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Operations

This is the day-to-day operator's guide. The data-plane concepts are in SCHEMA.md; the why's and how's of each layer are in ARCHITECTURE.md. This file covers deploying, monitoring, and recovering.

Deployment

Systemd (recommended for the agent)

config/proxops.service is a template for the repository-first deployment: it sets WorkingDirectory= to the ProxOps GitOps checkout and execs proxops run with no --config (the unit condition checks that checkout exists). Install it:

sudo systemctl edit proxops   # if you want overrides
# or simply:
sudo install -Dm644 config/proxops.service /etc/systemd/system/proxops.service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now proxops

Adjust WorkingDirectory to your checkout location. Environment credentials must be set either via Environment= lines in the unit, a Drop-In file under /etc/systemd/system/proxops.service.d/, or a systemctl set-environment call. Never bake secrets into a committed config: SOPS keys are supplied via SOPS_AGE_KEY_FILE (see SOPS & credentials) or PROXOPS_* env vars (see CLI reference).

Example drop-in /etc/systemd/system/proxops.service.d/cred.env:

[Service]
Environment="PROXOPS_PVE_TOKEN_VALUE=root@pam!proxops=0f63b28d-...."
Environment="PROXOPS_GIT_TOKEN=ghp_...."

Configuration (repository-first)

The normal deployment has no standalone config file at all: the ProxOps GitOps repository carries its own configuration. From inside the repository:

cd <gitops repo>
proxops diff    # discovers the repo from the CWD, no --config needed

ProxOps discovers:

  1. the repository root (the nearest .git ancestor of the CWD — or of --git-path <path> / PROXOPS_GIT_PATH when set);
  2. an optional process-wide <root>/proxops.yaml (log / reconcile / listen / data-dir / bootstrap credentials / git URL-mode); absent = defaults; and
  3. every <root>/clusters/<name>/config.yaml — each declaring exactly one pve.clusters.<name> entry (endpoint + node allowlist + SOPS reference), named after its directory.

The full field reference lives in Configuration reference; the SOPS/credential model in SOPS & credentials.

Fail-closed configuration rules: at least one named cluster; each name a valid composition identity (lowercase alnum + -); each base-url parses as http(s)://host; two clusters may not share one endpoint (prune scoping is endpoint-based); every pve.clusters entry must have a composition at clusters/<name>/resources.yaml in the tree, and every composition a configured endpoint; a cluster-local config key that does not match its directory name is refused.

URL mode (remote git source)

For hosts that are NOT inside a ProxOps repository checkout (multi-host management, CI read-only, mount-free checkouts), the process config declares git.url (+ branch; token via PROXOPS_GIT_TOKEN), and ProxOps clones/fetches the remote into the data-dir and reconciles its head:

git:
  url: https://github.com/you/proxops-gitops.git
  branch: main

The remote tree still carries the compositions (clusters/<name>/resources.yaml + <kind>/…), and the endpoint, node allowlist and SOPS reference for every cluster must be declared inline in that same process config — pve.clusters.<name> (base-url + nodes + optional secrets-file), because that host has no local clusters/<name>/config.yaml to discover:

pve:
  clusters:
    conformance-dev:
      base-url: https://pve-dev-01.example:8006
      nodes: [pve-dev-01, pve-dev-02]
      secrets-file: /etc/proxops/security/conformance-dev.secrets.sops.yaml

Pass such a config explicitly: proxops run --config /etc/proxops/proxops.yaml. (Inside a repository, the repository-first path wins: the local clusters/<name>/config.yaml files are the source of the endpoints.)

Air-gapped / local mode

An explicit work tree you maintain yourself (or mount) is selected with --git-path <path> / PROXOPS_GIT_PATH=<path> — for automation, tests and hosts where the checkout path is not the CWD. The agent never writes the tree. In this mode there is no fetch: the tree the operator maintains IS the desired state.

Observability

  • /healthz — 200 when a reconcile cycle has finished within the last 2 minutes; 503 otherwise. Use for liveness probes and load balancers.
  • /metrics — Prometheus (labels: result ∈ {ok, error, aborted}, kind, what).
  • /status — JSON. Top-level fields:
    • process_start: RFC3339 UTC.
    • last_cycle: {commit, started_at, finished_at, objects, actions_ok, actions_error, pruned, prune_deferred, skipped, anomalies, desired_stale, read_only, aborted, abort_reason} — counters of the most recent completed cycle.
    • objects: array of {cluster, kind, name, node, id, state, last_action, last_error, last_converged_at, prune_reason, updated_at} — one entry per cluster-scoped object (every record carries its cluster). State values: desired, drift, converged, in_progress, failed, skipped, pruned, anomalous. The agent never marks anything converged without a round-trip read back from PVE.

Useful systemd / shell checks:

curl -s 127.0.0.1:9494/healthz && echo OK
curl -s 127.0.0.1:9494/status | jq .last_cycle
# Alert when anomalies > 0 (empty-desired guard or desired-stale on PVE read)
journalctl -u proxops -f | grep 'anomaly\|abort\|stale'

PVE 9.2 storage listing quirk (ISO + CTTemplate + DiskImage presence)

On a node-local dir storage, PVE 9.2's per-type content-listing endpoint 500s with unable to parse directory volume name 'iso' (or 'vztmpl' / 'import'):

GET /nodes/{n}/storage/local/content/iso      # → 500 (PVE 9.2 dir storage)
GET /nodes/{n}/storage/local/content/vztmpl   # → 500
GET /nodes/{n}/storage/local/content         # → 200 — use this

The bare listing returns every pool on that storage with a content field per entry; ProxOps's Storage.HasContent(ctx, node, storage, contentType, filename) filters on it. This is why ISO / CTTemplate / DiskImage presence detection does not use …/content/iso, …/content/vztmpl or …/content/import. Downloads still go through POST /nodes/{n}/storage/{s}/download-url with the content=iso|vztmpl|import form parameter. ProxOps treats a listing read failure as fail-closed: it skips the download for that node this cycle (a Skipped record) rather than blindly re-downloading, and retries next cycle.

ISO, CTTemplate and DiskImage are storage artifacts

All three kinds:

  • have no PVE numeric id — PVE-side identity is (node, storage, filename);
  • reconcile via a PVE storage download task + a bare content listing for presence;
  • are never pruned by ProxOps — removing a manifest stops re-downloads but does not delete the PVE-side file;
  • support spec.nodes (a node list). The legacy single spec.node is still honored as a one-element list; every declared node is checked independently.

Practical consequences: add a new PVE node and add it to the artifact's spec.nodes — ProxOps downloads the file onto that node's storage. Removing a node from spec.nodes stops checking that node but does not remove the file there.

Structured dependencies (inferred — no depends-on needed)

ProxOps infers these cross-kind edges from the manifest itself:

VM.spec.hardware.cdrom.iso          →  ISO.metadata.name
VM.spec.disks[].image               →  DiskImage.metadata.name
VM.spec.clone                       →  TemplateVM.metadata.name
LXC.spec.template                   →  CTTemplate.metadata.name
TemplateVM.spec.hardware.cdrom.iso  →  ISO.metadata.name
TemplateCT.spec.template            →  CTTemplate.metadata.name

Behaviour:

  • Unknown references abort the whole cycle at parse time (fail-closed); no PVE writes happen.
  • Reference cycles abort the whole cycle at parse time.
  • Creation order is topological: artifacts plan at level 0, the VMs/LXCs that reference them at level 1, and so on. Prunes use the reverse order (dependants deleted before prerequisites).
  • In-cycle deferral: if a prerequisite fails (e.g. a CTT download), a dependant that references it (e.g. an LXC) is not attempted this cycle. The next cycle re-derives everything from live state and retries. No persistent state file is introduced.
  • The proxops/depends-on annotation remains an escape hatch for relationships that cannot be expressed in a structured field; it is merged with the inferred edges.

Ownership-tag migration

Before the rename to ProxOps, the agent's PVE ownership tag was pveconform; it is now proxops. The rename is deliberately fail-closed:

  • An object tagged only pveconform is treated as untagged: ProxOps never prunes it, and diff reports it as skipped with the reason live object without proxops tag; never touched.
  • Once a manifest for that object is composed into resources.yaml, the first managed update rewrites tags to include proxops (the schema always appends the ownership tag), so the object is claimed with a single non-destructive write. Until then it is unmanaged.
  • Objects created by the renamed build carry proxops from the start.

To migrate a cluster that an older build managed, either let the claim happen naturally on the first reconcile of each object, or add the tag out of band (qm set <vmid> --tags <existing>,proxops / pct set). The stale pveconform tag is harmless and can be removed at leisure — ProxOps ignores it.

Pruning safety and artifact conservatism

The ownership gate remains: only PVE objects tagged proxops are eligible for pruning. The per-cycle prune budget (default 3, per cluster) caps deletions, and the empty-desired anomaly guard suppresses prunes when a kind has 0 manifests but more tagged live objects than the budget. All of this is per cluster: the candidate set, the budget, and the anomaly guard are scoped to one cluster's composition + node allowlist — an object belonging to cluster A is never pruned because it is absent from cluster B's composition, and an empty cluster triggers no destructive behaviour on its configured nodes. For ISO / CTTemplate / DiskImage, proxops never plans a delete (the "conservative artifact deletion" guarantee): PVE storage content may be shared with tooling the agent does not manage, and PVE has no "delete by proxops name" semantics.

Recovery

A cycle aborted with an anomaly

proxops status | jq '.objects' and /metrics proxops_cycles_total{result="aborted"} both point at which kind. Most common cause: you deleted all VM manifests but PVE still has tagged live VMs. Confirm the intent:

  • If the intent was keep the VMs, restore the manifests.
  • If the intent was delete, raise reconcile.prune-budget temporarily, verify with diff, then apply.

PVE task failed, one object stuck

proxops status will show the offending object with state=failed and lastError from PVE's exit status. The agent will re-diff on next cycle; if PVE's task is still in progress, the next attempt will return operation in progress and be logged as a transient failure — the following cycle re-diffs. There is no local retry state.

desired-stale on every cycle

The git fetch is failing. journalctl -u proxops will show the reason. Common: git credentials rotated, DNS broke, or the remote deleted the branch. Fix the cause; the agent returns to normal on the next successful fetch. No manual intervention needed.

PVE token rotated

Set PROXOPS_PVE_TOKEN_VALUE (or PROXOPS_PVE_TOKEN+PROXOPS_PVE_USER for token auth) to the new value, then sudo systemctl restart proxops. The agent does not pick up env changes live.

proxops apply exits non-zero

apply is a one-shot command with strict abort semantics: any failed action returns non-zero. This is what you want in runbooks and CI. In daemon mode (run) the loop tolerates cycle aborts and keeps ticking; check the /status anomaly counter and journalctl for the reason.

Multi-cluster operation

diff, apply, and status process every configured cluster in deterministic (sorted name) order and label each cluster's section (=== conformance-dev ===, [prod-a] ...). A failure or abort on one cluster never blocks the others; apply exits non-zero when any cluster aborted. Each cluster gets its own PVE endpoint + node allowlist, its own per-cycle prune budget, and its own empty-desired anomaly guard. The same PVE id and the same name can exist on different clusters (id/name spaces are cluster-scoped).

To add a cluster: create clusters/<name>/ with a config.yaml declaring pve.clusters.<name> (endpoint + node allowlist + optional SOPS reference) AND a resources.yaml composition. Both sides must agree; a mismatch fails closed at discovery.

Working with PVE

What ProxOps does not do

  • No VM replication. PVE's repl* properties are not modelled (deliberate; see docs/GAPS.md).
  • No PVE pool management. pool is not a schema field.
  • No qm/pct shell-outs. PVE API is the only interface.
  • No deletion of storage artifacts. ISO / CTTemplate / DiskImage manifests only create (download). Remove the manifest to stop re-downloading; PVE keeps the file.
  • No PVE user/role management. The PVE token used by ProxOps is assumed to already exist with the right roles (see README).
  • No PVE-kind demotion of a template back to a plain VM/CT. PVE 9.2 has no /qemu/{id}/untemplate and no /lxc/{id}/untemplate endpoint (probe: HTTP 501 "not implemented" on both). ProxOps therefore surfaces a kind: VM (or kind: LXC) desired against a live PVE-side template=1 as a non-destructive anomaly; the demotion is an operator's manual step on the PVE host.
  • No re-cloning of an existing VM. A spec.clone VM is cloned from its TemplateVM only when the VM is absent from PVE. Once the clone exists, every change is a config write (never a fresh clone over live data — PVE also refuses a clone onto an existing id). To reprovision a clone from an updated template, delete the VM manifest (prune), then re-add it.

Idempotency by construction

Because Drift compares desired vs live by PVE-wire fields (memory in MiB, disk size in PVE binary-suffix units, NIC model+bridge (auto MAC ignored), scsihw + iothread + pool + size for disks), you should never have to proxops apply twice in a row: the second cycle produces a zero-action plan for a converged cluster. Any non-empty plan is drift, not state-machine confusion. Disk pool/size drift on a live PVE volume is NOT auto-applied (PVE 9.2 re-creates the volume on a config write → data loss): ProxOps surfaces such drift as a non-destructive anomalous object state on /status + proxops_anomalies_total{type="live_only_slot"} on /metrics. Resize deliberately on PVE, then update the manifest.

Adoption

Adopting live PVE objects into ProxOps YAML, the PVE round-trip invariants, and production safety expectations are documented in Adoption.

SOPS & credentials

The per-cluster SOPS/age credential workflow (creating the encrypted file, the age key bootstrap, the precedence chain, the fail-closed guarantees, and the limitations) is documented in SOPS & credentials.

Runbook (typical incident)

1. proxops status                       # which objects are in what state
2. journalctl -u proxops -n 200         # last cycle's log lines
3. proxops diff                         # would-be plan
4. proxops apply --dry-run              # same as 3, through the full pipe
5. Fix the cause (manifest / PVE token / git)
6. proxops apply                        # one-shot convergence
7. Verify: proxops status again, /metrics counters reset

The agent is intentionally not a "runbook engine": it converges to a known state every cycle. If it does not converge, the diff is the runbook (it tells you exactly what PVE will do to reach state).