Two symptoms after the publishing fix landed:
1. LAN clients were reported as Remote. Measured root cause:
LanNetworksBandwidth was ABSENT, so Plex had no notion of a local
network and classified everything WAN -- 468 requests logged
"Allowed Network (WAN)", ZERO "(LAN)", including Seerr from inside the
cluster. allowedNetworks only waives AUTH; it does not make a client
local. Two settings, and only one has an env hook.
2. The advertised URL hard-coded both the VIP and the server's cert hash
into a cluster-var -- two values nothing kept in sync.
Operator design: ONE hostname, plex-vip.${BASE_DOMAIN}, split-horizon --
PiHole answers it with ${PLEX_L4_VIP} on the LAN, Cloudflare answers it
publicly with the WAN address NATed to the same VIP.
- catalog/plex.yaml: ADVERTISE_IP -> https://plex-vip.${BASE_DOMAIN}:32400,
plus a level-triggered postStart hook (pihole/qbittorrent idiom) that
re-asserts LanNetworksBandwidth and the three customCertificate* prefs
every start, converting PEM -> PKCS#12 so cert renewals need no extra part.
- apps/wave-0/plex-cert.yaml: cert-manager Certificate for exactly that
name from letsencrypt-prod, so the advertised https URL is servable.
- schema 1.11.0: `optional` on secretKeyRef/configMapKeyRef. Load-bearing --
the cert is issued INTO the plex namespace, which the rendered plex.yaml
itself creates, so it lands in the same reconcile; hard refs would have
held Plex in CreateContainerConfigError and, since apps-wave-0 is
wait:true, stalled the whole app tier on a slow DNS01 challenge.
- catalog/pihole.yaml: the plex-vip split-horizon answer. Required --
measured, the name resolved to the Gateway VIP where nothing listens
on 32400 (http=000).
- PLEX_ADVERTISE_URL deleted; the hostname removes the cert-hash fragility.
Corrects my own earlier claim that a SAN match is REQUIRED: it is not
(httpsRequired=0, secureConnections defaults to Preferred, so clients can
fall back to cleartext). A matching cert keeps the remote leg ENCRYPTED.
Hence: obtain a real cert for the advertised name rather than pick the name
to suit Plex's built-in one.
UNVERIFIED, and stated plainly in the handoff: nothing here has run. Cert
issuance for this name is inferred from the wildcard's success, and whether
Plex accepts an OpenSSL-3 PKCS#12 bundle is untested -- the largest risk.
Touches clusters/** -> sensitive paths -> needs a non-author approval or the
operator's /approve-override; deliberately not self-posted (CLAUDE.md 1).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>