jakman85andClaude Opus 5
44983095e1
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]>
143 lines
8.6 KiB
Markdown
143 lines
8.6 KiB
Markdown
# cert-expiry — A certificate is expiring soon, or imminently
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**Alerts:** `CertificateExpiringSoon` (warning, <14d, 1h) and `CertificateExpiryImminent` (critical, <3d, 1h)
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**File:** `platform/monitoring/alerts.yaml`, group `platform-health.certificates`
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**Expression:** `(certmanager_certificate_expiration_timestamp_seconds - time()) < (14 * 24 * 3600)` / `(3 * 24 * 3600)`
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## What this means here
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cert-manager has a Certificate whose expiry is inside 14 days (warning) or 3 days (critical) and it has
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not renewed. cert-manager normally renews at two-thirds of lifetime — about 60 days into a 90-day Let's
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Encrypt certificate — so **by the time this fires, renewal has already been failing for weeks**. Treat
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it as a late symptom of `/runbooks/cert-issuance`, not as a separate problem: the fix is almost always
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"why is issuance failing", and expiry is the clock running out on that.
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What is at stake concretely. There is effectively **one certificate that matters**: `wildcard-home` in
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the `gateway` namespace, secret `wildcard-home-tls`, requesting **both** `*.${BASE_DOMAIN}` **and**
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`${BASE_DOMAIN}` from `${ACME_CLUSTER_ISSUER}` (= `letsencrypt-prod` on prod). Every HTTPS listener on
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the shared Gateway terminates with it — the wildcard `https` listener and the `https-apex` listener both
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reference `wildcard-home-tls`. If it expires:
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- every public hostname serves an untrusted certificate;
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- **SSO breaks in-cluster**, because OIDC clients validate the issuer's TLS. This is not hypothetical:
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while the wildcard was still LE-**staging**, in-cluster clients rejected it with
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`x509: certificate signed by unknown authority`, which is what forced the move to `letsencrypt-prod`;
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- and the page you are reading right now is served over that same certificate.
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**There is no history of an actual expiry on this cluster.** The recorded history is all issuance
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failures. Say so rather than inventing precedent — but note the corollary: the renewal path has never
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been exercised under stress, so do not assume it will quietly work.
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### Verify the alert can even fire (measured 2026-09-13)
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**This alert is currently INERT.** `count(certmanager_clock_time_seconds)` and
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`count(certmanager_certificate_expiration_timestamp_seconds)` both returned **0 series** on prod:
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there is no cert-manager scrape job among Prometheus's 19 jobs, so all three certificate rules evaluate
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against nothing. **Certificate expiry is unmonitored today.** Check expiry by hand with the commands
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below, and see `/runbooks/targets-down` for the full list of inert rule groups. Adding cert-manager's
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ServiceMonitor is open work.
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## Running the commands in this runbook
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`kubectl` does not work on the operator workstation. The toolchain lives only in the pinned dev
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container, and the host's `k3s-oidc` context hangs on a browser prompt once its token expires —
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that hang is not the cluster being down. Every command below runs as:
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infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c 'kubectl --context k3s-prod get nodes'
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Always pass `--context k3s-prod` explicitly. `dev.sh` merges both clusters into one kubeconfig and
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defaults its current-context to k3s-**dev**, so a command without `--context` silently answers
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about the wrong cluster. (`CLUSTER=prod infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run kubectl ...` is equivalent.)
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Do not run two `dev.sh` invocations at once — they share one container and interfere.
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USE FULLY-QUALIFIED RESOURCE NAMES, ALWAYS. Three CRDs on this cluster register the kind `Backup`:
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`longhorn.io/v1beta2`, `postgresql.cnpg.io/v1` and `velero.io/v1`. The bare short name resolves to
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Longhorn's, which holds zero objects — so `kubectl get backup -A` prints **"No resources found"** on
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a cluster holding 6 Velero backups and 27 CNPG backups. Verified on prod 2026-09-13. Reading that as
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"the backups are gone" and acting on it turns a false negative into real data loss. Write
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`backups.velero.io`, `backups.postgresql.cnpg.io`, `clusters.postgresql.cnpg.io`,
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`settings.longhorn.io`, `volumes.longhorn.io`, `nodes.longhorn.io`.
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Mutating kubectl (`apply`, `patch`, `annotate`, `rollout`) and `flux reconcile` are blocked for
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agents here: every durable change goes through git (`git push origin main` **is** the deploy).
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Where this runbook gives a mutating command it is for an operator, and it says so.
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## First commands
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Every certificate and its real expiry, straight from the CRs (works with no metrics):
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```
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infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
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'kubectl --context k3s-prod get certificates.cert-manager.io -A \
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-o custom-columns=NS:.metadata.namespace,NAME:.metadata.name,READY:.status.conditions[?\(@.type==\"Ready\"\)].status,NOTAFTER:.status.notAfter,RENEWAL:.status.renewalTime,ISSUER:.spec.issuerRef.name'
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```
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What the Gateway is actually serving (the answer that matters), read from outside the cluster with an
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explicit SNI — testing HTTPS from **inside** a pod is misleading here, and an IP+SNI probe without the
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right SNI returns curl exit 35:
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```
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curl -sv --resolve home.keithjackson.dev:443:192.168.2.20 https://home.keithjackson.dev/runbooks/ 2>&1 | grep -E "expire|subject|issuer|SSL certificate"
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```
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```
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echo | openssl s_client -connect 192.168.2.20:443 -servername grafana.home.keithjackson.dev 2>/dev/null | openssl x509 -noout -subject -issuer -dates
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```
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Is a renewal in flight or stuck?
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```
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infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
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'kubectl --context k3s-prod get certificaterequests.cert-manager.io,orders.acme.cert-manager.io,challenges.acme.cert-manager.io -A; echo; \
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kubectl --context k3s-prod -n cert-manager logs deploy/cert-manager --tail=80 | tail -40'
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```
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## Likely causes, most likely first
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### 1. Issuance has been failing since the last successful renewal
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The dominant cause, and the one with real history. Go to `/runbooks/cert-issuance` — it covers the
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DNS-01 self-check failure (fixed with `dns01RecursiveNameservers: "1.1.1.1:53,8.8.8.8:53"` and
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`dns01RecursiveNameserversOnly: true`), the Cloudflare token, and the ACME order/challenge chain. Fixing
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issuance fixes expiry; nothing else does.
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### 2. Two clusters racing the same `_acme-challenge` TXT record
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A specific, recorded hazard for any future two-cluster window. `infra/PROD-PROVISIONING.md` §10 records
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that after the 2026-09-04 incident, `platform-config` **would have** requested a
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`*.home.keithjackson.dev` wildcard from letsencrypt-prod for a certificate dev already held; both
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clusters would then have raced each other's `_acme-challenge` TXT records on one Cloudflare zone and
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**neither would reliably solve DNS-01**. It never fired only because the tier was suspended. If a second
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cluster exists, confirm which one owns the zone before renewing.
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### 3. Let's Encrypt rate limits
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One wildcard is well inside the limits, so this is unlikely — unless something has been retrying in a
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loop. `cert-manager` logs will say `too many certificates already issued`. Remediation: stop the loop,
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wait out the window; do **not** switch to letsencrypt-staging as a workaround, because in-cluster OIDC
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clients reject the staging chain (that is the bug that forced LE-prod).
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### 4. The issuer or its credential changed
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`${ACME_CLUSTER_ISSUER}` is a cluster-vars knob; the Cloudflare API token is a SOPS-encrypted Secret.
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Note the standing rule: **non-secret, environment-specific values must not live inside an encrypted
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Secret** — `${BASE_DOMAIN}` substitution can never reach inside one, which is exactly how prod's OIDC
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clients once ended up pointed at dev's Keycloak.
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### 5. The Certificate is Ready but the Secret is stale
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Check the Secret's actual notAfter (the `openssl` command above) rather than the CR's status. The Gateway
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reads the Secret.
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## When to escalate or stop
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- **`CertificateExpiryImminent` on `wildcard-home` is a cluster-wide outage in under 3 days**, including
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SSO and including this runbook server. Get the operator immediately.
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- **Do not switch to `letsencrypt-staging`** to make issuance succeed. It will issue, and it will break
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every in-cluster OIDC client with `x509: unknown authority`.
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- **Do not delete the `wildcard-home-tls` Secret** to force a reissue while issuance is broken — you
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would replace a certificate that still has days left with none at all.
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- **Do not hand-edit the Secret.** cert-manager owns it; the durable change is in git.
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- Verify DNS at the **authority** (`dig @betty.ns.cloudflare.com _acme-challenge.home.keithjackson.dev TXT`),
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never at a resolver: 1.1.1.1 has served a deleted TXT record for minutes here and produced a false
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failure diagnosis.
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---
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Source of truth: `runbooks/cert-expiry.md`. Index: `/runbooks/`
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Records: `DECISIONS-LOG.md` "Fix 5 — cert-manager DNS-01 self-check via public resolvers" and the
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LE-staging → LE-prod switch (Session 7); `infra/PROD-PROVISIONING.md` §10 (the queued ACME race).
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