die "${CLIENT_ADDR}/32 is already allocated in platform/vpn-ingress/peers.yaml. Pick another octet."
fi
if [ -r "$PEERS_FILE" ] && grep -qi "^ *# *${NAME} " "$PEERS_FILE"; then
printf 'new-peer.sh: WARNING a peer comment already mentions "%s" in peers.yaml.\n' "$NAME" >&2
fi
# --- output location: 0700, and never inside the repo -------------------------------------------
if [ -z "$OUT_DIR" ]; then
OUT_DIR="$(mktemp -d "${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/wg-peer-XXXXXX")"
else
mkdir -p "$OUT_DIR"
fi
chmod 700 "$OUT_DIR"
case "$(cd "$OUT_DIR" && pwd)" in
"$REPO_ROOT"|"$REPO_ROOT"/*) die "refusing to write a private key inside the git checkout ($OUT_DIR)" ;;
esac
PROFILE="${OUT_DIR}/${NAME}.conf"
umask 077
PRIVKEY="$(wg genkey)"
PUBKEY="$(printf '%s' "$PRIVKEY" | wg pubkey)"
if [ "$SPLIT" -eq 1 ]; then
ALLOWED="${WG_LAN_CIDR}, ${WG_CLIENT_CIDR}"
TUNNEL_KIND="split tunnel (LAN only; the device keeps using its own internet)"
else
ALLOWED="0.0.0.0/0"
TUNNEL_KIND="FULL tunnel (all IPv4 traffic egresses the house WAN)"
fi
cat > "$PROFILE" <<EOF
# ${NAME} — remote-access VPN profile for home.keithjackson.dev
# Generated $(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ) by infra/vpn-ingress/new-peer.sh
# ${TUNNEL_KIND}
#
# THIS FILE CONTAINS A PRIVATE KEY. Move it to the device, then delete it from here.
# It is the ONLY copy: the server never sees it and it cannot be recovered or re-derived.
[Interface]
PrivateKey = ${PRIVKEY}
Address = ${CLIENT_ADDR}/32
DNS = ${WG_DNS}
MTU = ${WG_MTU}
[Peer]
PublicKey = ${WG_SERVER_PUBKEY}
Endpoint = ${WG_ENDPOINT_HOST}:${WG_LISTEN_PORT}
AllowedIPs = ${ALLOWED}
# Hold the NAT mapping open from the client side. Required for the server to be able to reach the
# device at all once it goes idle; harmless otherwise (one small packet every 25s).
PersistentKeepalive = 25
EOF
chmod 600 "$PROFILE"
cat <<EOF
Device : ${NAME}
Address : ${CLIENT_ADDR}/32
Routing : ${TUNNEL_KIND}
DNS : ${WG_DNS} (PiHole — gives the device LAN answers for *.home.keithjackson.dev)
Profile : ${PROFILE} (0600; contains the private key)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STEP 1 — add this to platform/vpn-ingress/peers.yaml, under data.peers.conf, then PR it:
# ${NAME} — <owner>, enrolled $(date -u +%Y-%m-%d)
[Peer]
PublicKey = ${PUBKEY}
AllowedIPs = ${CLIENT_ADDR}/32
Keep the comment line: \`wg show\` can only print the key, so it is the only record of which
stanza belongs to which device when one has to be revoked.
STEP 2 — get the profile onto the device:
Android / iOS : scan the QR code below in the WireGuard app ("+" -> Scan from QR code)
Windows / macOS: WireGuard app -> "Import tunnel(s) from file" -> ${NAME}.conf
Linux : install as /etc/wireguard/${NAME}.conf, then
sudo systemctl enable --now wg-quick@${NAME}
STEP 3 — delete the profile from this machine once the device has it:
shred -u ${PROFILE} 2>/dev/null || rm -f ${PROFILE}
The tunnel will not work until the peers.yaml PR is MERGED and Flux has rolled the DaemonSet
(~1 min). Until then the device handshakes and gets silence, exactly like an unknown key.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EOF
if command -v qrencode >/dev/null; then
printf ' QR code (this IS the private key — your terminal scrollback now holds a credential):\n\n'
qrencode -t ansiutf8 < "$PROFILE"
else
printf ' qrencode not installed, so no QR code was printed (Debian/Ubuntu: apt install qrencode).\n'
printf ' Transfer %s to the device by another route instead.\n' "$PROFILE"
fi
+199
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@@ -0,0 +1,199 @@
# platform/vpn-ingress — WireGuard remote access (north-south INGRESS)
Lets the operator's own devices — Android, Linux, Windows, macOS, iOS — dial in from anywhere on
the internet and behave as though plugged into the home LAN: full reach to `192.168.2.0/24` and
egress out the house WAN.
> **This is not `platform/vpn-egress`.** They are opposite directions and share nothing but the
> word "VPN". `vpn-egress` pushes *pods out* to the internet through a PIA tunnel (ADR-0015,
> R-NET-05/06/07). This component lets *remote clients in*. Changing one never affects the other.
| | |
|---|---|
| Transport | WireGuard, **udp/51820**, kernel implementation |
| Where it runs | `hostNetwork` **DaemonSet** — one warm listener on every node |
| Client subnet | `${WG_CLIENT_CIDR}` = `10.90.0.0/24`; `.1` is the server, `.2`–`.254` devices |
| Authorisation | a device's **public key** is in [`peers.yaml`](./peers.yaml), or it cannot connect |
| The one secret | the server's private key, Secret `wg-server-key`, **created out of band** |
| Exposure | one hand-made WAN port-forward on the SOHO router, off-repo |
| Enrolling a device | [`infra/vpn-ingress/new-peer.sh`](../../infra/vpn-ingress/new-peer.sh) |
| Procedure / bring-up | [`runbooks/vpn-remote-access.md`](../../runbooks/vpn-remote-access.md) |
## Why WireGuard
The requirement names four client platforms. WireGuard is the only option that has a *first-party*
client on all of them (official apps for Android, iOS, Windows and macOS; in-kernel on Linux since
5.6, so a Linux client needs no userspace daemon at all). It is also the smallest thing to expose:
one UDP port, no cipher negotiation, no PKI, no user database, no TLS stack.
OpenVPN would have needed a CA, per-device certificates and a revocation list — three pieces of
long-lived state this repo would then have to protect and rotate. IKEv2/IPsec has native clients but
is painful to run in a container and brittle behind double NAT. Neither buys anything here.
### Why this is safe to expose to the whole internet
The honest answer is not "because it is encrypted" — it is the handshake's failure mode:
**An unauthenticated packet gets no reply at all.** WireGuard's first handshake message carries a
MAC keyed with the *responder's own public key*. If the sender does not already know it, the packet
is dropped silently — no error, no reset, no banner, nothing a scanner can fingerprint. From the
outside, udp/51820 is indistinguishable from a closed port. There is no login prompt to brute-force,
no version string to match against a CVE, and no amplification to abuse.
That is the whole security argument, and it is why the exposed port carries no IP allowlist (which
would also have made roaming clients unusable — a phone's address changes with every cell tower).
Compare `apps/wave-0/pihole-dns.yaml`, which *does* pin `loadBalancerSourceRanges` to the LAN: a
resolver answers anybody, so it must be scoped by address. WireGuard answers nobody.
What it does **not** protect against is a stolen device — anyone holding a device's private key
*is* that device. That is what revocation is for: delete the stanza, merge, done (~1 min).
## Architecture, and the one decision that drives everything
```
phone on 5G SOHO router k3s-prod-N (host netns)
┌──────────────┐ udp/51820 ┌───────────────┐ forward ┌────────────────────────────┐
│ WireGuard app│─────────────▶│ WAN 51820 ──▶ │───────────▶│ wg0 10.90.0.1/24 │
│ 10.90.0.2/32 │ over the │ node IP:51820 │ │ decrypt, then FORWARD │
└──────────────┘ internet └───────────────┘ │ SNAT to the node's addr │
└─────────────┬──────────────┘
│ as `host`/`remote-node`
┌─────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────┐
▼ ▼ ▼
LAN 192.168.2.0/24 Gateway VIP .20 (16 web UIs) WAN / internet
(NAS, router, printers) PiHole DNS VIP .23
```
### `hostNetwork: true` is required, not convenient
This is the only genuinely interesting decision in the component, and it was forced by a *measured*
property of this cluster rather than chosen for convenience.
In Cilium, what a packet may reach is decided by the **security identity of its source**. A
WireGuard server running as an ordinary pod must SNAT client traffic to its own pod IP (Cilium drops
a packet whose source is not the endpoint's own address), so every remote client would have arrived
everywhere wearing *that pod's* identity. On 2026-10-04 this cluster measured what that costs
(`decisions/2026-10-04-plex-advertise-plexdirect.md`): a request to the shared Gateway VIP **from
inside a pod returns `403 Access denied` from Envoy for all 16 Gateway hostnames**, because Cilium's
Gateway preserves the original source identity and enforces the *destination's* ingress policy —
and every app admits `reserved:ingress` plus named peers, never an arbitrary pod. LAN browsers work
only because they arrive as `reserved:world` / `reserved:host`.
So the pod-networked version of this component would have produced a tunnel that came up healthy,
reported connected peers, routed packets — and 403'd **every single cluster web UI**: plex, gitea,
keycloak, nextcloud, grafana, headlamp, the apex. `*.home.keithjackson.dev` would not even have
resolved, because `apps/wave-0/pihole-dns.yaml`'s ingress policy deliberately omits the `cluster`
entity. A VPN that looks up and is useless is the worst available outcome, and nothing in the
manifests would have hinted at it.
In the **host** netns there is no pod identity to carry. Forwarded client traffic is SNATed to the
node's own address, so it reaches the Gateway, PiHole and every LAN host as `host`/`remote-node` —
byte-for-byte what a LAN client looks like. Three further problems vanish with it:
* `net.ipv4.ip_forward` is **already 1** on these nodes (`node_baseline` writes
`/etc/sysctl.d/99-k3s-cilium.conf`). It is *not* in the kubelet's safe-sysctl allowlist, so a
pod-netns build would have needed `--allowed-unsafe-sysctls` on all three kubelets — a
node-restart change to the k3s service, to run a VPN.
* **No LoadBalancer VIP**, so no `CiliumL2AnnouncementPolicy` lease lottery (the backend-blind
announcer that cost this LAN an 8-day Minecraft outage — see
`conformance/tests/l0-static/l2-announced-vips-serve-from-any-node`) and no
`externalTrafficPolicy` trade-off to make at all.
* **No double encapsulation.** Client UDP lands on the node's own NIC, so the underlay is a flat
1500-byte path, not Cilium's 1450-byte VXLAN. That is what makes `MTU = 1420` simply correct.
`hostNetwork` is *permitted* here, and not by oversight:
`platform/kyverno/policies/restrict-host-namespaces.yaml` matches `namespaceSelector:
app-namespace=true` only, and names this exact carve-out in its own comment — "platform components
that do … e.g. Cilium, node-exporter … live in platform namespaces that do NOT carry the
app-namespace label". [`namespace.yaml`](./namespace.yaml) is deliberately unlabelled.
**The cost, stated rather than buried:** a `hostNetwork` pod has no Cilium endpoint, so **no
NetworkPolicy constrains this workload** — not [`networkpolicy.yaml`](./networkpolicy.yaml), not
anything. That file says so at length instead of implying a protection it cannot provide. The
boundary around this port is WireGuard's peer authentication, full stop.
### Why a DaemonSet
The WAN forward names **one node address**, by hand, off-repo (same shape as the plex tcp/32400
forward). A single-replica Deployment would float on every reschedule and silently invalidate it.
A DaemonSet instead puts an identical listener on all three nodes — every node answers the same
keys — so **losing the forwarded node is a one-line router change**, with no cluster work and no
re-issued client profiles. The two idle listeners cost ~15 MiB each.
A pinned `LoadBalancer` VIP was the considered alternative (it would make the forward immune to node
replacement). Rejected: it reintroduces the L2-announcement lease, SNAT, and an extra node-to-node
hop into the one path whose failure mode is *"I am away from home and cannot get in"*. Fewer
translations win here.
### The split that keeps authorisation reviewable
| half | where | why |
|---|---|---|
| peer **public** keys + addresses | [`peers.yaml`](./peers.yaml), **plaintext in git** | a public key grants nothing by itself, and this makes *"who can get into my house"* a reviewable PR diff with `git log` as its audit trail |
| the server's **private** key | Secret `wg-server-key`, **out of band** | the only real secret; an agent must not mint a long-lived private key (CLAUDE.md §6) |
The two are joined only at pod start, by the init container, into a **`medium: Memory` emptyDir** —
so the assembled config holding the private key never touches any node's disk and dies with the pod.
Encrypting the peer register would have hidden exactly the change a reviewer most needs to see: a
new line granting a new device access to the whole LAN.
## What a client can reach — and how to narrow it
By design, **everything a LAN machine can reach**: all of `192.168.2.0/24`, the shared Gateway's 16
hostnames, PiHole, the NAS, the router's admin UI, and the internet via the house WAN.
**That includes the three k3s nodes themselves** — `192.168.2.10/.11/.12`, and therefore the
kube-apiserver on 6443, kubelet on 10250 and SSH on 22. An enrolled device is as privileged as a
machine sitting in the house, which is what "reach the entire local network" asks for; it is
recorded here because it is the largest consequence of saying yes to that, and because nobody should
discover it later. **It is also why a lost device must be revoked promptly** (delete its stanza,
merge; ~1 min to take effect).
To grant less, narrow it at the **client** profile first — `new-peer.sh --split` emits a
split-tunnel profile routing only the LAN and the tunnel subnet, so the device keeps its own
internet path. To enforce less *server-side*, add filtering to the `PostUp` chain in
[`daemonset.yaml`](./daemonset.yaml) (e.g. `iptables -A FORWARD -i wg0 -d 192.168.2.10 -j DROP`
before the accept rules) — the FORWARD chain there is the only enforcement point, since no
NetworkPolicy applies.
## Operating it
* **Enrol a device:** `./infra/vpn-ingress/new-peer.sh <name> <octet>` → paste the printed `[Peer]`
stanza into `peers.yaml` → PR → merge. Phones scan a QR code; desktops import a `.conf`.
* **Revoke a device:** delete its stanza → PR → merge. No other step; the key stops working.
* **Is it up?** `kubectl --context k3s-prod -n vpn-ingress get ds wireguard` — three Ready.
* **Who is connected?** `kubectl --context k3s-prod -n vpn-ingress exec ds/wireguard -- wg show`
(`latest handshake` under ~3 min means live). Never dump `wg showconf` — it prints the private key.
* **Full bring-up and verification:** `runbooks/vpn-remote-access.md`.
## Prerequisites outside this directory
1. **The `wireguard` kernel module on every node.** Added to `node_baseline_kernel_modules`
(`infra/ansible/roles/node_baseline/defaults/main.yml`); the operator runs the role. The pod has
`NET_ADMIN` but deliberately **not** `SYS_MODULE`, so it cannot load the module itself — it
CrashLoops with a clear `wg-quick` error instead of quietly degrading to userspace WireGuard.
2. **The `wg-server-key` Secret.** Runbook step 1. Until it exists the DaemonSet cannot start —
the correct fail-closed state for an unenrolled VPN.
3. **The WAN port-forward**, udp/51820 → one node address. Hand-made on the SOHO router, off-repo,
and the half CI can never check.
## Not built (deliberate, with reasons)
* **No metrics / no peer-level alerting.** A WireGuard exporter would expose
`wireguard_latest_handshake_seconds` per peer — genuinely useful for spotting unexpected
activity — but it needs a second `NET_ADMIN` container in the pod that terminates the
internet-facing tunnel, and that trade was not worth making unverified. Pod-down is already
covered generically by `KubeDeploymentReplicasMismatch`/`KubePodNotReady` from
kube-prometheus-stack. **This is the top follow-up.**
* **No preshared keys.** They would add a symmetric post-quantum hedge on top of the Noise
handshake — and would be a real secret, forcing `peers.yaml` into SOPS and costing the
reviewability above. Revisit only if the threat model changes; if it does, the PSK belongs in the
`wg-server-key` Secret.
* **No IPv6.** The server offers no IPv6 tunnel address, so a full-tunnel client with native IPv6
still reaches IPv6 sites *outside* the tunnel. Functionally harmless, a privacy leak if the point
was to hide the client's network. Fix is an `fd..` ULA on `wg0` plus `::/0` in the client's
`AllowedIPs`; not done because nothing here needs it.
* **No in-cluster-service reach beyond what the LAN has.** Clients reach cluster apps the way a LAN
browser does — through the Gateway VIP. Pod IPs and `10.43.0.0/16` service IPs are not routed
into the tunnel.
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---
# =================================================================================================
# WireGuard remote-access listener — udp/51820 in the HOST network namespace, on every node.
# =================================================================================================
# WHY WireGuard AND NOT OpenVPN/IPsec. The requirement is "Android, Linux, Windows and other
# computing clients", from anywhere on the internet, securely. WireGuard is the only option here
# with a first-party client on all four platforms (official apps for Android/iOS/Windows/macOS, and
# in-kernel on Linux since 5.6 — so Linux clients need no userspace daemon at all). It is also the
# smallest attack surface of the three: one UDP port, ~4k lines of kernel code, no cipher
# negotiation, no PKI, no user database, and — the property that actually matters for a port
# exposed to the whole internet — it NEVER REPLIES to an unauthenticated packet. See README.
#
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# hostNetwork: true — REQUIRED, not convenient. This is THE decision in this file.
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# A VPN client must behave like a machine plugged into the LAN. In Cilium, what a packet is ALLOWED
# to reach is decided by the SECURITY IDENTITY of its source, and after any in-pod SNAT that
# identity is the VPN pod's — not `world`. That distinction is not academic; it was MEASURED on
# this cluster on 2026-10-04 (decisions/2026-10-04-plex-advertise-plexdirect.md): a curl of the
# shared Gateway VIP from inside a pod returns `403 Access denied` from Envoy for **all 16**
# Gateway hostnames, because Cilium's Gateway preserves the original source identity and enforces
# the DESTINATION's ingress CiliumNetworkPolicy, and every app admits `reserved:ingress` plus named
# peers — never an arbitrary pod. LAN browsers are allowed only because they arrive as
# `reserved:world` / `reserved:host`.
#
# So a pod-networked WireGuard server would have handed remote clients a tunnel on which every
# single cluster web UI returned 403 — plex, gitea, keycloak, nextcloud, grafana, headlamp, the
# apex, all of them — while `wg show` reported a perfectly healthy tunnel. PiHole would have failed
# the same way and worse: apps/wave-0/pihole-dns.yaml's ingress policy deliberately OMITS the
# `cluster` entity, so VPN clients would not have been able to resolve `*.${BASE_DOMAIN}` either.
# The VPN would have looked up and been useless, which is the worst failure shape available.
#
# In the host netns there is no pod identity to carry: forwarded client traffic is SNATed to the
# NODE's address, so it reaches the Gateway, PiHole and every LAN host as `host`/`remote-node` —
# exactly what a LAN client looks like. Three further problems disappear with it:
# * net.ipv4.ip_forward is ALREADY 1 on these nodes (node_baseline writes it to
# /etc/sysctl.d/99-k3s-cilium.conf), so no pod sysctl is needed — and `net.ipv4.ip_forward`
# is NOT in the kubelet's safe-sysctl allowlist, so a pod-netns version of this would have
# required `--allowed-unsafe-sysctls` on all three kubelets (a node-restart change).
# * no LoadBalancer VIP, so no CiliumL2AnnouncementPolicy lease lottery (the defect that cost
# this LAN an 8-day Minecraft outage) and no `externalTrafficPolicy` trade-off at all.
# * no double encapsulation. WireGuard's UDP lands on the node's own NIC, so the underlay is a
# flat 1500-byte LAN path, not Cilium's 1450-byte VXLAN.
#
# hostNetwork is PERMITTED here, and not by accident: platform/kyverno/policies/
# restrict-host-namespaces.yaml matches `namespaceSelector: app-namespace=true` only, and names
# this exact carve-out in its own comment ("platform components that do -- e.g. Cilium,
# node-exporter -- live in platform namespaces that do NOT carry the app-namespace label").
# namespace.yaml is deliberately unlabelled. THE COST IS REAL AND IS STATED: a hostNetwork pod
# bypasses the Cilium datapath, so NO NetworkPolicy constrains this workload (see
# networkpolicy.yaml, which says so rather than pretending otherwise). The boundary protecting
# this port is WireGuard's own cryptographic peer authentication, not the CNI.
#
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# A DaemonSet, not a single-replica Deployment.
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# The WAN port-forward on the SOHO router points at ONE node address, by hand, off-repo (same shape
# as the plex tcp/32400 forward — runbooks/plex-remote-access.md). A Deployment would float to
# whichever node the scheduler picked and silently invalidate that forward on every reschedule. A
# DaemonSet instead puts an identical warm listener on ALL THREE nodes: the forward names one of
# them, and if that node is lost, FAILOVER IS A ONE-LINE ROUTER CHANGE with no cluster work and no
# new client profiles — every node answers the same keys. Each node binds udp/51820 in its own
# netns, so there is no conflict, and the two idle listeners cost ~15 MiB each.
#
# All three nodes carry no taints (measured 2026-10-05), so no tolerations are needed for the
# DaemonSet to cover the cluster; add them if a node is ever tainted.
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: DaemonSet
metadata:
name: wireguard
namespace: vpn-ingress
labels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: vpn-ingress
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: vpn-ingress
# One node at a time, so a rollout never takes every listener down at once. The node named by the
# router's forward does drop for a few seconds during its own replacement; clients re-handshake
# automatically (WireGuard retries every 5s, and rekeys every 2 minutes regardless).
updateStrategy:
type: RollingUpdate
rollingUpdate:
maxUnavailable: 1
template:
metadata:
labels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: vpn-ingress
# Declared for documentation and for symmetry with the app tier. It MUST be `internet`, and
# the value is load-bearing rather than cosmetic: platform/vpn-egress/egress-steering.yaml's
# CiliumEgressGatewayPolicy selects `egress-class: vpn` pods CLUSTER-WIDE, with no namespace
# scope. Setting `vpn` here would steer every remote client's internet traffic out the PIA
# tunnel instead of the house WAN — the opposite of the requirement, and it would look like
# a working VPN with a mysterious foreign exit IP. (The selector matches on the pod label,
# so hostNetwork does not exempt this pod from being selected.)
homelab.keithjackson.dev/egress-class: internet
# WireGuard authenticates its own peers by public key; there is no UI and no IdP hop.
homelab.keithjackson.dev/auth-mode: native
spec:
# See the long rationale at the head of this file. ClusterFirstWithHostNet keeps in-cluster
# DNS working for the pod itself despite hostNetwork (without it the pod inherits the NODE's
# resolv.conf, which points at public resolvers).
hostNetwork: true
dnsPolicy: ClusterFirstWithHostNet
automountServiceAccountToken: false
# ── Assemble the running config: PUBLIC peer register (git) + PRIVATE server key (Secret) ──
# The two halves are deliberately stored apart (peers.yaml explains why) and are only ever
# joined here, at pod start, into a tmpfs that is destroyed with the pod. The server's private
# key is therefore never written to any node's disk, never committed, and never logged.
initContainers:
- name: assemble-config
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/wireguard:1.0.20260223-r0-ls124
imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
# POSIX sh. Note on $ handling: this script is rendered through Flux's envsubst (the
# `vpn-ingress` Kustomization declares postBuild.substituteFrom), so `${WG_CLIENT_CIDR}`
# below IS substituted on purpose — it is a declared cluster-vars knob. Every SHELL
# variable is written bare (`$net`, `$(cmd)`), which envsubst leaves untouched. There is
# deliberately NO braced shell-variable form anywhere in here: braces are what envsubst
# consumes, so a shell variable written that way silently renders to the empty string.
# (ci: flux-postbuild-substitution enforces this, and caught this very comment when it
# first spelled the hazard out literally — the check reads comments too, correctly.)
command:
- /bin/sh
- -c
- |
set -eu
umask 077
mkdir -p /config/wg_confs
# Derive the server's own tunnel address from the single CIDR knob, so there is no
# second knob to keep in agreement: 10.90.0.0/24 -> 10.90.0.1/24.
net=${WG_CLIENT_CIDR}
mask=$(echo "$net" | cut -d/ -f2)
base=$(echo "$net" | cut -d/ -f1 | cut -d. -f1-3)
# The key arrives as a Secret file; strip any trailing newline the operator's shell
# added, or wg-quick rejects the config with "Key is not the correct length or format".
key=$(tr -d ' \r\n' < /run/wg-server-key/privatekey)
if [ -z "$key" ]; then
echo "FATAL: /run/wg-server-key/privatekey is empty." >&2
echo " See runbooks/vpn-remote-access.md step 1 (create the server key)." >&2
exit 1
fi
{
echo '[Interface]'
echo "Address = $base.1/$mask"
echo 'ListenPort = 51820'
# 1420 = 1500 (flat LAN/WAN path to the node's own NIC) - 60 bytes of WireGuard
# encapsulation (20 IPv4 + 8 UDP + 32 WireGuard). This is also what wg-quick would
# auto-derive, but it is pinned because the symptom of getting it wrong is the
# nastiest kind: handshakes and SSH work while large packets (HTTPS, file copies)
# hang. Inner packets stay under Cilium's 1450-byte VXLAN MTU too, so reaching a
# cluster pod does not fragment either.
echo 'MTU = 1420'
printf 'PrivateKey = %s\n' "$key"
# ── Forwarding + SNAT, applied in the HOST netns when wg0 comes up ──
# ip_forward is already 1 from node_baseline; re-asserted so this component does not
# silently depend on another role's sysctl file surviving.
echo 'PostUp = sysctl -q -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1'
# SNAT client traffic to the node's address. REQUIRED: without it a LAN host would
# reply to 10.90.0.x, find no route, hand the packet to the router, and the router
# would drop it — so every connection would hang rather than fail. Matching on
# `! -o wg0` rather than a named `-o eth0` keeps this independent of the node's NIC
# name. Each rule is add-if-absent so a pod killed without PostDown does not
# accumulate duplicates in the host's tables across restarts.
echo "PostUp = iptables -t nat -C POSTROUTING -s $net ! -o wg0 -j MASQUERADE 2>/dev/null || iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s $net ! -o wg0 -j MASQUERADE"
echo 'PostUp = iptables -C FORWARD -i wg0 -j ACCEPT 2>/dev/null || iptables -A FORWARD -i wg0 -j ACCEPT'
echo 'PostUp = iptables -C FORWARD -o wg0 -j ACCEPT 2>/dev/null || iptables -A FORWARD -o wg0 -j ACCEPT'
echo "PostDown = iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -s $net ! -o wg0 -j MASQUERADE 2>/dev/null || true"
echo 'PostDown = iptables -D FORWARD -i wg0 -j ACCEPT 2>/dev/null || true'
echo 'PostDown = iptables -D FORWARD -o wg0 -j ACCEPT 2>/dev/null || true'
echo ''
} > /config/wg_confs/wg0.conf
cat /run/wg-peers/peers.conf >> /config/wg_confs/wg0.conf
chmod 600 /config/wg_confs/wg0.conf
# Report the SHAPE of the result, never its content — the file now holds the server's
# private key, and a log line is a transcript (CLAUDE.md §6).
echo "wg0.conf assembled: $(grep -c '^\[Peer\]' /config/wg_confs/wg0.conf || true) peer(s), server $base.1/$mask, udp/51820."
securityContext:
runAsUser: 0
allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
capabilities:
drop:
- ALL
resources:
requests:
cpu: 10m
memory: 16Mi
limits:
memory: 64Mi
volumeMounts:
- { name: wg-config, mountPath: /config }
- { name: wg-server-key, mountPath: /run/wg-server-key, readOnly: true }
- { name: wg-peers, mountPath: /run/wg-peers, readOnly: true }
containers:
- name: wireguard
# linuxserver/wireguard — provides wg, wg-quick and iptables on a maintained, multi-arch
# base. Pinned to the full upstream+build tag (1.0.20260223, published 2026-10-01) rather
# than `latest`, per the crafty/oauth2-proxy convention; Renovate maintains it.
#
# NO `PEERS` ENV IS SET, DELIBERATELY. With PEERS the image runs in "server mode" and
# GENERATES keypairs at runtime — which would put the authoritative peer list on a
# container filesystem instead of in git, and (worse) print client private keys and QR
# codes into the POD LOG, where they would be readable by anyone with log access and
# shipped to Loki. Supplying our own /config/wg_confs/wg0.conf selects the image's
# bring-up-what-you-are-given path instead.
image: lscr.io/linuxserver/wireguard:1.0.20260223-r0-ls124
imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
env:
- name: TZ
value: "America/Chicago"
ports:
# hostNetwork, so containerPort IS the node port. Declared for documentation and so
# `kubectl get pod -o wide` shows what this listener owns.
- { name: wireguard, containerPort: 51820, hostPort: 51820, protocol: UDP }
securityContext:
# NET_ADMIN is the whole privilege budget: create the wg0 link, set the host sysctl, and
# write the two netfilter rules above. Everything else is dropped, and the container is
# NOT privileged — which also keeps it clear of restrict-host-namespaces' second rule.
# SYS_MODULE is deliberately NOT granted: the `wireguard` module is loaded by the node
# (infra/ansible/roles/node_baseline, node_baseline_kernel_modules), so this container
# never needs to load a kernel module. If the module is missing the pod CrashLoops with
# a clear wg-quick error rather than quietly falling back to slow userspace WireGuard.
allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
capabilities:
drop:
- ALL
add:
- NET_ADMIN
# readOnlyRootFilesystem intentionally UNSET: the image's s6 init writes under /run and
# /var during startup. Same deferral as crafty/headlamp.
resources:
requests:
cpu: 25m
memory: 32Mi
limits:
# Kernel WireGuard does its crypto in the KERNEL, not in this container, so throughput
# does not consume the container's budget. The limit covers s6 plus the tmpfs holding
# wg0.conf (a memory-medium emptyDir counts against this).
memory: 128Mi
# `wg show wg0` exits non-zero when the interface is absent, which is the one failure that
# matters and the one that a port probe cannot see: a crashed or never-created wg0 leaves
# udp/51820 silent, and WireGuard is silent to unauthenticated traffic ANYWAY, so "nothing
# answers" is indistinguishable from "working" from the outside. This probe is the only
# thing that tells the difference.
startupProbe:
exec:
command: ["sh", "-c", "wg show wg0 >/dev/null"]
periodSeconds: 5
failureThreshold: 24
livenessProbe:
exec:
command: ["sh", "-c", "wg show wg0 >/dev/null"]
periodSeconds: 30
failureThreshold: 3
volumeMounts:
- { name: wg-config, mountPath: /config }
# Read-only so the image can SEE whether the kernel module is present and fail with a
# real message. It cannot load one (no SYS_MODULE) — that is the node's job.
- { name: lib-modules, mountPath: /lib/modules, readOnly: true }
volumes:
# tmpfs. The assembled wg0.conf contains the server's private key, so it must never land on
# a node's disk — `medium: Memory` guarantees that and guarantees it is gone when the pod is.
- name: wg-config
emptyDir:
medium: Memory
# 8Mi, not 1Mi: /config is this image's whole config ROOT, not just our one file — its
# s6 init also writes templates and state there, and a tmpfs that small would ENOSPC
# during startup rather than at a point anyone would connect to the volume size. Still
# counted against the container's 128Mi limit, and still far more than wg0.conf needs.
sizeLimit: 8Mi
# The ONLY secret in this component. Created OUT OF BAND by the operator and referenced by
# name (R-IDP-04) — runbooks/vpn-remote-access.md step 1. It is NOT a *.sops.yaml in this
# tree on purpose: an agent must not mint a long-lived private key (CLAUDE.md §6), and a key
# that passed through a session transcript would have to be treated as compromised.
# DR: Velero's `daily` schedule excludes only `monitoring` and `unifi`, so this namespace
# and this Secret ARE captured off-cluster (platform/velero/helmrelease.yaml). Keep a copy
# in the operator's password manager as well — restoring it is what makes every already
# enrolled client work again without re-enrolling.
- name: wg-server-key
secret:
secretName: wg-server-key
defaultMode: 0400
items:
- { key: privatekey, path: privatekey }
- name: wg-peers
configMap:
name: wg-peers
- name: lib-modules
hostPath:
path: /lib/modules
type: Directory
+30
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@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
---
# WireGuard remote-access VPN (north-south INGRESS). Reconciled by its OWN non-gating post-platform
# Flux Kustomization (clusters/base/vpn-ingress.yaml, dependsOn platform-config, wait:false) — the
# same placement as crafty/headlamp/homepage/runbooks, for the same reason: a leaf whose pod can be
# legitimately unhealthy must never sit in the gating `platform` tier, where one component's
# unhealth stalls platform-config and every apps wave behind it (DECISIONS-LOG: "Headlamp gating
# stall"). That rationale is unusually concrete here: until the operator creates the `wg-server-key`
# Secret (runbooks/vpn-remote-access.md step 1) this DaemonSet CANNOT start, so putting it in the
# gating tier would have taken the whole platform down on merge.
#
# NOT in platform/kustomization.yaml — see clusters/base/vpn-ingress.yaml.
apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Kustomization
resources:
- namespace.yaml
# The peer register: which devices may dial in. PLAINTEXT and reviewable on purpose (see the file).
- peers.yaml
# The listener itself: hostNetwork DaemonSet, udp/51820 on every node.
- daemonset.yaml
# Namespace default-deny baseline. NOTE: does NOT constrain the hostNetwork DaemonSet — the file
# says so at length rather than implying a protection it cannot provide.
- networkpolicy.yaml
#
# DELIBERATELY ABSENT: a Secret. The server's private key (`wg-server-key`) is created out of band
# by the operator and referenced BY NAME from daemonset.yaml. There is no `*.sops.yaml` here, so
# this component needs NO SOPS decryption stanza in clusters/dev or clusters/prod — unlike
# crafty/headlamp/velero. If that key is ever migrated into SOPS, BOTH halves must land together:
# the file here, and a `decryption:` patch naming the `vpn-ingress` Kustomization in each overlay.
# Without the patch, kustomize hands Flux the raw ciphertext and the pod mounts a key full of
# ENC[...] — which applies cleanly and fails only at handshake time.
+26
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@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
---
# WireGuard REMOTE-ACCESS VPN (north-south INGRESS) — the counterpart to platform/vpn-egress.
#
# Do not confuse the two. They are opposite directions and share nothing but the word "VPN":
# * platform/vpn-egress — pods OUT to the internet through a PIA tunnel (ADR-0015, R-NET-05/06/07).
# * platform/vpn-ingress — remote CLIENTS IN from the internet to this LAN. THIS directory.
#
# NOTE: intentionally NOT homelab.keithjackson.dev/app-namespace=true. This is PLATFORM network
# infrastructure (like cilium / vpn-egress), not an application, so Kyverno does NOT generate the app
# default-deny baseline here and the app-scoped auth-mode / egress-class / host-namespace policies do
# not apply — every Kyverno policy in platform/kyverno/policies matches namespaceSelector
# app-namespace=true. THAT EXEMPTION IS LOAD-BEARING HERE, not incidental: this workload runs with
# `hostNetwork: true`, which `restrict-host-namespaces` forbids in an app namespace. It is permitted
# here by that policy's OWN stated carve-out — "platform components that do [need host namespaces] --
# e.g. Cilium, node-exporter -- live in platform namespaces that do NOT carry the app-namespace
# label, so they are out of scope". daemonset.yaml documents why hostNetwork is REQUIRED rather than
# convenient; it is the single most consequential decision in this component.
#
# NO `gateway-access` label. This component serves no HTTP and attaches no HTTPRoute to the shared
# Gateway — it is a raw UDP listener. There is deliberately nothing here for the L7 Gateway to route.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
name: vpn-ingress
labels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: vpn-ingress
+56
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@@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
---
# =================================================================================================
# READ THIS BEFORE TRUSTING THIS FILE: it does NOT constrain the WireGuard listener.
# =================================================================================================
# Every other platform namespace in this repo (crafty, headlamp, homepage, runbooks) ships an
# explicit default-deny baseline as defense in depth, because Kyverno's generator only covers
# `app-namespace=true` namespaces. This file keeps that convention — but it would be dishonest to
# leave it at that, because the convention does not actually bite here:
#
# THE `wireguard` DaemonSet RUNS WITH hostNetwork: true, SO IT HAS NO CILIUM ENDPOINT, AND NO
# NetworkPolicy OR CiliumNetworkPolicy APPLIES TO IT — NEITHER THIS ONE NOR ANY OTHER.
#
# That is the documented reason restrict-host-namespaces forbids hostNetwork in app namespaces at
# all ("a pod on hostNetwork bypasses the CNI (Cilium) datapath and therefore ESCAPES the
# default-deny NetworkPolicy fabric -- it is the most direct way to defeat R-NET-01"). Here that
# escape is the deliberate, required design (daemonset.yaml explains why: without it, remote
# clients carry a pod identity and are 403'd by every Gateway hostname). A CiliumNetworkPolicy
# admitting `world` to udp/51820 would therefore be theatre: it would read as the control that
# protects this port, and it would be enforcing nothing. So there isn't one.
#
# WHAT ACTUALLY PROTECTS THE EXPOSED PORT, then, since the CNI does not:
# 1. WireGuard's cryptographic peer authentication. A packet whose key is not in peers.yaml gets
# NO REPLY — see README "Why this is safe to expose". This is the real control.
# 2. The SOHO router's forward: only udp/51820 is forwarded inbound, to one node.
# 3. The blast radius once authenticated is deliberately the whole LAN — that IS the requirement
# ("clients should reach the entire local network"). README "What a client can reach" states
# the consequence in full, including reach to the nodes' own control plane, and gives the
# narrowing recipe for an operator who wants less than that.
#
# WHAT THIS FILE IS STILL FOR: it is the namespace's standing posture for any FUTURE pod-networked
# workload added here (a metrics exporter is the likely one — README "Not built"). Without it, such
# a pod would be born unrestricted, because Kyverno will not generate a baseline in a namespace
# that is not labelled `app-namespace=true`, and this one deliberately is not.
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: NetworkPolicy
metadata:
name: default-deny
namespace: vpn-ingress
labels:
homelab.keithjackson.dev/baseline: default-deny
spec:
podSelector: {}
policyTypes:
- Ingress
- Egress
ingress: []
egress:
- to:
- namespaceSelector:
matchLabels:
kubernetes.io/metadata.name: kube-system
ports:
- protocol: UDP
port: 53
- protocol: TCP
port: 53
+73
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@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
---
# ============================================================================================
# THE PEER REGISTER — every device allowed to dial in, in PLAINTEXT, in git, on purpose.
# ============================================================================================
# WireGuard has no usernames, no passwords and no PKI. Authorisation is exactly one thing: a
# device's PUBLIC key appears in this file, or it cannot complete a handshake. An unlisted key
# gets no reply at all — not a rejection, silence (see README "Why this is safe to expose").
# Revoking a device is therefore deleting its stanza, and nothing else.
#
# WHY PLAINTEXT, AND WHY THIS IS NOT A SECRET LEAK. A WireGuard peer's PUBLIC key is public by
# construction — it is the half you are supposed to hand to the server, and holding it grants
# nothing. The only secret in the whole scheme is the SERVER's private key, which is NOT here:
# it lives in the `wg-server-key` Secret and is assembled into the running config at pod start
# (daemonset.yaml). Keeping the register in cleartext buys the property that matters most for an
# access-control list: **"who can get into my house" is reviewable in a pull-request diff**, and
# its history is `git log` on this file. A SOPS-encrypted register would hide exactly the change
# a reviewer most needs to see — a new line granting a new device entry to the whole LAN.
#
# This is the same division of labour the repo already uses for the opposite case: a Secret's KEY
# NAMES are cleartext while values are encrypted (.sops.yaml `encrypted_regex`), so diffs stay
# readable. Here the whole file is the key-name half.
#
# ADDING A DEVICE — never hand-roll this, and never generate a key in a chat transcript.
# ./infra/vpn-ingress/new-peer.sh <device-name> <last-octet>
# It generates the keypair ON THE OPERATOR'S MACHINE, writes/renders the client profile (and a
# QR code for phones), prints ONLY the public half for pasting below, and never transmits or
# logs the private half. Then: add the stanza, PR, merge; Flux rolls the DaemonSet.
#
# ADDRESS ALLOCATION. ${WG_CLIENT_CIDR} is the tunnel subnet; .1 is the server (every node).
# Give each device ONE address as a /32 in AllowedIPs. A /32 is not a formality — on the SERVER
# side AllowedIPs is the cryptokey ROUTING table AND the inbound source filter: a peer may only
# send from, and receive traffic for, the addresses listed in its own stanza. A sloppy /24 here
# would let any one device impersonate every other device's tunnel address.
#
# .1 the server (this DaemonSet, on every node)
# .2 - .254 devices, one each, allocated below. Keep this list dense and in order so the
# next free octet is obvious; never re-use an octet after revoking a device
# (an old client profile would silently start working again as someone else).
#
# PRESHARED KEYS are deliberately NOT used. They add a symmetric post-quantum hedge on top of
# the Noise handshake and would be a genuine secret — which would force this register into SOPS
# and cost the reviewability above. Revisit only if the threat model changes; if it does, the PSK
# belongs in the `wg-server-key` Secret, not here. See README "Hardening not taken".
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
name: wg-peers
namespace: vpn-ingress
labels:
app.kubernetes.io/name: vpn-ingress
data:
# Appended VERBATIM to the generated [Interface] block, in this order, at pod start.
#
# *** THERE ARE NO PEERS YET. THAT IS THE CORRECT INITIAL STATE, NOT AN OVERSIGHT. ***
# An agent must not mint key material (CLAUDE.md §6), so no device could be enrolled as part of
# authoring this component. A zero-peer WireGuard interface is valid and starts cleanly: the
# DaemonSet will run and listen, and every handshake will be refused because no key is trusted.
# The VPN is therefore INERT-BUT-HEALTHY until the first stanza lands — fail-closed, and visible
# (`wg show` reports an interface with no peers).
#
# COPY THIS TEMPLATE, uncomment, one block per device:
#
# # pixel-8 — Keith's phone, enrolled 2026-10-05
# [Peer]
# PublicKey = <the public key new-peer.sh printed>
# AllowedIPs = 10.90.0.2/32
#
# Keep the `# <name> — <owner>, enrolled <date>` comment line. It is the only place a key is
# tied to a human-recognisable device; `wg show` can only ever print the key itself, so without
# it an incident responder cannot tell which stanza to delete.
peers.conf: |
# No peers enrolled yet. See the template in this file's comments and
# ./infra/vpn-ingress/new-peer.sh. One [Peer] block per device.
+3
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@@ -120,6 +120,9 @@ Each affected runbook says so on its own page and gives the by-hand equivalent.
- **`vpn-egress-stale`** — the tunnel is UP but `egress-class=vpn` pods have no egress: Cilium's cached
ifindex outlived a reconnect. Also covers the watchdog for that rule going inert.
- **`denied-flows`** — policy-denied flow spike. The Cilium hairpin/identity regression class.
- **`vpn-remote-access`** — the INBOUND remote-access VPN (WireGuard, udp/51820): standing it up,
enrolling and revoking devices, and the off-LAN checks that are the only honest proof it works.
The opposite direction to the two pages above — do not confuse them.
### Backups and DR
- **`backup-failure`** — a Velero backup failed. The R2 object-tagging incompatibility is documented here.
+5
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@@ -113,3 +113,8 @@ configMapGenerator:
- update-rollback=update-rollback.md
- vpn-down=vpn-down.md
- vpn-egress-stale=vpn-egress-stale.md
# Operator procedure, not an alert page. Served because the component it completes is INERT
# until three off-repo manual steps are done (kernel module, server key, WAN port-forward) —
# and because the one check that actually proves it cannot be run from inside the house.
# Peer-level alerting does not exist yet (it needs an exporter); this page is the substitute.
- vpn-remote-access=vpn-remote-access.md
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@@ -0,0 +1,203 @@
# vpn-remote-access — standing up the WireGuard remote-access VPN, and proving it
**Status: the in-cluster half is shipped; the VPN is INERT until three manual steps are done.**
All three are off-repo by necessity — a kernel module, a private key, and a router port-forward.
**Alert:** pod-down is covered generically (`KubePodNotReady` / `KubeDeploymentReplicasMismatch`).
There is **no peer-level alerting** — see "Why there is no connection alert". This is an **operator
procedure**, not an incident page.
**Files:** `platform/vpn-ingress/` (namespace, peer register, DaemonSet, baseline policy),
`clusters/base/vpn-ingress.yaml` (its Flux tier), `clusters/base/cluster-vars.yaml`
(`WG_CLIENT_CIDR`), `infra/ansible/roles/node_baseline/defaults/main.yml` (the `wireguard` module),
`infra/vpn-ingress/new-peer.sh` (device enrolment).
**Design rationale:** `platform/vpn-ingress/README.md` — read "Why `hostNetwork` is required"
before changing anything about how this is wired.
**Not to be confused with** `vpn-down` / `vpn-egress-stale`, which are about `platform/vpn-egress`
(pods *out* through PIA). This page is remote clients *in*.
## What this gives you
A device — Android, Linux, Windows, macOS, iOS — dials in over **udp/51820** from anywhere and
behaves like a machine on the LAN: full reach to `192.168.2.0/24`, the Gateway's web UIs, PiHole
DNS, and internet egress out the house WAN.
Authorisation is one thing only: the device's **public key is in
`platform/vpn-ingress/peers.yaml`**. An unlisted key gets no reply at all.
> **An enrolled device is as privileged as a machine sitting in the house** — including the three
> k3s nodes (`192.168.2.10/.11/.12`: apiserver 6443, kubelet 10250, SSH 22). That is what "reach
> the entire local network" means. Revoke a lost device promptly: delete its stanza, PR, merge.
## Step 1 — load the `wireguard` module on every node (once)
The DaemonSet creates its `wg0` link in the host netns with `CAP_NET_ADMIN` only; it is
deliberately **not** granted `CAP_SYS_MODULE`, so it cannot autoload the module. Without it
`wg-quick` fails outright and the pod CrashLoops.
```bash
# operator action (Ansible is not an agent action)
cd infra/ansible && ./site.sh --tags system --limit k3s_prod
```
Verify on each node — the module is in-tree since kernel 5.6, so nothing is installed, only loaded:
```bash
# expected: a `wireguard` line, and the modules-load.d file naming it for the next boot
lsmod | grep '^wireguard'
grep -w wireguard /etc/modules-load.d/k3s-cilium-longhorn.conf
```
## Step 2 — create the server key (once)
This is the **only** secret in the component, and the one thing that must never be generated in an
agent session or pasted into a transcript. Generate it on your own machine:
```bash
mkdir -p ~/.config/wireguard-home && chmod 700 ~/.config/wireguard-home
umask 077
wg genkey > ~/.config/wireguard-home/server.key # keep this; see "Back it up" below
```
Load it into the cluster. **Do not echo it, do not pass it on an interactive command line that
lands in shell history, and never print the resulting Secret's `.data`** (CLAUDE.md §6):
```bash
./infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n vpn-ingress create secret generic wg-server-key \
--from-file=privatekey=/work/.cache/server.key'
```
…where `/work/.cache/server.key` is a path you copied the key to **inside the repo's gitignored
cache** (or mount it however you prefer — the requirement is only that the bytes never pass through
a log). Delete that copy afterwards: `shred -u .cache/server.key`.
Confirm it exists **by key name only**:
```bash
./infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n vpn-ingress get secret wg-server-key -o jsonpath="{.data}" | tr "," "\n" | cut -d: -f1'
# expected: {"privatekey -- a NAME. If you see base64 payload, you printed the key. Rotate it.
```
**Why out of band and not SOPS.** An agent must not mint a long-lived private key, and a key that
passed through a session transcript would have to be treated as compromised. The trade-off is that
this Secret is **not reconstructible from git** — so:
**Back it up.** Keep `server.key` in your password manager. Velero's `daily` schedule excludes only
`monitoring` and `unifi` (`platform/velero/helmrelease.yaml`), so this namespace *is* captured
off-cluster to R2 as well. Restoring this one key is what makes every already-enrolled device work
again after a cluster rebuild — **losing it means re-enrolling every device.**
## Step 3 — forward udp/51820 on the router (once)
On the SOHO router at `192.168.2.1`, forward **WAN udp/51820** to **one node address**, e.g.
`192.168.2.10:51820`. This is hand-made and off-repo; it is the half CI can never check.
Pick any node — all three run an identical listener. Note which one you chose here:
```
# WAN udp/51820 -> 192.168.2.__ (k3s-prod-_) set <date>
```
**Node loss = failover is this one line.** Re-point the forward at another node address; every
device keeps working with the same profile, because all three nodes answer the same keys.
Do **not** also expose this on tcp, and do not change the port hoping for obscurity — WireGuard is
already silent to unauthenticated probes (README, "Why this is safe to expose").
## Step 4 — confirm the listener is healthy
```bash
./infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n vpn-ingress get ds wireguard -o wide'
# expected: DESIRED 3 CURRENT 3 READY 3
./infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n vpn-ingress exec ds/wireguard -- wg show'
# expected: `interface: wg0`, `listening port: 51820`, and (before step 5) NO peers.
```
A zero-peer interface that is Ready is the **correct** state before any device is enrolled: it
listens, and refuses every handshake because no key is trusted.
The readiness/liveness probe is `wg show wg0`, and that is load-bearing rather than cosmetic: a
port probe cannot distinguish "wg0 never came up" from "working", because WireGuard is silent to
unauthenticated traffic either way. If the pod is Ready, the interface exists.
## Step 5 — enrol a device
```bash
./infra/vpn-ingress/new-peer.sh pixel-8 2 # full tunnel (LAN + WAN egress)
./infra/vpn-ingress/new-peer.sh thinkpad 3 --split # split tunnel (LAN only)
```
It generates the keypair **on your machine**, writes a `0600` client profile outside the checkout,
prints a QR code if `qrencode` is installed, and prints the `[Peer]` stanza to add. Then:
1. Paste the stanza into `platform/vpn-ingress/peers.yaml` under `data.peers.conf`, keeping the
`# <name> — <owner>, enrolled <date>` comment. `wg show` can only ever print the key, so that
comment is the only record of which stanza belongs to which device.
2. PR → merge. Flux rolls the DaemonSet (~1 min).
3. Get the profile onto the device (QR scan for phones; "Import tunnel from file" on
Windows/macOS; `/etc/wireguard/<name>.conf` + `wg-quick@<name>` on Linux).
4. **Delete the profile from your machine**: `shred -u <path>`. It is the only copy of that
device's private key — the server never sees it and it cannot be re-derived.
Until the PR is merged the device handshakes and gets silence, exactly like an unknown key.
## Step 6 — verify it end to end (from OFF the LAN)
**This is the only honest test, and it cannot be run from inside the house.** Put the phone on
cellular, with Wi-Fi off, and check all four — each proves a different hop:
| # | Check | Proves |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | tunnel shows a recent handshake in the WireGuard app | the WAN forward + the server key + the peer stanza |
| 2 | `ping 192.168.2.1` (the router) | decrypt → FORWARD → LAN, and the SNAT return path |
| 3 | open `https://plex.home.keithjackson.dev` | PiHole DNS over the tunnel **and** the Gateway accepting a `host`-identity source — the specific thing a pod-networked VPN would have 403'd |
| 4 | visit an IP-echo site; it should show `136.51.115.252` | full-tunnel WAN egress out the house, not the carrier |
Then confirm server-side:
```bash
./infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n vpn-ingress exec ds/wireguard -- wg show'
# a `latest handshake` under ~3 min, and non-zero transfer, on the expected peer.
```
**If check 3 fails while 2 passes**, the tunnel is fine and the problem is DNS or the Gateway, not
WireGuard. Check the client's `DNS = 192.168.2.23` and that PiHole is up.
**If 1 and 2 pass but large transfers hang**, it is MTU. The profile ships `MTU = 1420` (1500 − 60
bytes of WireGuard encapsulation); drop the client to `1280` and re-test.
**If nothing handshakes at all**, you cannot tell a wrong forward from a wrong key from outside —
by design. Work inwards: `wg show` on the node holding the forward will show *zero* received bytes
if the router is not delivering the packets, and a `handshake` with no completed session if it is.
## Revoking a device
Delete its `[Peer]` stanza from `peers.yaml`, PR, merge. Nothing else — the key stops working on the
next reconcile. **Never re-use that address octet**: an old profile would silently start working
again as a different device.
## Why there is no connection alert
A WireGuard exporter would publish `wireguard_latest_handshake_seconds` per peer and make
"something connected at 03:00" alertable. It needs a second `NET_ADMIN` container inside the pod
that terminates the internet-facing tunnel, and that was not worth shipping unverified. **It is the
top follow-up for this component.** Until then:
* pod-down is covered generically by kube-prometheus-stack's `KubePodNotReady` /
`KubeDeploymentReplicasMismatch`;
* "who is connected" is an on-demand question — `wg show`, above;
* **never** `wg showconf` — it prints the server's private key.
## Known limitations
* **No IPv6 in the tunnel.** A full-tunnel client with native IPv6 still reaches IPv6 sites outside
the tunnel. Functionally harmless; a privacy leak if hiding the client's network was the point.
* **Client IPs are not preserved** on the LAN side: everything arrives SNATed as the node's
address. A static route for `10.90.0.0/24` → the forwarded node, added on the router, would
preserve them — at the cost of another hand-maintained off-repo route.
* **Rollouts briefly drop the forwarded node.** `maxUnavailable: 1`, so one node at a time; clients
re-handshake automatically (retry every 5s, rekey every 2 min).