Make cluster-health a user-global skill for emo (the lone entry in the provisioner's SKILL_USERS allowlist), so it's available from any directory — not only when working inside the infra clone where it already exists as a project skill (.claude/skills/cluster-health). install_skills() in t3-provision-users.sh copies the vendored snapshot into ~/.agents/skills/ and symlinks ~/.claude/skills/, so this is the durable, rebuild-surviving path. cluster-health is homelab-local (vendored from this repo's own .claude/skills/), unlike the other snapshot entries which mirror upstream mattpocock/skills + vercel-labs/skills; README documents its provenance and the explicit re-sync step so the vendored copy doesn't silently drift. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
20 KiB
| name | description | author | version | date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| cluster-health | Check Kubernetes cluster health and fix common issues. Use when: (1) User asks to check the cluster, check health, or "what's wrong", (2) User asks about pod status, node health, or deployment issues, (3) User asks to fix stuck pods, evicted pods, or CrashLoopBackOff, (4) User mentions "health check", "cluster status", "cluster health", (5) User asks "is everything running" or "any problems". Runs 47 cluster-wide checks (nodes, workloads, monitoring, certs, backups, external reachability, PVE host thermals + load, HA Sofia status dashboard, Immich smart-search, Proxmox CSI ghost-disk drift) with safe auto-fix for evicted pods. | Claude Code | 2.0.0 | 2026-04-19 |
Cluster Health Check
MANDATORY: Run the script first
When this skill is invoked, your first action must be to run the
cluster health check script and reason over its output before doing
anything else. Do not improvise individual kubectl calls — the
script is the authoritative surface.
cd /home/wizard/code
bash infra/scripts/cluster_healthcheck.sh --json | tee /tmp/cluster-health.json
If the session is rooted elsewhere, fall back to the absolute path:
bash /home/wizard/code/infra/scripts/cluster_healthcheck.sh --json
Then:
- Parse the JSON. Report the PASS/WARN/FAIL counts + overall verdict.
- Iterate every FAIL and WARN check, describe what tripped, and propose the remediation path (use the recipes below).
- Only reach for ad-hoc
kubectlcommands when investigating a specific failure beyond what the script reported.
Exit codes: 0 = healthy, 1 = warnings only, 2 = failures.
Quick flags
# Human-readable report (default), no auto-fix
bash infra/scripts/cluster_healthcheck.sh
# Machine-readable JSON summary
bash infra/scripts/cluster_healthcheck.sh --json
# Only show WARN + FAIL (suppress PASS noise)
bash infra/scripts/cluster_healthcheck.sh --quiet
# Enable auto-fix (delete evicted pods, kick stuck CrashLoop pods)
bash infra/scripts/cluster_healthcheck.sh --fix
# Combined: quiet JSON without auto-fix
bash infra/scripts/cluster_healthcheck.sh --no-fix --quiet --json
# Custom kubeconfig
bash infra/scripts/cluster_healthcheck.sh --kubeconfig /path/to/config
What It Checks (47 checks)
| # | Check | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Node Status | NotReady nodes, version drift |
| 2 | Node Resources | CPU/mem >80% (warn) / >90% (fail) |
| 3 | Node Conditions | MemoryPressure / DiskPressure / PIDPressure |
| 4 | Problematic Pods | CrashLoopBackOff / Error / ImagePullBackOff |
| 5 | Evicted/Failed Pods | status.phase=Failed |
| 6 | DaemonSets | desired == ready |
| 7 | Deployments | ready == desired replicas |
| 8 | PVC Status | all Bound |
| 9 | HPA Health | targets not <unknown>, utilization <100% |
| 10 | CronJob Failures | job conditions Failed=True in last 24h |
| 11 | CrowdSec Agents | all pods Running |
| 12 | Ingress Routes | every ingress has an LB IP + Traefik LB |
| 13 | Prometheus Alerts | count of firing alerts |
| 14 | Uptime Kuma Monitors | internal + external monitors up |
| 15 | ResourceQuota Pressure | any quota >80% used |
| 16 | StatefulSets | ready == desired |
| 17 | Node Disk Usage | ephemeral-storage <80% |
| 18 | Helm Release Health | all deployed (no pending-*) |
| 19 | Kyverno Policy Engine | all pods Running |
| 20 | NFS Connectivity | 192.168.1.127 showmount / port 2049 |
| 21 | DNS Resolution | Technitium resolves internal + external |
| 22 | TLS Certificate Expiry | TLS Secret certs >30d valid |
| 23 | GPU Health | nvidia namespace + device-plugin Running |
| 24 | Cloudflare Tunnel | pods Running |
| 25 | Resource Usage | node CPU/mem headroom |
| 26 | HA Sofia — Entity Availability | Home Assistant unavailable/unknown count |
| 27 | HA Sofia — Integration Health | config entries setup_error / not_loaded |
| 28 | HA Sofia — Automation Status | disabled / stale (>30d) automations |
| 29 | HA Sofia — System Resources | HA CPU / mem / disk |
| 30 | Hardware Exporters | snmp / idrac-redfish / proxmox / tuya pods + scrapes |
| 31 | cert-manager — Certificate Readiness | Certificate CRs with Ready!=True |
| 32 | cert-manager — Certificate Expiry (<14d) | notAfter within 14d |
| 33 | cert-manager — Failed CertificateRequests | Ready=False, reason=Failed |
| 34 | Backup Freshness — Per-DB Dumps | MySQL + PG dumps within 25h |
| 35 | Backup Freshness — Offsite Sync | Pushgateway backup_last_success_timestamp <27h |
| 36 | Backup Freshness — LVM PVC Snapshots | newest thin snapshot <25h (SSH PVE) |
| 37 | Monitoring — Prometheus + Alertmanager | /-/ready + AM pods Running |
| 38 | Monitoring — Vault Sealed Status | vault status reports Sealed: false |
| 39 | Monitoring — ClusterSecretStore Ready | vault-kv + vault-database Ready |
| 40 | External — Cloudflared + Authentik Replicas | deployments fully ready |
| 41 | External — ExternalAccessDivergence Alert | alert not firing |
| 42 | External — Traefik 5xx Rate (15m) | top-10 services emitting 5xx |
| 43 | PVE Host Thermals | package + per-core temps via /sys/class/hwmon (SSH). Baseline 55-65 °C. PASS <65 °C, WARN 65-82 °C (a VM is burning too much CPU), FAIL ≥83 °C (TjMax) |
| 44 | PVE Host Load | /proc/loadavg via SSH. PASS 5m <30, WARN 30-37, FAIL ≥38 of 44 threads |
| 45 | HA Sofia — Status Dashboard | emo's curated Барзини → Статус view (dashboard-barzini / path status). Pulls the lovelace config via WS, batch-renders every custom:mushroom-template-card secondary template against /api/template, classifies each rendered line: FAIL on Offline / Disconnected / Разкачен / — No data; WARN on ⚠️ / Abnormal / Trouble ( / (ниска) / Пълен резервоар / Грешка / attention / Внимание. Verdict rolls up across the 8 sections (Сигурност, Мрежа & IT, Енергия, Климат, Уреди, Мултимедия, Осветление, Поливна) |
| 46 | Immich Smart Search | clip_index residency in PG shared_buffers + representative ANN probe latency (in immich-postgresql). FAIL >1.5s or <50% resident; WARN >0.5s or <90% resident. Cold cache → check clip-index-prewarm CronJob |
| 47 | Proxmox CSI — Ghost-Disk Drift | Per node, compares real virtio-scsi CSI disks in qm config <vmid> (SSH PVE) vs attached proxmox-CSI VolumeAttachments k8s tracks. Catches orphaned "ghost" disks left by failed detaches (query-pci QMP timeouts) that the scheduler's 28-LUN guard can't see. PASS reconciled; WARN drift>0 or real 20-24; FAIL real ≥25 (near LUN cap → imminent wedge). Cleanup: detach ghosts via qm set <vmid> --delete scsiN (frees slot, retains LV) |
Safe Auto-Fix Rules
--fix only performs operations that are genuinely reversible and
observable. Nothing here rewrites Terraform state or mutates the cluster
beyond "delete pod".
Done automatically by --fix
- Evicted / Failed pods — delete them; the controller recreates.
kubectl delete pods -A --field-selector=status.phase=Failed - CrashLoopBackOff pods with >10 restarts — delete once to reset backoff timer.
NEVER auto-fix (requires human investigation)
- NotReady nodes
- MemoryPressure / DiskPressure / PIDPressure
- ImagePullBackOff (usually a bad tag / registry credential)
- Deployment ready-replica mismatch
- Pending PVCs
- Node CPU/memory >90%
- CronJob failures
- DaemonSet desired != ready
- Vault sealed
- ClusterSecretStore not Ready
- cert-manager Certificate failures
- Backup freshness regressions
- Any external-reachability failure
Deep-investigation recipes per failure mode
Node Issues (checks 1, 3, 17, 25)
kubectl describe node <node>
kubectl top nodes
kubectl get events --field-selector involvedObject.name=<node> --sort-by='.lastTimestamp'
# SSH to the node
ssh root@10.0.20.10X
systemctl status kubelet
journalctl -u kubelet --since "30 minutes ago" | tail -100
df -h ; free -h
Node IPs: 10.0.20.100 master, .101 node1 (GPU), .102 node2,
.103 node3, .104 node4.
Pod Issues (checks 4, 5, 11, 19)
kubectl describe pod -n <ns> <pod>
kubectl logs -n <ns> <pod> --tail=200
kubectl logs -n <ns> <pod> --previous --tail=200
kubectl get events -n <ns> --sort-by='.lastTimestamp' | tail -20
Common failure causes: OOMKilled (raise mem limit in Terraform), bad
config / missing env var, DB connection failure (check dbaas pods),
NFS mount failure (showmount -e 192.168.1.127), stale
imagePullSecret.
Deployment / StatefulSet / DaemonSet (checks 6, 7, 16)
kubectl describe deployment -n <ns> <name>
kubectl rollout status deployment -n <ns> <name>
kubectl rollout history deployment -n <ns> <name>
kubectl get rs -n <ns> -l app=<app>
PVC (check 8)
kubectl describe pvc -n <ns> <pvc>
kubectl get events -n <ns> --field-selector reason=FailedMount --sort-by='.lastTimestamp'
kubectl get pv | grep <pvc>
showmount -e 192.168.1.127
cert-manager (checks 31, 32, 33)
kubectl get certificate -A
kubectl describe certificate -n <ns> <name>
kubectl get certificaterequest -A
kubectl describe certificaterequest -n <ns> <name>
kubectl logs -n cert-manager deploy/cert-manager | tail -50
Common causes: ACME HTTP-01 challenge blocked, ClusterIssuer missing DNS provider secret, rate-limit from Let's Encrypt.
Backups (checks 34, 35, 36)
# Per-DB dumps (inside the DB pod)
kubectl exec -n dbaas mysql-standalone-0 -- ls -lah /backup/per-db/
kubectl exec -n dbaas pg-cluster-0 -- ls -lah /backup/per-db/
# Pushgateway metrics
kubectl exec -n monitoring deploy/prometheus-server -- \
wget -qO- http://prometheus-prometheus-pushgateway:9091/metrics | \
grep backup_last_success_timestamp
# LVM snapshots on PVE host
ssh -o BatchMode=yes root@192.168.1.127 \
'lvs -o lv_name,lv_time,lv_size --noheadings | grep snap'
If offsite sync is stale, the common cause is the
offsite-sync-backup.service systemd unit on the PVE host failing.
ssh root@192.168.1.127 'systemctl status offsite-sync-backup'.
Monitoring stack (checks 37, 38, 39)
# Prometheus
kubectl exec -n monitoring deploy/prometheus-server -- wget -qO- http://localhost:9090/-/ready
kubectl logs -n monitoring deploy/prometheus-server --tail=100
# Alertmanager
kubectl get pods -n monitoring | grep alertmanager
kubectl logs -n monitoring -l app=prometheus-alertmanager --tail=100
# Vault
kubectl exec -n vault vault-0 -- sh -c 'VAULT_ADDR=http://127.0.0.1:8200 vault status'
# If sealed: check raft peers with `vault operator raft list-peers` and unseal.
# ClusterSecretStore
kubectl get clustersecretstore
kubectl describe clustersecretstore vault-kv vault-database
kubectl logs -n external-secrets deploy/external-secrets --tail=100
External reachability (checks 40, 41, 42)
# Cloudflared
kubectl get pods -n cloudflared
kubectl logs -n cloudflared -l app=cloudflared --tail=100
# Authentik (Helm chart names the deployment goauthentik-server)
kubectl get deployment -n authentik goauthentik-server
kubectl logs -n authentik deploy/goauthentik-server --tail=100
# ExternalAccessDivergence alert
kubectl exec -n monitoring deploy/prometheus-server -- \
wget -qO- 'http://localhost:9090/api/v1/alerts' | \
python3 -m json.tool | grep -A 5 ExternalAccessDivergence
# Traefik 5xx — find the hot service
kubectl exec -n monitoring deploy/prometheus-server -- \
wget -qO- 'http://localhost:9090/api/v1/query?query=topk(10,rate(traefik_service_requests_total{code=~%225..%22}%5B15m%5D))' \
| python3 -m json.tool
OOMKilled remediation
kubectl describe pod -n <ns> <pod> | grep -A 5 Limits- Edit
infra/modules/kubernetes/<service>/main.tfand raiseresources.limits.memory. cd /home/wizard/code/infra && scripts/tg apply(Tier 1) orterraform apply -target=module.<service>as appropriate.
ImagePullBackOff remediation
kubectl describe pod -n <ns> <pod> | grep -A 5 Events- Verify tag exists on the source registry.
- Check pull-through cache at
10.0.20.10:{5000,5010,5020,5030}. - Update the image tag in Terraform + re-apply.
Persistent CrashLoopBackOff after auto-fix
kubectl logs -n <ns> <pod> --previous --tail=200kubectl describe pod -n <ns> <pod>and check Last State:OOMKilled→ raise memory limit- Exit code 137 → OOM or probe killed
- Exit code 143 → SIGTERM / graceful shutdown failed
- Cross-check dbaas + NFS + secrets are healthy.
Performance forensics — top consumers + optimization hints
When the cluster is healthy (script returns 0) but the host is hot or load is elevated, switch from "what broke?" to "what's expensive?". Run these in order; stop as soon as the root cause is obvious.
Step 1 — Snapshot top consumers cluster-wide
# Top 15 pods by current CPU
kubectl top pods --all-namespaces --sort-by=cpu --no-headers | head -15
# Top 5 nodes by CPU + memory pressure
kubectl top nodes
# Top 15 by 5-min rolling rate (smoothed — kills noise from one-off spikes)
kubectl -n monitoring exec deploy/prometheus-server -- wget -qO- \
"http://localhost:9090/api/v1/query?query=topk(15,sum%20by%20(namespace,pod)%20(rate(container_cpu_usage_seconds_total%7Bcontainer!%3D''%7D%5B5m%5D)))" \
| python3 -m json.tool | head -80
Step 2 — For each suspect pod, get the WHY
For every pod in the top-N, gather these BEFORE proposing a fix:
NS=<namespace>; POD=<pod>; CONT=$(kubectl -n $NS get pod $POD -o jsonpath='{.spec.containers[0].name}')
# What it does (image + command)
kubectl -n $NS get pod $POD -o jsonpath='{.spec.containers[0].image}{"\n"}{.spec.containers[0].args}{"\n"}'
# Resource limits + current usage
kubectl -n $NS top pod $POD --containers
kubectl -n $NS get pod $POD -o jsonpath='{.spec.containers[0].resources}'
# Recent logs filtered for reconcile loops, watch storms, slow queries
kubectl -n $NS logs $POD -c $CONT --tail=200 --since=5m 2>&1 \
| grep -iE 'reconcil|watch|scrape|index|loop|retry|slow|timeout' | tail -20
# Restart count + recent OOM
kubectl -n $NS describe pod $POD | grep -E 'Restart Count|Last State|Reason'
# Self-exported metrics (for apps that publish on /metrics)
kubectl -n $NS exec $POD -c $CONT -- wget -qO- localhost:<port>/metrics 2>/dev/null | head -50
Step 3 — apiserver / etcd specific deep-dive (when control-plane is hot)
# Top request producers by verb+resource (last 30 min)
kubectl -n monitoring exec deploy/prometheus-server -- wget -qO- \
"http://localhost:9090/api/v1/query?query=topk(15,sum%20by%20(resource,verb)%20(rate(apiserver_request_total%5B30m%5D)))" \
| python3 -m json.tool
# Top user agents (which clients are hammering)
kubectl -n monitoring exec deploy/prometheus-server -- wget -qO- \
"http://localhost:9090/api/v1/query?query=topk(15,sum%20by%20(user_agent)%20(rate(apiserver_request_total%5B30m%5D)))" \
| python3 -m json.tool
# Long-running requests (WATCH / CONNECT — log streams, pod-watchers)
kubectl -n monitoring exec deploy/prometheus-server -- wget -qO- \
"http://localhost:9090/api/v1/query?query=apiserver_longrunning_requests" \
| python3 -m json.tool
# etcd write rate + DB size
kubectl -n monitoring exec deploy/prometheus-server -- wget -qO- \
"http://localhost:9090/api/v1/query?query=rate(etcd_disk_wal_fsync_duration_seconds_count%5B5m%5D)" \
| python3 -m json.tool
Step 4 — PVE host specific deep-dive (when temp / load is high)
Checks 43 + 44 capture package temp + 5-min load avg with PASS/WARN/FAIL thresholds — that's the first stop. When those WARN or FAIL, the follow-up commands below trace which VM / process is the source:
# Per-core temps (broader than the package summary in check 43)
ssh root@192.168.1.127 'for f in /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/temp*_input; do
base=${f%_input}; label=$(cat ${base}_label 2>/dev/null || echo "${base##*/}")
val=$(cat "$f"); echo " $label: $((val/1000))°C"
done'
# Per-VM CPU (each VM = one kvm process)
ssh root@192.168.1.127 'top -bn1 -o %CPU | grep kvm | head -10'
# pvestatd anomaly check — bursts > 50% usually mean LV count > 1000
ssh root@192.168.1.127 'lvs --noheadings 2>/dev/null | wc -l'
# Stale snapshots (any '_pre-*' that survived past their rollback window)
ssh root@192.168.1.127 'lvs --noheadings -o lv_name 2>/dev/null | awk "/_pre-/" | head -20'
Step 5 — Optimization decision
For each consumer in the top-N, fill in a row:
| Pod / Process | CPU (m) | Why busy | Tunable | Est saving | Trade-off | Effort |
|---|
Then rank by ROI (saving / effort) and surface the top 3-5. Hold back the ones where saving < 50m unless effort is also < 5 min.
Common causes + tunables (catalogue)
| Symptom | Likely cause | Tunable |
|---|---|---|
kube-apiserver > 1 core sustained |
CONNECT pods/log streams from alloy/promtail using apiserver-tail; OR Kyverno PolicyReport churn (background+enforce mode); OR VPA fanout (309 VPAs cause ~7 req/s) |
Switch alloy/promtail to loki.source.file; raise Kyverno backgroundScanInterval; reduce VPA count |
pvestatd 70-100% bursts |
LV metadata scan over > 1000 LVs (typically stale _pre-* snapshots from ad-hoc node ops) |
Delete stale snapshots; /usr/local/bin/lvm-pvc-snapshot prune |
| Frigate > 2 cores | Birdseye mode: continuous (16% on frigate.output); LPR debug; debug logging; too many active cameras × detect.fps |
birdseye.mode: motion; lpr.debug_save_plates: false; remove debug loggers |
vault-0 looping ERRORs every ~10s |
DB static-role not in connection's allowed_roles list (drift between role and connection) |
Add role to vault_database_secret_backend_connection.*.allowed_roles in TF |
| Alloy DS > 100m/pod | loki.source.kubernetes (apiserver-tail) instead of loki.source.file |
Switch to file-tail (~5× drop per pod) |
| Prometheus default 1m scrape | Chart default; new sample every minute | Raise server.global.scrape_interval to 2m; pin critical jobs (snmp-ups) to 30s; bump for: 1m alerts to for: 3m |
kube-controller-manager periodic ERROR loop |
Aggregated APIService discovery fails (calico/metrics-server unreachable, OR stuck Terminating pod still in endpoints) | Force-delete stuck pod; verify APIService Available; check pod runc bug on k8s-master |
| etcd write > 1 MB/s | PolicyReport thrash, too-frequent secret rotation, or audit log mode = RequestResponse | Trim Kyverno reports config; raise rotation_period; downgrade audit policy to Metadata for noisy resources |
What NOT to touch
- calico-node, etcd write rate, kube-controller-manager core work, pg-cluster replication — structural cost, touching them risks correctness.
- Pods doing legitimate request-serving work (web servers, databases under load) — optimize the workload, not the runtime.
- Anything where Goldilocks VPA upperBound is already close to current request — no headroom to cut.
Source-of-truth notes
- All infra mutations go via Terraform (
scripts/tg plan/apply). The recipes above are diagnostic; the FIX lives ininfra/stacks/<name>/main.tfor chart values. - Pod-internal config files (e.g., Frigate's
/config/config.ymlon a PVC) are not TF-managed — edit in-pod and document ininfra/docs/runbooks/. - PVE host-level state (LVM snapshots, pvestatd) — SSH + manual ops; record in memory if the pattern recurs.
Notes on the canonical / hardlink setup
The authoritative copy of this SKILL.md lives at
/home/wizard/code/.claude/skills/cluster-health/SKILL.md. A hardlink
at /home/wizard/code/infra/.claude/skills/cluster-health/SKILL.md
points to the same inode so infra-rooted sessions also discover the
skill.
To verify the hardlink is intact:
stat -c '%i %n' \
/home/wizard/code/.claude/skills/cluster-health/SKILL.md \
/home/wizard/code/infra/.claude/skills/cluster-health/SKILL.md
Both should print the same inode number. If they diverge (e.g. git checkout replaced the file rather than updating it), re-link:
ln -f /home/wizard/code/.claude/skills/cluster-health/SKILL.md \
/home/wizard/code/infra/.claude/skills/cluster-health/SKILL.md