Home-Network/home-network-k3s-impl
2
0 Fork 0
Code Issues 3 Pull Requests 3 Actions Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity
Files
a1cc0a55560f27e698f00a5bb00baaf12bb719fd
home-network-k3s-impl/runbooks/flux-reconcile.md
T
jakman85andClaude Opus 5 b7341b329b fix(runbooks): declare whole-repo scope, drop the bespoke l0 stage, +cnpg-primary-spread 
Three corrections after rebasing onto main.

1. THE GUARD CAUGHT A REAL ONE ON ITS FIRST CONTACT WITH main. main had gained
   `CNPGPrimariesCoLocated` (platform/cnpg/alerts.yaml) pointing at
   /runbooks/cnpg-primary-spread, with no runbook. The check failed the rebase exactly as
   designed — 46 annotations, 35 names, 34 present — naming both the missing file AND the
   missing configMapGenerator entry. runbooks/cnpg-primary-spread.md now exists: what
   co-located primaries actually cost here (blast radius, not an outage, because
   instances: 3 + required anti-affinity), why the drift is uncorrectable-by-declaration
   (CNPG has no primary-placement field), the readiness gate that keeps the rule quiet
   during a real node outage, and the ~9s-per-database switchover rebalance, one cluster
   at a time. The 2026-09-07 outage in which all three primaries sat on one node is the
   reason the alert exists at all.

2. WHOLE-REPO SCOPE, NOT A HAND-WRITTEN STAGE. main's refactor replaced ci/l0.sh's
   per-check "UNCONDITIONAL" stages with a declaration:
   `conformance.home.k3s/scope: "whole-repo"`, unioned into every gate run by Stage 3b's
   `--include-scope`. My +38-line Stage 3f is removed (ci/l0.sh is now byte-identical to
   main) and the annotation is declared instead. Assertion (7) of the check was rewritten
   to match: it no longer asserts its own path appears in ci/l0.sh — it asserts the test
   DECLARES the scope and that ci/l0.sh still passes --include-scope, since neither half
   alone makes the check load-bearing. That matters here because
   ci/touched-requirements.sh maps platform/monitoring/* to "R-OBS-01 R-OBS-02", not
   R-OBS-04, and maps platform/kubevirt/* and runbooks/* to nothing at all.

3. A FACTUAL CORRECTION IN ALL 35 RUNBOOKS. Every page claimed `dev.sh` defaults its
   current-context to k3s-dev. main's `9b4744d fix(devcontainer): dev.sh defaults to
   prod` made that false, and a runbook that misstates which cluster a command talks to is
   worse than one that says nothing. The pages now say what is durably true: the default
   has already changed once, so naming `--context k3s-prod` is what makes a command mean
   the same thing next month, and the per-invocation banner is there to be read. The
   check's own failure message was corrected the same way.

Re-verified after all three: check green at 374 assertions (46 annotations, 35/35 runbooks
present, 35/35 projected), re-applied to prod, and re-probed in-cluster through the
Gateway — node-down, keycloak-down, keycloak-client-secrets, cnpg-archiving,
longhorn-faulted, vpn-down, node-io and cnpg-primary-spread all HTTP 200 with
text/plain; charset=utf-8 and 8.9-12.1 KB of real body; /runbooks/ index 200; an unknown
name 404s with a pointer rather than a blank page; and homepage still answers the apex `/`,
confirming Gateway API longest-path precedence.

Full merge gate: PASS (spec-immutability, lint, l0, render-golden, l1 all green;
prom-rules SKIPPED for want of promtool in the image; L2/L3 SKIPPED, no cluster).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
2026-09-13 00:00:24 -05:00

165 lines
10 KiB
Markdown
Raw Blame History

# flux-reconcile — A Flux resource has failed to reconcile for 15 minutes
**Alert:** `FluxReconciliationFailure` (warning, 15m)
**File:** `platform/monitoring/alerts.yaml`, group `platform-health.flux`
**Expression:** `max by (namespace, name, kind) (gotk_reconcile_condition{type="Ready", status="False"}) == 1`
## What this means here
Something in the GitOps chain is stuck at Ready=False. On this cluster that is more consequential than
it sounds, because **`git push origin main` IS the deploy** — there is no other apply step. A stuck
Kustomization means git and the cluster have diverged and nothing will close the gap.
The chain has **14 tiers**: `flux-system` → `cilium` → `platform` → `platform-config` →
`platform-config-cdi` → `apps-wave-0/1/2`, plus the non-gating leaves `apps-vms`, `oauth2-proxy`,
`headlamp`, `homepage`, `crafty`, `runbooks`, `backup`. Which tier is failing decides the blast radius:
- **`flux-system`, `cilium`, `platform`, `platform-config` are gating (`wait: true`).** One Failed
HelmRelease in the `platform` tier stalls **everything downstream** on "dependency not ready". That
is not theoretical: a crashlooping Headlamp HelmRelease once stalled `platform-config`,
`oauth2-proxy` and every apps wave (the "Headlamp gating stall"), and oauth2-proxy twice deadlocked
by **blocking its own fix** — it sat in the gating tier while needing Keycloak + trusted TLS +
split-horizon DNS, so `platform-config`, which applies the fix, could never reconcile. Both were
resolved by moving the leaf into its own `wait: false` tier.
- **The leaf tiers are `wait: false`** precisely so their unhealth can never gate anything.
Prod's source is `http://gitea.gitea.svc.cluster.local:3000` — the **in-cluster Service**, on purpose.
It used to be a public hostname, and the apex flip taught the expensive version of that lesson: the
HTTPRoute serving the source's own hostname lives in a downstream tier that cannot reconcile while the
source is down, so `srcReady=False` / *"unable to list remote"* became a **deadlock**. If you are
tempted to point the GitRepository at a public name, don't.
**This alert is currently INERT.** `count(gotk_reconcile_condition)` and `count(gotk_suspend_status)`
both returned **0 series** on prod on 2026-09-13: there is no scrape job for the Flux controllers in
Prometheus's 19 jobs, so every `gotk_*`-based rule (`FluxReconciliationFailure`,
`FluxResourceSuspended`, `ImageUpdateAutomationFailing`, `ImagePolicyStalled`,
`UpdateHealthGateFailed`) evaluates against nothing. **Flux health is therefore unmonitored today** and
must be read from the CRs directly, with the commands below. See `/runbooks/targets-down` for the full
list of inert rule groups. Adding the Flux controllers' ServiceMonitor is open work.
## 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
picks a current-context per invocation, and **that default has already changed once** — it was k3s-dev
until dev was decommissioned on 2026-09-13, and is k3s-prod now. A command that names its context means
the same thing next month as it does today; one that relies on the default does not, and the failure is
silent (it answers confidently about the other cluster). `CLUSTER=prod infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run
kubectl ...` selects it explicitly, and every invocation prints a banner naming the cluster it is about
to talk to — read it. 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
The whole chain at a glance — this is the command to run first, every time:
```
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
'kubectl --context k3s-prod get kustomizations.kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io -A \
-o custom-columns=NAME:.metadata.name,PATH:.spec.path,READY:.status.conditions[?\(@.type==\"Ready\"\)].status,MSG:.status.conditions[?\(@.type==\"Ready\"\)].message,REV:.status.lastAppliedRevision'
```
Is the SOURCE healthy? If not, nothing downstream can be:
```
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n flux-system get gitrepositories.source.toolkit.fluxcd.io \
-o custom-columns=NAME:.metadata.name,URL:.spec.url,READY:.status.conditions[?\(@.type==\"Ready\"\)].status,MSG:.status.conditions[?\(@.type==\"Ready\"\)].message'
```
HelmReleases (the usual culprit inside `platform`):
```
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
'kubectl --context k3s-prod get helmreleases.helm.toolkit.fluxcd.io -A \
-o custom-columns=NS:.metadata.namespace,NAME:.metadata.name,READY:.status.conditions[?\(@.type==\"Ready\"\)].status,MSG:.status.conditions[?\(@.type==\"Ready\"\)].message'
```
The controller's own view, with the real error text:
```
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n flux-system logs deploy/kustomize-controller --tail=80; echo ====; \
kubectl --context k3s-prod -n flux-system logs deploy/helm-controller --tail=80'
```
## Likely causes, most likely first
### 1. "no matches for kind X" — a CR applied before its CRD
The recurring structural failure here. Flux server-side-apply fails the **whole** apply, so a tier that
ships both a CRD-installing HelmRelease and CRs of that CRD can never converge — the CRD never gets
created because the apply that would create it also contains the CR. Symptoms:
`no matches for kind "ClusterIssuer"` / `"PrometheusRule"`. The standing rule: **any component shipping
CRs of a CRD it installs must split the CRs into `platform-config`** (`dependsOn: platform`), and
second-order CRs whose CRD only appears after a controller reconciles go in `platform-config-cdi`.
Remediation is a git change moving the resource; `bootstrap/standup.sh crds` is the belt-and-braces
repair for a cluster already wedged.
### 2. A HelmRelease is genuinely failing its install/upgrade
Read the message. Known instances: the `headlamp-0.40.1` `-session-ttl` chart/image desync; Grafana 13
OOM-looping after kps 65→88. Note `platform`'s `timeout: 5m` versus Longhorn's HelmRelease
`timeout: 15m` — **the tier can time out while a legitimate Longhorn upgrade is still running**. Give
it another interval before concluding it is broken.
### 3. A `${TOKEN}` problem in post-build substitution
Substitution **fails open**: an undefined variable becomes the empty string and the Kustomization still
reports Ready — which is how `k8sServiceHost: ""` broke Cilium on 2 of 3 dev nodes on 2026-09-01. A
*parse* error is the loud version and does fail the whole Kustomization
(`unable to parse variable name`). If the message mentions envsubst or a variable, run the L0 check:
`conformance/tests/l0-static/flux-postbuild-substitution/check.sh`. Note **strict substitution became
default-on in kustomize-controller v1.9.0**, so a Flux upgrade flips this behaviour whether or not you
opt in.
### 4. A remote kustomize base timed out
The kustomize-controller's git fetch has a 27s timeout and remote GitHub bases flake against it.
`external-snapshotter` was vendored into the repo for this reason; **`platform/kubevirt` still uses
remote bases**, so a `BuildFail` there is probably this. Remediation: vendor it the same way.
### 5. SOPS decryption
A tier that carries an encrypted Secret needs its own `decryption` stanza patched in by the overlay, by
name. A newly split-out tier that inherited a secret but not the patch fails here.
## Remediation notes
- Everything durable is a **git change**. `flux reconcile` only re-triggers; it does not fix a bad
manifest, and it is blocked for agents here.
- Flux is **level-triggered**: an interrupted reconcile is retried, so a restart of a controller is
safe and often the fastest way past a wedged in-flight apply (operator action).
- `dependsOn` is **revision-gated**, not merely Ready-gated: a dependent cannot reconcile revision N
until its dependency has applied N. That is what makes the chain safe and also what makes one stuck
tier so expensive.
## When to escalate or stop
- **If `flux-system`, `cilium`, `platform` or `platform-config` is the failing tier, treat it as a
platform outage in progress** — everything downstream is frozen, including the fix. Get the operator.
- **Do not `flux suspend` a tier to make the alert stop.** That trades a visible failure for
`/runbooks/flux-suspended` and silent drift, which is how prod's whole `platform` tier ended up
suspended and left that way after the 2026-09-04 external-dns incident.
- **Do not enable `driftDetection.mode: enabled` on a CNI.** During the 2026-09-01 Cilium incident the
Helm storage manifest *was* the bad render, so drift correction would have actively re-asserted the
broken value.
- If the GitRepository itself is not Ready, check Gitea before Flux — and remember prod deliberately
reads from the in-cluster Service so that public DNS can never be in this path.
---
Source of truth: `runbooks/flux-reconcile.md`. Index: `/runbooks/`
Records: `DECISIONS-LOG.md` "2026-09-01 — INCIDENT: merging PR #4 briefly broke Cilium" (substitution
fails open), the Headlamp gating stall, the oauth2-proxy cold-start deadlock, and the 2026-09-13
GitOps source deadlock.
Reference in new issue View Git Blame Copy Permalink