Twelve `<app>-down` SLI rules were STRUCTURALLY INERT. Each read `up{job="<app>"} == 0`,
and the ServiceMonitor rendered beside it named `endpoints[].port: metrics` — a port NO
rendered app Service defined. Every monitor discovered ZERO targets, so no `up{job="<app>"}`
series existed and the rule could not fire. Verified on prod before this change:
`count by (job) (up)` listed 24 jobs and not one of the twelve appeared; `up{job="plex"}`
and `up{job="gitea"}` both returned nothing. `PrometheusTargetsMissing` could not see it
either — a target that was never discovered has no `up` series to be 0.
THE PORT NAME WAS NEVER THE MISSING PIECE. Ground truth per app: Plex, Pi-hole, Jackett,
qBittorrent, Sonarr, Radarr, Seerr, Semaphore and Nextcloud export NO Prometheus metrics
without a separate exporter sidecar; Gitea can but only with app.ini metrics enabled;
Keycloak does, on the operator's management port, already scraped by
platform/keycloak/servicemonitor.yaml; vm-demo is a KubeVirt VM with no Service at all, so
its monitor selected nothing whatsoever. `metrics: true` was asserting a fact none of them
had. There was also a THIRD layer of inertness nobody had hit yet: every app namespace ships
default-deny with `ingress: []` and the renderer emitted no monitoring allow, so even a
correct port would have been dropped by policy — while renderer-contract.md claimed the
baseline carried such an allow.
FIXED IN THE GENERATOR, not in twelve rendered files:
* `slis: [up]` now renders a `<app>-down` alert against kube-state-metrics readiness of the
service's own workload object —
`kube_deployment_status_replicas_available{namespace,deployment} == 0 or absent(...)`,
`kube_statefulset_status_replicas_ready` for a StatefulSet, and
`absent(kubevirt_vmi_info{namespace,name,phase="running"})` for a VM. The same idiom
KeycloakDown has used since it was fixed. kube-state-metrics IS scraped, so this needs no
exporter and no new target. The `or absent(...)` half is load-bearing: the signal
DISAPPEARING now fires the alert instead of silencing it.
* schema 1.6.0 adds `observability.metricsEndpoint` — WHERE metrics are served. A
ServiceMonitor is rendered ONLY from it, and it renders all three halves of a working
scrape together: the named Service port, the monitor endpoint, and the
monitoring-namespace CiliumNetworkPolicy allow. No catalog entry declares one, so twelve
dead ServiceMonitors are gone. `metrics: true` keeps meaning logs-to-Loki plus
kube-state-metrics liveness.
* schema 1.6.0 also adds `observability.livenessWorkload`, and catalog/keycloak.yaml uses
it. Keycloak's server is a StatefulSet run by the operator; the default Deployment shape
would have made its `absent()` half fire FOREVER — the other failure mode this repo has
shipped.
* renderer selftest gains cases 9/9a/9b/9c: no metricsEndpoint => no monitor; the up SLI
must not read `up{job=...}`; endpoint port must exist on the Service; the metrics port
must NOT reach the Gateway allow; an unknown livenessWorkload.kind is REFUSED.
PROOF, both directions, for all twelve (apps/wave-{0,1,2}/tests/app-slis.test.yaml, run by
platform/monitoring/tests/run.sh over the RENDERED manifests):
* quiet on the healthy state; firing on no-ready-replica; firing when the series is ABSENT;
the VM asserted both gone and in a non-running phase; per-app isolation asserted, and
keycloak asserted un-maskable by its neighbours (keycloak-operator Deployment,
keycloak-db StatefulSet ready in the same namespace).
* mutation-checked: six mutations, each turning its suite red — reverting plex to
`up{job=...} == 0`; dropping seerr's `absent()` half; pointing keycloak at a Deployment;
capitalising the VMI phase to `Running`; widening keycloak's matcher to the namespace;
inverting plex's `== 0` to `!= 0`. Control run green.
* live on prod with `promtool query instant`: all ten deployed app Deployments export
`kube_deployment_status_replicas_available`,
`kube_statefulset_status_replicas_ready{namespace="keycloak",statefulset="keycloak"}` = 2,
`kubevirt_vmi_info` present with a lowercase `phase="running"`; and evaluating the twelve
SHIPPED expressions returns no series for eleven (quiet, not permanently firing). The
twelfth is vm-demo, which is not in apps/wave-0/kustomization.yaml and so is not deployed
— its rule is not applied either.
DELETION WAS NOT THE ANSWER, and the evidence is recorded rather than assumed:
kube-prometheus-stack's `kubernetes-apps` group IS live on prod (17 rules, KubePodNotReady /
KubeDeploymentReplicasMismatch among them), so app pods are not unmonitored — but that is a
generic warning keyed to a namespace, not the per-service CRITICAL SLI R-OBS-01 declares.
platform/monitoring/alerts.yaml carries no generic app-readiness rule at all.
GUARD SO IT CANNOT RECUR SILENTLY: new whole-repo L0 invariant
conformance/tests/l0-static/servicemonitor-ports-resolve. It walks the MONITORS, not the
alerts, so it needs no `up{job=...}` rule to reach one, and resolves each endpoint by SELECTOR
across the whole tree rather than by same-file adjacency. Fixing the alerts DELETED the only
thing that made the broken monitors visible to the sibling check, which is exactly why this
axis needed its own home. It declares `conformance.home.k3s/scope: whole-repo` and adds no
ci/l0.sh stage. Proven to FAIL on the pre-fix tree: 15 failures — eleven port disagreements,
vm-demo's monitor matching no Service at all, and the three generator/contract assertions —
and to pass after. Its resolver is additionally proven on in-check fixtures (agreeing pair
accepted, disagreeing pair rejected, target-less endpoint rejected), because after the fix
there are zero in-repo monitors left for it to judge and a guard whose only evidence is
"nothing failed" cannot be told apart from one that stopped working. It also asserts
r_servicemonitor does not HARDCODE a port name — the mechanism by which one edit gave twelve
services the same wrong one.
Also fixed, found on the way:
* platform/monitoring/tests/run.sh discovered the SUITE convention only inside
platform/monitoring/tests/ while documenting it as general — a suite added anywhere else
was never run and still looked like coverage. Now discovered tree-wide; a misplaced
*.test.yaml fails loudly instead of vanishing.
* KNOWN_UNWIRED_JOBS in alert-metrics-have-scrape-targets is now EMPTY, and the twelve
apps/* entries in alert-rules-unit-tested's UNTESTED_FILES are gone — both because the
gaps were CLOSED, not waived. Both registers are shrink-only and a stale entry fails.
* renderer-contract.md claimed the default-deny baseline carried a standing monitoring
scrape allow. It never did; the claim is corrected and the allow is now real, per declared
metrics endpoint and scoped to that one port.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
home-network-k3s-impl
Implementation of the home k3s + Longhorn platform. This repo holds the reconciled artifacts
(Flux config, Kustomize overlays, KubeVirt/Helm manifests, ServiceDefinitions, Kyverno policies,
Chainsaw conformance tests, CI). It is driven by — and subordinate to — the read-only
specification at ../home-network-k3s.
Rules (from the spec — non-negotiable)
- The spec is read-only. Never modify anything under
../home-network-k3s. Implement against it; escalate spec problems, don't edit them (specAGENTS.md§11, R-TEST-06). - Done = a green, reproducible, requirement-tagged conformance test — never "merged," never a
manual demo (spec
docs/14,agents/definition-of-done.md). - No work on
main. Every change is a feature branch merged intomain(specCONTRIBUTING.md). - No plaintext secrets — SOPS-encrypted only (spec
docs/07). - Phase discipline — only build what the active roadmap phase authorizes (spec
roadmap/phases.md).
Layout
infra/ node provisioning: OpenTofu (Proxmox VE) + cloud-init + Ansible, and the
pinned dev container that carries the whole toolchain
bootstrap/ one-time cluster bootstrap: Flux install, SOPS/age key, host Gitea
platform/ platform CONTROLLERS (Flux HelmReleases / operator bases): kyverno, cilium,
longhorn, external-snapshotter, cert-manager, externaldns, gateway, coredns,
vpn-egress, monitoring, cnpg, keycloak, oauth2-proxy, kubevirt
platform-config/ platform CONFIGS — the custom resources of the CRDs installed above
(ClusterIssuers, Gateway, Kyverno policies, KubeVirt/CDI CRs, Keycloak CRs).
Split out because CRs and the CRDs they use cannot apply in one pass.
apps/ application tier, reconciled as dependency-ordered WAVES:
wave-0/ wave-1/ wave-2/ rendered container apps (see DESIGN-waves.md)
vms/ KubeVirt VirtualMachines (non-gating tier)
catalog/ ServiceDefinition entries (the onboarding surface) + render.py
schemas/ ServiceDefinition JSON Schema + renderer contract
clusters/ Flux entrypoints + dev/ and prod/ overlays
conformance/ Chainsaw behavior/conformance suite + harness + coverage report
ci/ the gate as scripts (lint · schema · Kyverno L0 · L1 render · decision)
.gitea/ Gitea Actions CI running that gate on an in-cluster runner
Status
Roadmap phases 0–6 are delivered and deployed on the dev cluster; Phase 7 (prod) is not
open — clusters/prod is a design-only overlay.
| Phase | Delivered |
|---|---|
| 0 Foundations | ServiceDefinition schema + renderer, Kyverno L0 gate, conformance harness, CI |
| 1 Cluster bring-up | 3-node k3s HA on Proxmox VE (192.168.1.50/.51/.52), Cilium, Flux, SOPS |
| 2 Platform core | Cilium · Longhorn · cert-manager (LE-prod wildcard) · ExternalDNS · Gateway API · split-horizon CoreDNS |
| 3 Egress / VPN | ADR-0015 node-level OpenVPN split-tunnel + Cilium egress-gateway steering + host kill-switch |
| 4 Observability | kube-prometheus-stack · Loki · Alloy · Alertmanager. Velero still blocked on OQ-BKP; image-automation authored but disabled |
| 5 IaaS | KubeVirt + CDI on real nested KVM; live-migratable RWX VM storage. The UniFi VM runs, but UniFi OS Server is not yet installed in the guest |
| 6 Identity + CI | Keycloak (Operator + CNPG) · oauth2-proxy forward-auth · Grafana OIDC · kubectl OIDC SSO with group→RBAC · in-cluster Gitea Actions merge gate |
Conformance: 36 / 51 requirements covered (70.6%), 15 gaps, 1 safety-critical gap
(R-STATE-02, Longhorn node-loss). Regenerate with ./conformance/run.sh --coverage-only;
the full report is conformance/_artifacts/coverage/coverage.md.
The running narrative — decisions, root causes, incidents, follow-ups — is
DECISIONS-LOG.md. It, not this table, is the authoritative record.
Working on this repo
Everything the gate needs is baked into the pinned dev container — do not install the toolchain on the host:
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh build # once
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run make -C ci gate # the same gate CI runs
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh # interactive shell (sops, flux, kubectl, tofu, ansible)
The container mounts the repo at /work, your age keyring, and the sibling spec repo read-only
so the spec-immutability check can actually run. See
infra/devcontainer/README.md.
A green run prints MERGE GATE: PASS. The L2/L3 conformance layers stay SKIPPED unless
CLUSTER_AVAILABLE=true — the static gate never pretends to have run them.