The bulk tier's PersistentVolumes need a server address, and there is no single correct one: the
two clusters sit on OPPOSITE SIDES of pfSense from the storage host, which has exactly one
interface (vmbr0 192.168.1.9/24, on pfSense's LAN).
dev 192.168.1.40/.41/.42 — the SAME segment. Reaches it directly, and already holds one NFS
export from it (/mnt/Storage/k8s-volumes, in the host's /etc/exports). Proven path, so
base's default is the dev value per this file's existing convention, and dev restates it.
prod 192.168.2.10/.11/.12 — pfSense's WAN. tcp/2049 does not traverse that today; 22 and 8006
answer only because pfSense port-forwards them via 192.168.2.102. Opening the storage path
is a PENDING operator decision whose two candidate outcomes give DIFFERENT values here:
192.168.2.102 (another port-forward) or 192.168.1.9 (a route). So prod holds
TBD-PROD-BULK-NFS-SERVER, this repo's established loud-placeholder convention.
Two findings recorded in the prod overlay because they change what the operator has to do:
* THE EXPORT'S CLIENT LIST IS THE SAME UNDER BOTH OUTCOMES. Measured today from this
workstation (192.168.2.132) through the existing port-forward: the storage host logged the
connection as coming from 192.168.2.132 — a WAN-side address — not from a pfSense LAN address
(`ss -tn` peer 192.168.2.132; the host's only route off-LAN is its default via 192.168.1.1).
pfSense DNATs WITHOUT source NAT, so the NFS server sees prod's REAL node addresses either
way. The `zfs set sharenfs=` work therefore does not have to wait for the routing decision.
* ONE PORT, NOT FOUR. The PVs mount nfsvers=4.1, and NFSv4 carries mount and lock in-protocol —
no rpcbind/111, mountd or statd. Whichever outcome is chosen, it opens tcp/2049 and nothing
else. NFSv3 would have needed four ports, three of them on ephemeral numbers.
*** AND ONE HONEST WEAKNESS, stated in the overlay where an operator will hit it. ***
Unlike the LAN knobs above it, this placeholder does NOT fail at apply time. A PV's
spec.nfs.server is an unvalidated string: the API server accepts it, the PV is created, and the
PVC BINDS (binding is pure control-plane). The failure appears only when a pod mounts —
MountVolume.SetUp "Failed to resolve server TBD-PROD-BULK-NFS-SERVER" — so plex, sonarr, radarr
and nextcloud would sit in ContainerCreating on prod. There is no CRD validation to lean on here,
so the guard has to be procedural: set the value before prod reconciles a revision carrying the
bulk volumes. Dev renders a working value and is where these manifests are meant to be proven.
Related finding, NOT fixed here because the file does not exist on main: the static guard this
convention is supposed to lean on, `bootstrap/standup.sh`'s `s3_is_placeholder` family, is absent
from main (it lives on unmerged prod branches), so
conformance/tests/l0-static/placeholder-guard-coupling exits 3 SKIPPED and nothing in the gate
currently refuses a placeholder-shaped overlay value. When standup.sh lands, its guard needs an
arm for this knob and a consumer that calls it — assertions (2) and (3) of that check then cover
this value automatically, since the detector's SEED vocabulary already matches "TBD".
Evidence: `kubectl kustomize clusters/dev` -> BULK_NFS_SERVER: 192.168.1.9;
`kubectl kustomize clusters/prod` -> BULK_NFS_SERVER: TBD-PROD-BULK-NFS-SERVER. Both exit 0.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
clusters/
Flux entrypoints and the environment-overlay model (R-ENV-02, R-GITOPS-01/02/03).
Governing spec: docs/05-gitops-and-delivery.md,
docs/02-environments-and-provisioning.md,
ADR-0004 (Flux).
Phase 0 scaffolding only. These are structurally-correct stubs. No cluster exists — nothing here reconciles until WS-INFRA delivers a cluster and bootstraps Flux (roadmap Phase 1).
Layout — base + overlay (never fork the base)
clusters/
base/ shared Flux objects (one authoring, both environments)
flux-system.yaml GitRepository — the reconciliation source (bootstrap → Gitea)
platform.yaml Flux Kustomization → ./platform (reconciles first)
apps-wave-0.yaml Flux Kustomization → ./apps/wave-0 (dependsOn platform-config)
apps-wave-1.yaml Flux Kustomization → ./apps/wave-1 (dependsOn apps-wave-0)
apps-wave-2.yaml Flux Kustomization → ./apps/wave-N (dependsOn apps-wave-N-1)
cluster-vars.yaml ConfigMap of overlay knobs (BASE defaults)
kustomization.yaml
dev/ ACTIVE build target — patches cluster-vars with dev values only
kustomization.yaml
prod/ DESIGN-ONLY until roadmap Phase 7 — patches cluster-vars with prod values only
kustomization.yaml
How the overlay model satisfies R-ENV-02
The base authors the reconciliation graph once. platform.yaml and the app-wave Kustomizations
(apps-wave-0/1/2.yaml — the single apps.yaml was retired; apps-vms.yaml deliberately omits it,
see below) declare postBuild.substituteFrom the cluster-vars ConfigMap. Platform and
app manifests use ${TOKEN} placeholders for every value that legitimately differs between
environments (issuer, replica counts, storage sizes, retention, node placement).
clusters/dev and clusters/prod differ ONLY by the values they patch into cluster-vars —
they add no resources of their own and never copy/fork a base manifest. Promotion to prod
(docs/02) is a change to the
prod overlay's variables, nothing else.
LAN addressing is a knob, not a literal (fixed 2026-08-31)
Until 2026-08-31 the base manifests hardcoded the dev LAN: the k3s API host Cilium dials, the
Cilium LB IP pool range, the pinned crafty/unifi L4 VIPs and the off-cluster S3 backup endpoint. That
broke R-ENV-02 outright — clusters/prod would have rendered dev addresses (192.168.1.x) onto the
prod LAN (192.168.2.x). They are now the cluster-vars "LAN addressing" block
(K3S_API_HOST, CILIUM_LB_POOL_START/_STOP, UNIFI_L4_VIP, CRAFTY_L4_VIP,
S3_BACKUP_ENDPOINT, alongside the pre-existing GATEWAY_VIP), set explicitly by BOTH overlays.
Two rules when touching that block:
- Substitution coverage. A
${TOKEN}only resolves in a path whose Flux Kustomization declarespostBuild.substituteFrom: cluster-vars; anywhere else the literal string${TOKEN}ships to the cluster.apps-vmswas the one path without it and now has it — which means every shell${...}in a VM manifest's cloud-init must be escaped$${...}(seeclusters/base/apps-vms.yamlfor the full envsubst escape contract). GATEWAY_VIPmust be insideCILIUM_LB_POOL_START..STOP, and in practice equal to START: thesharedGateway pins no address, so Cilium LB-IPAM gives it the pool's first free IP while split-horizon CoreDNS answers with${GATEWAY_VIP}. A VIP outside the pool blackholes in-cluster hairpin traffic while the Gateway still looks healthy.
Values the operator has not decided are TBD-PROD-* placeholders, not guesses: prod inherits the
DEV base defaults if an overlay op is simply omitted, so an invalid value that fails loudly is
strictly safer than a plausible one that quietly comes up on the wrong network.
How Flux is pointed at an environment
flux bootstrap (run by WS-INFRA in Phase 1) targets one environment's path per cluster:
# dev cluster
flux bootstrap ... --path=clusters/dev
# prod cluster (Phase 7 only — design-only until then)
flux bootstrap ... --path=clusters/prod
Bootstrap materializes the flux-system Kustomization that renders the chosen overlay, which pulls
in base/ and applies the env-scoped cluster-vars.
Reconciliation order
GitRepository (flux-system)
│
▼
Kustomization: platform (./platform, substituteFrom cluster-vars)
│ healthy
▼
Kustomization: apps-wave-0 (./apps/wave-0, dependsOn platform-config, substituteFrom cluster-vars)
│ healthy
▼
Kustomization: apps-wave-1 (./apps/wave-1, dependsOn apps-wave-0)
│ healthy
▼
Kustomization: apps-wave-N (./apps/wave-N, dependsOn apps-wave-N-1)
Second-order CRDs need a THIRD pass (platform-config-cdi, added 2026-09-05)
The controllers/configs split (platform → platform-config) assumes a CRD is registered by the
controller install. CDI breaks that: cdi-operator.yaml registers only cdis.cdi.kubevirt.io,
and cdi-operator creates storageprofiles / datavolumes / datasources only after it has
reconciled the CDI CR. Since kustomize-controller server-side dry-runs every object in a pass
before applying any of them, having the CDI CR and the CDI StorageProfiles in one pass was a
deadlock, not a race: unknown kind → pass aborts → CR never applied → CRD never created →
platform-config can never converge → every tier below it blocked. Invisible on dev (its CDI CRDs
have existed for months); it cost 12h on prod's cold start.
So there is a third tier, platform-config-cdi (./platform-config-cdi, dependsOn: platform-config), and a rule:
A CR belongs in
platform-config-cdi, notplatform-config, when the CRD it needs is created by a controller at runtime rather than by a manifest in git.
apps-vms dependsOn it as well as platform-config, because CDI reads
StorageProfile/longhorn-vm at DataVolume provisioning time — a VM disk provisioned before that
profile exists is stamped RWO/Filesystem and is permanently not live-migratable.
Wave 0 dependsOn platform-config (transitively platform) so CNI/storage/TLS/DNS/gateway
exist before any workload reconciles. The app tier is split into dependency-ordered WAVES
(catalog/render.py --emit-waves): each apps-wave-<N> health-gates (wait:true) ONLY its own
wave, so a crashloop in a later wave can no longer stall an earlier wave or block new revisions.
See DESIGN-waves.md for the wave table + cutover runbook.
TODOs (later phases — do not action in Phase 0)
- Source cutover (WS-GITOPS, Phase 6):
base/flux-system.yamlcurrently points at the bootstrap source. After Gitea is onboarded, repointspec.urltogitea.home.keithjackson.devand keep an off-cluster mirror (specdocs/05"Source-of-truth",CONTRIBUTING.md). - SOPS decryption (WS-SEC, Phase 1): add
spec.decryption.provider: sops(age secret name only, never plaintext) to the platform/apps Kustomizations once the age key is bootstrapped (ADR-0007). - Split ordered Flux Kustomizations if intra-platform ordering needs to be explicit (e.g. a
separate
cilium/longhornKustomization othersdependsOn).