Fix three issues with the fluentd-gcp liveness probe: h1. STUCK_THRESHOLD_SECONDS was overridden by LIVENESS_THRESHOLD_SECONDS if defined Probably a copy/paste issue introduced inedf1ffc074h1. `[[` is [a bashism](https://stackoverflow.com/a/47576482), and will always failed when called with `/bin/sh` Introduced bya844523c20Given that we call the liveness probe with `/bin/sh`, we cannot use the double-bracketed `[[` syntax for test, as it is not POSIX-compliant and will throw an error. Annoyingly, even through it prints an error, `sh` returns with exit code 0 in this case: ```bash root@fluentd-7mprs:/# sh liveness.sh liveness.sh: 8: liveness.sh: [[: not found liveness.sh: 15: liveness.sh: [[: not found root@fluentd-7mprs:/# echo $? 0 ``` Which means the liveness probe is considered successful by Kubernetes, despite failing to test things as it was intended. This is also probably the reason why this bug wasn't reported sooner :) Thankfully, the test in this case can just as easily be written as POSIX-compliant as it doesn't use any bash-specific features within the `[[` block. h1. Buffers are transient and cannot be relied upon for monitoring Finally, after fixing the above issue, we started seeing the fluentd containers being restarted very often, and found an issue with the underlying logic of the liveness probe. The probe checks that the pod is still alive by running the following command: `find /var/log/fluentd-buffers -type f -newer /tmp/marker-stuck -print -quit` This checks if any _regular_ file exists under `/var/log/fluentd-buffers` that is more recent than a predetermined time, and will return an empty string otherwise. The issue is that these buffers are temporary and volatile, they get created and deleted constantly. Here is an example of running that check every second on a running fluentd: ``` root@fluentd-eks-playground-jdc8m:/# LIVENESS_THRESHOLD_SECONDS=${LIVENESS_THRESHOLD_SECONDS:-300}; root@fluentd-eks-playground-jdc8m:/# STUCK_THRESHOLD_SECONDS=${LIVENESS_THRESHOLD_SECONDS:-900}; root@fluentd-eks-playground-jdc8m:/# touch -d "${STUCK_THRESHOLD_SECONDS} seconds ago" /tmp/marker-stuck; root@fluentd-eks-playground-jdc8m:/# touch -d "${LIVENESS_THRESHOLD_SECONDS} seconds ago" /tmp/marker-liveness; root@fluentd-eks-playground-jdc8m:/# while true; do date ; find /var/log/fluentd-buffers -type f -newer /tmp/marker-stuck -print -quit ; sleep 1 ; done Fri Feb 22 10:52:57 UTC 2019 Fri Feb 22 10:52:58 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer/buffer.b5827964ccf4c7004103c3fa7c8533f85.log Fri Feb 22 10:52:59 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer/buffer.b5827964ccf4c7004103c3fa7c8533f85.log Fri Feb 22 10:53:00 UTC 2019 Fri Feb 22 10:53:01 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer/buffer.b5827964fb8b2eedcccd2763ea7775cc2.log Fri Feb 22 10:53:02 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer/buffer.b5827964fb8b2eedcccd2763ea7775cc2.log Fri Feb 22 10:53:03 UTC 2019 Fri Feb 22 10:53:04 UTC 2019 Fri Feb 22 10:53:05 UTC 2019 Fri Feb 22 10:53:06 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer/buffer.b5827965564883997b673d703af54848b.log Fri Feb 22 10:53:07 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer/buffer.b5827965564883997b673d703af54848b.log Fri Feb 22 10:53:08 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer/buffer.b5827965564883997b673d703af54848b.log Fri Feb 22 10:53:09 UTC 2019 Fri Feb 22 10:53:10 UTC 2019 Fri Feb 22 10:53:11 UTC 2019 Fri Feb 22 10:53:12 UTC 2019 Fri Feb 22 10:53:13 UTC 2019 Fri Feb 22 10:53:14 UTC 2019 Fri Feb 22 10:53:15 UTC 2019 Fri Feb 22 10:53:16 UTC 2019 ``` We can see buffers being created, then disappearing. The LivenessProbe running under these conditions has a ~50% chance of failing, despite fluentd being perfectly happy. I believe that check is probably ok for fluentd installs using large amounts of buffers, in which case the liveness probe will be correct more often than not, but fluentd installs that use buffering less intensively will be negatively impacted by this. My solution to fix this is to check the last updated time of buffering _folders_ within `/var/log/fluentd_buffers`. These _do_ get updated when buffers are created, and do not get deleted as buffers are emptied, making them the perfect candidate for our use. Here's an example with the `-d` flag for directories: ``` root@fluentd-eks-playground-jdc8m:/# while true; do date ; find /var/log/fluentd-buffers -type d -newer /tmp/marker-stuck -print -quit ; sleep 1 ; done Fri Feb 22 10:57:51 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer Fri Feb 22 10:57:52 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer Fri Feb 22 10:57:53 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer Fri Feb 22 10:57:54 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer Fri Feb 22 10:57:55 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer Fri Feb 22 10:57:56 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer Fri Feb 22 10:57:57 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer Fri Feb 22 10:57:58 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer Fri Feb 22 10:57:59 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer Fri Feb 22 10:58:00 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer Fri Feb 22 10:58:01 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer Fri Feb 22 10:58:02 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer Fri Feb 22 10:58:03 UTC 2019 /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer ``` And example of the directory being updated as new buffers come in: ``` root@fluentd-eks-playground-jdc8m:/# ls -lah /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer total 0 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 6 Feb 22 11:17 . drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 38 Feb 22 11:14 .. root@fluentd-eks-playground-jdc8m:/# ls -lah /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer total 16K drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 224 Feb 22 11:18 . drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 38 Feb 22 11:14 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.8K Feb 22 11:18 buffer.b58279be6e21e8b29fc333a7d50096ed0.log -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 215 Feb 22 11:18 buffer.b58279be6e21e8b29fc333a7d50096ed0.log.meta -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 429 Feb 22 11:18 buffer.b58279be6f09bdfe047a96486a525ece2.log -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 195 Feb 22 11:18 buffer.b58279be6f09bdfe047a96486a525ece2.log.meta root@fluentd-eks-playground-jdc8m:/# ls -lah /var/log/fluentd-buffers/kubernetes.system.buffer total 0 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 6 Feb 22 11:18 . drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 38 Feb 22 11:14 .. ```
Legacy Cluster add-ons
For more information on add-ons see the documentation.
Overview
Cluster add-ons are resources like Services and Deployments (with pods) that are shipped with the Kubernetes binaries and are considered an inherent part of the Kubernetes clusters.
There are currently two classes of add-ons:
- Add-ons that will be reconciled.
- Add-ons that will be created if they don't exist.
More details could be found in addon-manager/README.md.
Cooperating Horizontal / Vertical Auto-Scaling with "reconcile class addons"
"Reconcile" class addons will be periodically reconciled to the original state given
by the initial config. In order to make Horizontal / Vertical Auto-scaling functional,
the related fields in config should be left unset. More specifically, leave replicas
in ReplicationController / Deployment / ReplicaSet unset for Horizontal Scaling,
leave resources for container unset for Vertical Scaling. The periodic reconcile
won't clobbered these fields, hence they could be managed by Horizontal / Vertical
Auto-scaler.
Add-on naming
The suggested naming for most of the resources is <basename> (with no version number).
Though resources like Pod, ReplicationController and DaemonSet are exceptional.
It would be hard to update Pod because many fields in Pod are immutable. For
ReplicationController and DaemonSet, in-place update may not trigger the underlying
pods to be re-created. You probably need to change their names during update to trigger
a complete deletion and creation.