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jakman85andClaude Opus 5 44983095e1 feat(runbooks): make the 42 alert runbook_url annotations resolve

Every platform-health alert rule carries
`runbook_url: "https://${BASE_DOMAIN}/runbooks/<name>"` — 42 annotations over 34
distinct names, across platform/monitoring/alerts.yaml,
platform/monitoring/pvc-capacity-alerts.yaml, platform/cnpg/alerts.yaml and
platform/kubevirt/alerts.yaml. There was no runbooks/ directory and no HTTPRoute
serving that path: an in-cluster probe of
https://home.keithjackson.dev/runbooks/node-down returned HTTP 404. Every alert that
reached a human handed them a dead link at the exact moment the documentation is read,
and the annotation made it look solved — the same green-surface-over-absent-mechanism
class as the import Job that reported success while storing placeholder secrets.

No alerts.yaml is touched and no runbook_url value changes. The existing URL scheme is
made to resolve instead.

WHAT LANDS
- runbooks/<34>.md — one per name, each grounded in this cluster's real topology and,
  where one exists, its real incident history: the 2026-09-07 k3s-prod-1 etcd I/O
  starvation (measured PSI 11.36 vs 0.75/1.29, the exact journal lines, the four
  mechanisms proven inert), the Longhorn reboot tax and the freeze/thaw of
  concurrent-replica-rebuild-per-node-limit, Cilium's once-resolved egress interface
  cache (Ifindex 3 against a live 1780) and the absence of OSS failover, the CNPG
  38-hour ContinuousArchiving=False with its measured 6.8 MiB/h disk-full clock and the
  2026-09-12 aggregation-scope fix, the 2026-09-06 Keycloak lockout in which all 12
  clients held literal placeholder secrets behind an entirely green cluster, the Velero
  R2 x-amz-tagging NotImplemented incompatibility and its v1.14.3-rc.2 pin, and swap
  re-enabling itself across reboots via systemd-gpt-auto-generator.
  Each page states what the alert means HERE, the first diagnostic commands, likely
  causes ordered by probability with a remediation each, and when to escalate or stop.
- Every page uses FULLY-QUALIFIED resource names and says why: three CRDs register the
  kind `Backup` here, the bare short name resolves to Longhorn's (zero objects), so
  `kubectl get backup -A` prints "No resources found" on a cluster holding 6 Velero and
  27 CNPG backups. Acting on that false negative is how a CLI quirk becomes data loss.
- Every page states that kubectl only works via
  `infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c '...'` with an explicit `--context k3s-prod`,
  because dev.sh defaults its current-context to k3s-dev.
- Pages also record which alert groups are INERT today (measured 2026-09-13: no
  Longhorn, cert-manager, Flux-controller or Hubble scrape job exists, so 13 rules
  evaluate against nothing) so nobody reads their silence as health.

SERVING — runbooks/serving/ plus clusters/base/runbooks.yaml
A two-replica nginx-unprivileged serving a ConfigMap generated from runbooks/*.md, at
the apex `/runbooks` prefix, in its own non-gating post-platform Flux tier
(dependsOn platform-config, wait:false) — the platform/homepage pattern, file for file.
- The service catalog cannot express this route: ingressRoutes[].host is pattern-bound
  to a single DNS label plus the apex, so the bare apex is unrepresentable, and there is
  no path field.
- Rejected: redirecting to the Gitea web UI. A runbook is read when the platform is
  broken, and Gitea is an app-tier workload whose own dependencies several of these
  runbooks document; Gateway API's RequestRedirect also has no "append .md" modifier,
  so it would need 34 hand-maintained ReplaceFullPath rules.
- configMapGenerator maps each file to an EXTENSIONLESS key (node-down=node-down.md),
  so /runbooks/node-down is a plain static lookup with no rewrite rule. Served as
  text/plain: the namespace has DNS-only egress, so a CDN markdown renderer could not
  load anyway.
- The tier declares NO postBuild.substituteFrom, deliberately: envsubst would run over
  the prose and silently empty every ${...} shell example (it fails open — the 2026-09-01
  emptied Cilium k8sServiceHost). The HTTPRoute omits `hostnames:` and inherits the
  https-apex listener's, so nothing needs substituting.

AUTH — PUBLIC, deliberately
auth-mode=none. Gating these pages behind oauth2-proxy/Keycloak would make
runbooks/keycloak-down unreadable when Keycloak is down and
runbooks/keycloak-client-secrets unreadable during the exact 2026-09-06 failure mode.
An operator who cannot log in is this route's primary reader. Content is operational
procedure only, no secrets. The rationale is recorded in an annotation on the HTTPRoute
so the route is left OUT of the Gateway ext-authz attachment when forward-auth
enforcement lands.

PROVEN — in-cluster probe through the Gateway on prod
  /runbooks/node-down        HTTP 200   8613 bytes  text/plain; charset=utf-8
  /runbooks/keycloak-down    HTTP 200   9378 bytes  text/plain; charset=utf-8
  /runbooks/cnpg-archiving   HTTP 200  11729 bytes  text/plain; charset=utf-8
  /runbooks/longhorn-faulted HTTP 200   9135 bytes  text/plain; charset=utf-8
  /runbooks/vpn-down         HTTP 200  11092 bytes  text/plain; charset=utf-8
  /runbooks/backup-failure   HTTP 200   9604 bytes  text/plain; charset=utf-8
HTTPRoute Accepted by io.cilium/gateway-controller on sectionName https-apex; the
`/runbooks` prefix wins over homepage's apex `/` by Gateway API longest-path precedence.

GUARD — conformance/tests/l0-static/alert-runbooks-resolvable (R-OBS-04)
363 offline assertions. It checks BOTH halves, because the regression is silent in both
directions: an alert with a new runbook_url and no runbook links to a 404, AND a runbook
committed without its configMapGenerator entry is in git, reviewed, merged, and still
404s in the cluster. Also asserts a quality floor so a stub cannot make the link look
fixed, and that route/listener/nginx prefix agree with the annotations.
Proven to fail, then reverted: a bogus runbook_url (2 FAIL), a runbook removed from the
generator (1 FAIL), and a 31-byte stub (7 FAIL).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>

2026-09-12 23:49:58 -05:00

8.7 KiB

Raw Blame History

backup-missed — No successful Velero backup in 24 hours

Alert: VeleroNoRecentBackup (critical, 1h) File: platform/monitoring/alerts.yaml, group platform-health.backups Expression: (time() - velero_backup_last_successful_timestamp{schedule!=""}) > (24 * 3600)

What this means here

A Velero schedule has not produced a successful backup in over a day. This is the alert that catches the quiet failure — not "a backup broke" (that is /runbooks/backup-failure) but "backups stopped happening and nobody noticed". The {schedule!=""} filter means it only watches scheduled backups, so ad-hoc ones do not mask a dead schedule.

Live shape on prod: two schedules, both 0 3 * * * — schedule.velero.io/velero-daily and schedule.velero.io/velero-daily-resources-only — retention 720h, target Cloudflare R2 (bucket k3s-prod-backup, prefix velero, region auto).

Why this alert is worth its critical: the precedent is that these rules could not fire at all. Velero shipped with three backup alerts and the chart default metrics.serviceMonitor.enabled: false, confirmed live on prod — kubectl -n velero get servicemonitor returned no resources. Recorded verbatim: "A nightly backup could fail — or silently stop running — for weeks with nothing to say so." The ServiceMonitor now exists (velero and velero/node-agent are both live scrape jobs as of 2026-09-13), which is the only reason this alert is real.

READ THIS BEFORE YOU CONCLUDE THE BACKUPS ARE GONE

kubectl get backup -A prints "No resources found" on this cluster even when backups exist. Three CRDs register the kind Backup — longhorn.io/v1beta2, postgresql.cnpg.io/v1 and velero.io/v1 — and the bare short name resolves to Longhorn's, which holds zero objects. Verified on prod 2026-09-13: the fully-qualified queries returned 6 Velero backups and 27 CNPG backups while the short name returned nothing. This false negative has already produced two wrong "the backups are missing" conclusions in one night. A destructive recovery action taken on it is how a CLI quirk becomes real data loss. Always:

backups.velero.io           backups.postgresql.cnpg.io           backups.longhorn.io
schedules.velero.io         scheduledbackups.postgresql.cnpg.io  clusters.postgresql.cnpg.io

Running the commands in this runbook

kubectl does not work on the operator workstation. The toolchain lives only in the pinned dev container, and the host's k3s-oidc context hangs on a browser prompt once its token expires — that hang is not the cluster being down. Every command below runs as:

infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c 'kubectl --context k3s-prod get nodes'

Always pass --context k3s-prod explicitly. dev.sh merges both clusters into one kubeconfig and defaults its current-context to k3s-dev, so a command without --context silently answers about the wrong cluster. (CLUSTER=prod infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run kubectl ... is equivalent.) Do not run two dev.sh invocations at once — they share one container and interfere.

USE FULLY-QUALIFIED RESOURCE NAMES, ALWAYS. Three CRDs on this cluster register the kind Backup: longhorn.io/v1beta2, postgresql.cnpg.io/v1 and velero.io/v1. The bare short name resolves to Longhorn's, which holds zero objects — so kubectl get backup -A prints "No resources found" on a cluster holding 6 Velero backups and 27 CNPG backups. Verified on prod 2026-09-13. Reading that as "the backups are gone" and acting on it turns a false negative into real data loss. Write backups.velero.io, backups.postgresql.cnpg.io, clusters.postgresql.cnpg.io, settings.longhorn.io, volumes.longhorn.io, nodes.longhorn.io.

Mutating kubectl (apply, patch, annotate, rollout) and flux reconcile are blocked for agents here: every durable change goes through git (git push origin main is the deploy). Where this runbook gives a mutating command it is for an operator, and it says so.

First commands

Are the schedules enabled, and when did each last run?

infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
  'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n velero get schedules.velero.io \
     -o custom-columns=NAME:.metadata.name,SCHEDULE:.spec.schedule,PAUSED:.spec.paused,LASTBACKUP:.status.lastBackup,PHASE:.status.phase'

What backups actually exist (fully-qualified — the short name lies):

infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
  'kubectl --context k3s-prod get backups.velero.io -A \
     -o custom-columns=NAME:.metadata.name,PHASE:.status.phase,SCHEDULE:.metadata.labels.velero\\.io/schedule-name,START:.status.startTimestamp --sort-by=.status.startTimestamp'

Is the storage location usable at all?

infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
  'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n velero get backupstoragelocations.velero.io \
     -o custom-columns=NAME:.metadata.name,PHASE:.status.phase,LASTVALIDATED:.status.lastValidationTime,DEFAULT:.spec.default'

Is Velero's own Flux tier reconciling, or was it suspended?

infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
  'kubectl --context k3s-prod get kustomizations.kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io -A \
     -o custom-columns=NAME:.metadata.name,SUSPENDED:.spec.suspend,READY:.status.conditions[?\(@.type==\"Ready\"\)].status | grep -Ei "velero|NAME"'

And the controller:

infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
  'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n velero get pods; \
   kubectl --context k3s-prod -n velero logs deploy/velero --tail=120 2>&1 | tail -40'

Likely causes, most likely first

1. The Velero Flux tier was suspended and nobody resumed it

This has happened: Velero was found suspended live, with the suspension never recorded in git, and was resumed with flux resume. A suspended backup controller is a silent DR gap and is precisely the class this alert exists for. Remediation (operator): flux resume kustomization velero, and see /runbooks/flux-suspended for why an undocumented live suspension is itself a problem.

2. The schedule is paused

schedules.velero.io has spec.paused. Note from the live listing that velero-daily-resources-only shows an empty PAUSED column while velero-daily shows false — read the field, not the column width. A paused schedule is a git change to unpause.

3. Every run is failing rather than not running

Then backups.velero.io will show recent Failed entries and this alert is a downstream symptom. Go to /runbooks/backup-failure — and in particular check the plugin pin (velero/velero-plugin-for-aws:v1.14.3-rc.2), because the R2 tagging bug produces exactly this: volume data uploads, the backup goes Failed, and no successful backup ever lands.

4. The BackupStorageLocation is not Available

A wrong endpoint, a bad credential, or the placeholder. clusters/prod deliberately carried the loud placeholder https://TBD-R2-ACCOUNT-ID.r2.cloudflarestorage.com rather than inheriting the base (dev) value, because "an omitted op means prod silently inherits a dev address — far worse than a failed apply". Check S3_BACKUP_ENDPOINT, S3_BACKUP_REGION (auto), VELERO_BACKUP_BUCKET, VELERO_BACKUP_PREFIX, BACKUP_CREDENTIALS_SUFFIX (-prod).

5. Velero cannot schedule a pod

Node pressure, or the node-agent DaemonSet unhealthy. Cross-read /runbooks/node-io.

6. The metric, not the backup, is missing

If velero_backup_last_successful_timestamp has no series at all the rule cannot fire — which is the historical state. Confirm the velero scrape job is up (/runbooks/targets-down) before trusting either its silence or its firing.

When to escalate or stop

Escalate: this is a DR alarm and 24h is already a real window of exposure.
Do not create an ad-hoc backup and consider the alert answered. The expression filters {schedule!=""}, so a manual backup will not clear it, and more importantly it does not fix the schedule. (An operator's ad-hoc run for reassurance is velero backup create --from-schedule velero-daily.)
Do not conclude "no backups exist" from kubectl get backup. See the trap above.
Remember the databases are separate. keycloak-db, nextcloud-db and semaphore-db are covered by CNPG's Barman archive, not by Velero. This alert being clear says nothing about them, and vice versa — check /runbooks/cnpg-backup-missed too.
Be honest about restore: dr-restore is authored and has never been executed, so the R2 restore path is unrehearsed. Free R2 egress makes a rehearsal cheap; it is still outstanding.

Source of truth: runbooks/backup-missed.md. Index: /runbooks/ Records: commit 2d5171e (Velero had no ServiceMonitor, so these alerts could never fire); DECISIONS-LOG.md (Velero found suspended with the suspension never in git; dr-restore never executed); commit 32d6766 (R2 decision and endpoint knobs).

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