Debug Openshell Cluster

Debug OpenShell Gateway Deployment

Diagnose a gateway and its selected compute platform. Do not assume OpenShell provisions Kubernetes or runs a k3s container. OpenShell targets a reachable gateway endpoint backed by Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, the experimental VM driver, or an operator-managed out-of-tree compute driver.

Use openshell first to identify the active endpoint. Then use the platform tools that match the gateway's compute driver: docker, podman, kubectl/helm, or VM driver logs.

Overview

The target deployment flow is:

1. Operator starts or deploys the gateway with system packages, systemd, or Helm. The CLI does not start, stop, or destroy gateway services.
2. Operator configures the compute driver.
3. Operator provides the CLI and supervisor authentication material required by the deployment mode: edge or OIDC user auth, optional CLI mTLS, and gateway-minted sandbox JWTs.
4. The CLI registers a reachable gateway endpoint with openshell gateway add.
5. The gateway creates sandboxes through the selected compute driver.

The openshell-gateway composition crate explicitly installs its compiled Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, and VM registrations at startup; openshell-server does not link compute-driver crates. With no configured driver, the gateway probes only installed registrations in priority order (Kubernetes, Podman, then Docker); VM has no probe and remains opt-in. A custom gateway binary may install a different set, so confirm the binary's registered drivers when auto-detection reports that no suitable driver is available.

For local evaluation only, TLS may be disabled and the gateway can be reached through http://127.0.0.1:<port>.

Prerequisites

• The openshell CLI must be available for endpoint checks.
• Know the active gateway name and endpoint, or be able to inspect local gateway metadata.
• Know the compute platform: Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, VM, or an out-of-tree driver.
• For Kubernetes: kubectl must target the cluster that hosts OpenShell and Helm version 3 or later must be available.
• For Docker or Podman: the runtime socket must be reachable from the gateway host.

Use openshell --help and nested --help output as the authority for the installed CLI version. Use the published installation guide, compute-driver reference, gateway configuration reference, and Kubernetes setup guide as the authority for deployment and configuration behavior.

Workflow

Run diagnostics in order and stop once the root cause is clear.

Step 1: Check CLI Reachability

openshell gateway list --output json
openshell gateway info
openshell status

For a one-off endpoint check that bypasses stored gateway selection and metadata:

openshell --gateway-endpoint <url> status

Common findings:

• No active gateway: register one with openshell gateway add <endpoint>.
• Connection refused: gateway process is not running, service exposure is wrong, or a port-forward/proxy is not active.
• TLS/certificate errors: the endpoint scheme or trust chain is wrong, a local mTLS bundle does not match the gateway CA, or TLS termination does not match the gateway listener.
• Unauthenticated from an edge or OIDC gateway: refresh stored credentials with openshell gateway login [name], then retry. Use gateway logout only when intentionally clearing local credentials.
• A direct development endpoint with a private or self-signed certificate can be isolated with --gateway-endpoint <url> --gateway-insecure; do not persist or recommend insecure verification for shared gateways.

Step 2: Identify the Compute Platform

Use gateway metadata, deployment values, or the user's setup notes to identify the driver.

Step 3: Check Gateway Startup Dependencies

Before debugging the compute platform, inspect gateway logs for failures in dependencies initialized before the listener becomes ready.

For out-of-tree compute drivers, confirm the selected driver name and socket agree across CLI flags or gateway.toml, and that the operator-owned driver is running before the gateway starts:

rg -n 'compute_drivers|socket_path' /etc/openshell/gateway.toml
stat /run/openshell/<driver>.sock
journalctl -u <driver-service> --no-pager --lines=200
journalctl -u openshell-gateway --no-pager --lines=200

Custom names use [openshell.drivers.<name>].socket_path. A launch-time --compute-driver-socket override may also use docker, podman, kubernetes, or vm; the endpoint then takes precedence over built-in construction. First-party standalone drivers require the socket parent directory to be owned by the driver's effective UID, force its mode to 0700, create the socket with mode 0600, and accept only peers with that same UID. Check the parent and socket separately with stat; a gateway running under a different UID cannot connect even when filesystem permissions or group membership would otherwise allow it. Operator-supplied drivers must provide equivalent access control appropriate to their implementation. Check gateway logs for connection errors, GetCapabilities failures, or an unexpected advertised driver name. The advertised name is diagnostic metadata; negotiated features control optional behavior. The gateway does not create or supervise operator-supplied driver processes or sockets.

For configured gateway interceptors, inspect [[openshell.gateway.interceptors]], their Unix or network endpoints, and gateway startup logs:

rg -n 'interceptors|provider_profile_sources|grpc_endpoint|tls_ca_cert_path|audience|allow_insecure_transport|binding_policy|failure_policy|gateway_jwt' /etc/openshell/gateway.toml
stat /run/openshell/interceptors/<name>.sock
journalctl -u <interceptor-service> --no-pager --lines=200
journalctl -u openshell-gateway --no-pager --lines=200

The gateway calls each interceptor's Describe RPC and validates its manifest at startup. Check for unreachable endpoints, invalid RPC/phase bindings, strict allowlist or exact mismatches, and post_commit bindings that resolve to fail_closed. If gateway JWT signing is enabled, authenticated network interceptors require HTTPS and a valid bearer token; check the private CA path, endpoint hostname, expected audience, issuer, kid, and interceptor logs for token rejection. allow_insecure_transport = true explicitly preserves unauthenticated plaintext behavior. If provider_profile_sources names an interceptor, that interceptor must advertise provider-profile capability and return a valid, duplicate-free catalog. A selected interceptor-only source is authoritative; include builtin or user sources explicitly when composition is intended.

For operator-run supervisor middleware, inspect [[openshell.supervisor.middleware]], service reachability, and both gateway and supervisor logs:

rg -n 'supervisor|middleware|grpc_endpoint|tls_ca_cert_path|audience|allow_insecure_transport|max_payload_bytes|timeout|gateway_jwt' /etc/openshell/gateway.toml
journalctl -u <middleware-service> --no-pager --lines=200
journalctl -u openshell-gateway --no-pager --lines=200
openshell logs <sandbox-name> --tail --source sandbox

The middleware service must start before the gateway and be reachable from both the gateway and sandbox supervisors. Gateway startup fails if Describe is unavailable, a manifest exposes duplicate operation/phase bindings, the registration claims the reserved openshell/ namespace, or payload and timeout limits are invalid. Supported V1 bindings are HTTP_REQUEST/PRE_CREDENTIALS and WEBSOCKET_MESSAGE/PRE_CREDENTIALS. When gateway JWT signing is disabled, supervisors preserve the legacy unauthenticated connector and do not request extension credentials. When signing is enabled, credential acquisition and verification failures are fail closed: check HTTPS trust and hostname validation, audience and issuer agreement, the token kid, gateway RefreshSandboxToken errors, and middleware logs. Changing a registration requires a gateway restart. A policy update can also fail before persistence if the selected implementation rejects its network_middlewares config.

At request time, distinguish attachment, binding selection, coverage, denial, and failure. A host-matched HTTP-only attachment can inspect the upgrade GET but does not join the WebSocket chain; the connection proceeds under either on_error mode and emits binding_not_selected coverage. A selected WebSocket stage receives text messages only. Binary messages pass under both modes, emit unsupported_message_type coverage, and consume a session sequence without an RPC. An explicit middleware_denied result is always enforced. WebSocket preflight returns INSPECT, voluntary SKIP, or authoritative DENY; DENY rejects the upgrade before upstream contact under both on_error modes. A selected-stage failure follows the policy-local on_error: fail_closed blocks the HTTP request or closes the WebSocket, while fail_open bypasses only that stage and emits a detection finding. A fail-open per-message capacity failure bypasses that message without disabling the stage. A timeout, transport failure, stream closure, missing or invalid response, duplicate or regressed sequence, or other failure that makes an established WebSocket stream unreliable disables that stage for later messages on the connection and emits openshell.middleware.websocket_stage_disabled. Confirm preflight, session-start, and session-end in service logs. OpenShell best-effort sends at most one session-end to each still-writable opened stage, including a preflight that terminates before session start; distinguish MIDDLEWARE_DENIAL from MIDDLEWARE_FAILURE. WebSocket message sequences are allocated session-wide; each stage receives a strictly increasing subset, so gaps are valid when binary messages or other units are not delivered to that stage. Zero, duplicate, or regressed sequences are protocol errors. If a running supervisor cannot install a new registry, it preserves its last-known-good generation and emits a configuration failure event.

For network policy validation failures, first distinguish a gateway mutation rejection from a supervisor runtime rejection. Direct policy updates, incremental merges and approvals, provider attachments, and provider-profile fanout are validated against the complete effective policy before persistence when the gateway knows the affected sandbox scope. A FAILED_PRECONDITION ambiguity response means no invalid revision or partial fanout was stored. Supervisor validation remains defense in depth for startup, races, and policy sources outside those mutation paths.

Runtime rejection behavior is configured only in gateway.toml:

[openshell.gateway]
policy_validation_failure_mode = "fail_closed"

The default fail_closed mode deactivates the previous generation, closes pinned relays, and quarantines new egress until a valid generation loads. retain_last_valid explicitly keeps the previous valid policy active; without one it still fails closed. Restart the gateway after changing this field. Inspect sandbox OCSF configuration and finding events for the validation rationale, configured and effective modes, active generation, and the explicit previous_policy_active state.

Step 4: Check Docker-Backed Gateways

docker info
docker ps --filter name=openshell
docker logs <container> --tail=200
docker run --rm --entrypoint /openshell-sandbox "${OPENSHELL_DOCKER_SUPERVISOR_IMAGE:-ghcr.io/nvidia/openshell/supervisor:latest}" --version
openshell status

For Docker GPU failures, check CDI support and NVIDIA CDI discovery separately:

docker info --format '{{json .CDISpecDirs}}'
docker info --format '{{json .DiscoveredDevices}}'
for dir in /etc/cdi /var/run/cdi; do
  if [ -d "$dir" ]; then
    find "$dir" -maxdepth 1 -type f \( -name '*.yaml' -o -name '*.json' \) -print
  else
    echo "$dir missing"
  fi
done
systemctl is-enabled nvidia-cdi-refresh.service nvidia-cdi-refresh.path || true
systemctl is-active nvidia-cdi-refresh.service nvidia-cdi-refresh.path || true
systemctl status nvidia-cdi-refresh.service nvidia-cdi-refresh.path --no-pager --lines=50
journalctl -u nvidia-cdi-refresh.service --no-pager --lines=100

When the NVIDIA Container Toolkit CDI refresh units are not enabled or no NVIDIA CDI spec has been generated, enable them and trigger a refresh:

sudo systemctl enable --now nvidia-cdi-refresh.path
sudo systemctl enable --now nvidia-cdi-refresh.service
sudo systemctl restart nvidia-cdi-refresh.service
docker info --format '{{json .DiscoveredDevices}}'

Common findings:

• Docker daemon unavailable: start Docker Desktop or Docker Engine.
• Gateway process stopped: inspect exit status and logs.
• Sandbox image missing or pull denied: verify image reference and registry credentials.
• Sandbox fails before readiness with an identity-resolution error: inspect the image's OCI USER and matching /etc/passwd and /etc/group entries, or explicitly set both process identity fields in policy. Numeric workload identities 1 through 4294967294 are accepted; root, the invalid identity sentinel, and missing identities are rejected.
• Sandbox fails before readiness with an OCI workspace validation error: inspect the image's WorkingDir using the immutable image ID reported by the gateway. Empty, /, and explicit /sandbox use the managed /sandbox compatibility workspace. Any other workdir must be an absolute normalized directory with no symlink components; the final policy UID, primary GID, and supplementary groups must pass the kernel's effective traverse/write checks, including POSIX ACL and LSM decisions. OpenShell does not create, chown, or chmod a non-default image workdir.
• Docker also rejects an image VOLUME that covers the workdir or one of its parents because the runtime would mask the immutable path before validation. Move the VOLUME below the workspace or remove the declaration.
• A workdir rejected as a special filesystem or OpenShell control-path collision cannot be made valid with permissions. Move the image workdir away from kernel-backed mounts and the concrete supervisor, TLS, token, runtime, and socket paths named in the error.
• Docker driver cannot initialize because it cannot find openshell-sandbox: verify OPENSHELL_DOCKER_SUPERVISOR_BIN, the sibling binary next to openshell-gateway, or the configured supervisor image contains /openshell-sandbox.
• Sandbox never registers: check gateway logs and supervisor callback endpoint.
• On macOS, repeated Policy fetch failed after 5 attempts messages with a Homebrew gateway bound to [::1]:17670 indicate that the Docker host-gateway IPv4 route has no matching callback listener. Current releases leave bind_address unset in the Homebrew config, use the built-in 127.0.0.1:17670 primary listener, and reuse it for authenticated sandbox callbacks. On an older release, set bind_address = "127.0.0.1:17670" or upgrade.
• Supervisor image exits before printing openshell-sandbox --version: verify the configured supervisor image contains a static executable at /openshell-sandbox.
• A sandbox with explicit protocol: tcp endpoints fails before workload readiness: confirm the Docker or Podman driver supplied the policy-dns-transparent-tcp runtime capability and inspect supervisor logs for missing nft, synthetic-route overlap, or namespace-local DNS/TCP listener bind failures. Kubernetes, VM, sidecar, and out-of-tree drivers must reject this policy until they provide the complete substrate; use omitted protocol with an explicit proxy on those runtimes.
• A GPU sandbox fails because Docker reports no discovered NVIDIA CDI devices: verify .DiscoveredDevices contains entries such as nvidia.com/gpu=all, verify /etc/cdi or /var/run/cdi contains a generated NVIDIA spec, and check that nvidia-cdi-refresh.service and nvidia-cdi-refresh.path from NVIDIA Container Toolkit are enabled and healthy. The service is a one-shot unit, so inactive (dead) can be normal after a successful run; use systemctl status and journalctl to distinguish success from a skipped or failed refresh. Restart nvidia-cdi-refresh.service to regenerate missing or stale CDI specs, then restart or reload Docker and re-check docker info.

During a graceful gateway restart, Docker, Podman, and VM sandboxes with running intent should stop before the gateway exits and restart after it returns. Check for Stopped sandbox during gateway shutdown and Started sandbox during gateway startup in gateway logs. A sandbox explicitly stopped through the CLI remains stopped. Kubernetes sandboxes are cluster-owned and do not follow this local gateway lifecycle. Internal and external drivers follow the same rule: GetCapabilities.gateway_manages_lifecycle must be true for the gateway to run shutdown and startup sweeps.

Step 5: Check Podman-Backed Gateways

podman info
podman ps --filter name=openshell
podman logs <container> --tail=200
openshell status

Common findings:

• Podman socket unavailable: start or expose the user socket.
• Rootless networking unavailable: inspect Podman network configuration.
• Sandbox image missing or pull denied: verify image reference and registry credentials.
• Sandbox fails before readiness with an identity-resolution error: inspect the image's OCI USER and matching /etc/passwd and /etc/group entries, or explicitly set both process identity fields in policy. Numeric workload identities 1 through 4294967294 are accepted; root, the invalid identity sentinel, and missing identities are rejected.
• Supervisor cannot call back: check callback endpoint and gateway logs.
• A sandbox with explicit protocol: tcp endpoints fails before readiness: inspect supervisor logs for policy DNS port-53 binding, synthetic-route, or nftables redirect failures. Rootless Podman must provide these primitives inside the supervisor-owned nested network namespace; setup fails closed.
• Gateway exits before becoming healthy with a callback-listener discovery error: inspect podman info --debug, the configured Podman network, and the host's IPv4 default route. Rootless pasta uses the private source address selected by that route; rootful Podman uses the bridge gateway address.
• Current gateways reuse the primary listener when it covers Podman's callback address. If the primary does not cover that address, inspect the gateway startup logs for the additional callback-only listener and its provenance.
• Rootless slirp4netns, another named helper, or missing helper metadata requires an explicitly remote grpc_endpoint. An explicit host_gateway_ip cannot bypass slirp4netns host-loopback isolation. Do not work around discovery failures by broadening the primary gateway listener to 0.0.0.0.

When userns is configured (e.g. userns = "auto" or userns = "keep-id"):

• Supervisor delivery uses bind-mount fallback instead of image volumes because overlay mounts do not support idmapped mounts. The supervisor binary is extracted from the supervisor image and cached at $XDG_DATA_HOME/openshell/podman-supervisor/ (typically ~/.local/share/openshell/podman-supervisor/).
• Stale cache: if the supervisor image is updated but the cached binary is not refreshed, sandbox creation may fail with an ELF validation error or version mismatch. Remove the cache directory and retry.
• auto mode requires subuid/subgid ranges for the current user in /etc/subuid and /etc/subgid. If missing, Podman returns a user-namespace mapping error at container creation.
• private mode requires explicit uidmap and gidmap arrays in the TOML config. Without both, the gateway rejects the config at startup. Rootless Podman uses intermediate IDs (e.g. uidmap = ["0:0:1", "1:1:65535"]); rootful Podman uses absolute host IDs (e.g. uidmap = ["0:1000:1", "1:100000:65536"]).
• nomap (without hyphen) is accepted as input but canonicalized to no-map for Podman's API.
• A workload remains in stopping until Podman resorts to SIGKILL: inspect supervisor logs for failed to signal entrypoint process group. The supervisor must retain CAP_KILL so its root process can forward SIGTERM to a workload that runs as the sandbox user.

Step 6: Check Kubernetes Helm Gateways

helm -n openshell status openshell
helm -n openshell get values openshell
kubectl -n openshell get deployment,statefulset,pod,svc,pvc
kubectl -n openshell logs deployment/openshell -c openshell-gateway --tail=200
kubectl -n openshell logs statefulset/openshell -c openshell-gateway --tail=200
kubectl -n openshell rollout status deployment/openshell
kubectl -n openshell rollout status statefulset/openshell

Use the log and rollout commands for the workload kind that exists in the release. Look for failed installs, unexpected values, missing namespace, wrong image tag, TLS settings that do not match the registered endpoint, and scheduling failures.

server.telemetryEnabled renders OPENSHELL_TELEMETRY_ENABLED on the gateway pod, and the gateway propagates the effective value to sandbox supervisors.

When no external credential driver is enabled, the Helm chart uses the gateway's default encrypted database credential storage. The chart creates a retained Kubernetes Secret for the shared KEK, injects it into gateway pods, and stores encrypted credential envelopes in the OpenShell database. For workload.kind=deployment or multi-replica gateways, confirm server.externalDbSecret points at a shared database. A render/install error mentioning server.credentialDrivers means the values selected multiple external credential backends.

For HA or PostgreSQL-backed installs, also check the external database Secret referenced by server.externalDbSecret and the PostgreSQL workload when it is deployed in-cluster:

kubectl -n <namespace> get secret <external-db-secret> -o yaml
kubectl -n <namespace> get deployment,service,pod -l app.kubernetes.io/name=<postgres-workload>
kubectl -n <namespace> logs deployment/<postgres-workload> --tail=200

Check required Helm deployment secrets:

kubectl -n openshell get secret \
  openshell-server-tls \
  openshell-server-client-ca \
  openshell-client-tls \
  openshell-jwt-keys

When server.tls.clientCaSecretName="", the chart intentionally omits client_ca_path and the tls-client-ca mount, even with built-in PKI or cert-manager. That is expected; do not treat a missing tls-client-ca pod mount as a defect (openshell-server-client-ca may still exist from PKI). User auth is OIDC or trusted proxy (server.auth.allowUnauthenticatedUsers=true); supervisor transport still uses openshell-client-tls.

In cert-manager installs, certManager.enabled=true makes cert-manager own TLS generation. The Helm chart should still render the openshell-certgen pre-install/pre-upgrade hook in JWT-only mode to create openshell-jwt-keys, even if pkiInitJob.enabled remains true. If the gateway pod is pending with MountVolume.SetUp failed for volume "sandbox-jwt" and openshell-jwt-keys is absent, inspect the rendered templates/certgen.yaml output and the hook Job logs; cert-manager creates TLS Secrets but does not create the sandbox JWT signing Secret.

If the gateway exits with failed to read sandbox JWT signing key from /etc/openshell-jwt/signing.pem, verify that openshell-jwt-keys contains signing.pem, public.pem, and kid, and that the gateway workload mounts the sandbox-jwt secret at /etc/openshell-jwt. The sandbox JWT mount is required even when local Helm values disable TLS.

If certManager.serverIssuerRef points the server certificate at an external Issuer or ClusterIssuer (for example an ACME issuer, for a publicly-trusted cert on an OpenShift Route with TLS passthrough — see openshiftRoute.enabled), the chart creates two server certificates: an internal one (chart CA, internal SANs) and an external one (from the configured issuer, external SANs only). The gateway uses SNI to present the right cert.

Check the external Certificate/CertificateRequest/Challenge resources directly when the external secret never becomes Ready:

kubectl -n openshell get certificate,certificaterequest,challenge
kubectl -n openshell describe certificate openshell-server-external
oc -n openshell get route

ACME issuers reject certificate requests that include internal-only names (*.svc.cluster.local, localhost, loopback IPs) and require the commonName to also be a SAN — the external Certificate only requests the hostnames in certManager.serverDnsNames, for exactly this reason.

If sandbox supervisors fail their TLS handshake to the gateway with UnknownCA after configuring serverIssuerRef, the most likely cause is server.grpcEndpoint set to the external hostname. This forces supervisors to connect via the external hostname, receiving the ACME cert (via SNI) which they cannot verify against the chart CA. Remove server.grpcEndpoint or set it to the internal service name so supervisors receive the internal cert:

helm -n openshell get values openshell | grep -E 'grpcEndpoint|clientCaFromServerTlsSecret|clientCaSecretName|serverIssuerRef|caSecretName'
# server.grpcEndpoint should be unset or point to internal service name

Less commonly, UnknownCA can occur if the gateway's client-verification CA is misconfigured. The default clientCaFromServerTlsSecret=true is correct for all configurations — the internal server certificate is always signed by the chart CA (the same CA that signs the client cert), so its ca.crt is the right trust anchor. Only override this if you intentionally mount a separate client CA via server.tls.clientCaSecretName. Verify the mounted client CA matches the CA that signed the client certificate:

kubectl -n openshell get statefulset openshell -o jsonpath='{.spec.template.spec.volumes[?(@.name=="tls-client-ca")]}' | jq .
# Should show items filter for ca.crt from openshell-server-tls

If server.providerTokenGrants.spiffe.enabled=true, the gateway should still render [openshell.gateway.gateway_jwt] and mount the sandbox-jwt Secret. SPIRE is used by both the gateway and sandbox supervisors for dynamic provider token grants. The gateway pod must mount the spiffe-workload-api CSI volume and set OPENSHELL_GATEWAY_SPIFFE_WORKLOAD_API_SOCKET; sandbox pods must receive the matching Workload API socket from the Kubernetes driver config. The gateway verifies supervisor JWT-SVIDs from JWT bundles fetched through this Workload API socket, not from the SPIRE OIDC discovery endpoint. Verify that SPIRE is installed, the CSI driver is available, and the Kubernetes driver config includes provider_spiffe_workload_api_socket_path:

helm -n openshell get values openshell | grep -E 'providerTokenGrants|workloadApiSocketPath'
kubectl get pods -A | grep -E 'spire|spiffe'
kubectl -n openshell get configmap openshell-config -o yaml | grep provider_spiffe_workload_api_socket_path
kubectl -n openshell get pod -l app.kubernetes.io/name=helm-chart -o jsonpath="{.items[*].spec.containers[*].env[?(@.name==\"OPENSHELL_GATEWAY_SPIFFE_WORKLOAD_API_SOCKET\")].value}{\"\n\"}"

Sandbox pods using provider token grants should have an openshell.ai/sandbox-id annotation, an openshell.ai/managed-by=openshell label, supervisor env vars OPENSHELL_K8S_SA_TOKEN_FILE and OPENSHELL_PROVIDER_SPIFFE_WORKLOAD_API_SOCKET, plus both the projected openshell-sa-token volume and the spiffe-workload-api CSI volume.

Check the image references currently used by the gateway deployment:

kubectl -n openshell get deployment openshell -o jsonpath="{.spec.template.spec.containers[*].image}{\"\n\"}{.spec.template.spec.containers[*].env[?(@.name==\"OPENSHELL_SUPERVISOR_IMAGE\")].value}{\"\n\"}"
kubectl -n openshell get statefulset openshell -o jsonpath="{.spec.template.spec.containers[*].image}{\"\n\"}{.spec.template.spec.containers[*].env[?(@.name==\"OPENSHELL_SUPERVISOR_IMAGE\")].value}{\"\n\"}"
helm -n openshell get values openshell | grep -E 'repository|tag|supervisorImage|workload'

The gateway and supervisor images should use the same release tag. A stale supervisor image can make sandbox behavior lag behind gateway policy or protocol changes.

For plaintext local evaluation, confirm the chart has:

helm -n openshell get values openshell | grep -E 'disableTls|grpcEndpoint'

Expected shape:

server:
  disableTls: true
  grpcEndpoint: http://openshell.openshell.svc.cluster.local:8080

Check service exposure:

kubectl -n openshell get svc openshell -o wide
kubectl -n openshell get endpoints openshell

For local port-forward testing:

kubectl -n openshell port-forward service/openshell 8080:8080

Leave the port forward running. In another terminal, register the local endpoint if needed and verify it:

openshell gateway add http://127.0.0.1:8080 --local --name local-kubernetes
openshell status

If the gateway is healthy but sandbox creation fails:

kubectl -n openshell get pods
kubectl -n openshell get events --sort-by=.lastTimestamp | tail -n 50
kubectl -n openshell logs deployment/openshell -c openshell-gateway --tail=200
kubectl -n openshell logs statefulset/openshell -c openshell-gateway --tail=200

Check the configured sandbox namespace:

helm -n openshell get values openshell | grep sandboxNamespace

Then inspect sandbox resources in that namespace.

For a split release, the gateway values should have workspaceResources.enabled=false, and the target namespace should contain a separate openshell-workspace release:

helm -n openshell get values openshell | grep -A2 workspaceResources
helm -n <sandbox-namespace> status openshell-workspace
kubectl -n <sandbox-namespace> get serviceaccount,role,rolebinding,networkpolicy \
  -l app.kubernetes.io/instance=openshell-workspace
kubectl auth can-i create sandboxes.agents.x-k8s.io \
  --namespace <sandbox-namespace> \
  --as system:serviceaccount:openshell:openshell

If the gateway cannot create or watch sandboxes, verify the workspace RoleBinding subject matches the gateway ServiceAccount name and namespace. If SSH relay connections fail, verify the workspace NetworkPolicy selects the gateway's actual app.kubernetes.io/name and app.kubernetes.io/instance labels.

Check the configured sandbox service account when TokenReview bootstrap or sandbox registration fails. Helm creates a dedicated sandbox service account by default and writes it to [openshell.drivers.kubernetes].service_account_name; the selected Kubernetes compute driver rejects projected tokens from other service accounts. For an external driver, inspect its logs and confirm it advertises supports_sandbox_authentication; the gateway delegates the opaque credential over the driver socket and never interprets Kubernetes settings.

helm -n openshell get values openshell | grep -A3 sandboxServiceAccount
kubectl -n <sandbox-namespace> get serviceaccount openshell-sandbox
kubectl -n openshell get configmap openshell-config -o jsonpath='{.data.gateway\.toml}'
kubectl -n <sandbox-namespace> get sandbox <sandbox-name> -o jsonpath='{.spec.template.spec.serviceAccountName}{"\n"}'

If topology = "sidecar" is rendered under [openshell.drivers.kubernetes], sandbox pods should have an openshell-network-init init container running --mode=network-init, an agent container running openshell-sandbox --mode=process, and an openshell-supervisor-network container running --mode=network. The init container owns nftables setup and should be the only sidecar topology container with NET_ADMIN. It also needs CHOWN/FOWNER to hand shared emptyDir state to the effective sidecar UID. The default binary-aware network sidecar runs as UID 0 with primary GID sandbox_gid and adds SYS_PTRACE plus DAC_READ_SEARCH. When process_binary_aware_network_policy = false, it runs as the configured non-root proxy_uid without those inspection capabilities. That dedicated proxy UID must remain at least 1000 and must not match the workload UID because the pod egress fence exempts its traffic. The pod fsGroup is set to sandbox_gid in both modes.

In sidecar topology only the network sidecar should mount the gateway bootstrap credentials (openshell-sa-token and openshell-client-tls). The process container should not receive OPENSHELL_ENDPOINT, gateway TLS env vars, the sandbox token file, or those credential mounts. Instead, the network sidecar serves policy and provider environment state over the Unix control socket from OPENSHELL_SIDECAR_CONTROL_SOCKET (/run/openshell-sidecar/control.sock by default). The process supervisor must be the first and only client. After validating its peer UID, GID, and PID, the sidecar unlinks the listener. If the connection later closes, the network sidecar exits non-zero so Kubernetes can restart it with a fresh listener. If the process supervisor fails before launching the workload, inspect both containers for control-socket bind, connect, bootstrap, or update errors. If new SSH/exec sessions do not pick up refreshed provider environment, inspect the network sidecar settings-poll logs and the process container logs for provider environment update handling; the process container should consume newer provider-env revisions without receiving gateway credentials.

The process container reports the workload entrypoint PID over the same control socket, and the network sidecar uses that PID for binary-scoped policy decisions through /proc. If rules with policy.binaries are unexpectedly denied, inspect the sidecar control logs and confirm the pod has shareProcessNamespace: true. The shared state directory should preserve sandbox_gid inheritance (02775). Sidecar SSH uses the Linux abstract socket @openshell-sidecar-ssh; the network sidecar verifies its peer PID before bridging gateway relay requests. No ssh.sock file should appear in the shared state directory. Inspect all three when sandbox registration or egress enforcement fails:

kubectl -n openshell get configmap openshell-config -o jsonpath='{.data.gateway\.toml}' | grep -E '^\[openshell\.drivers\.kubernetes\]|^topology\s*='
kubectl -n <sandbox-namespace> get pod <sandbox-pod> -o jsonpath='{range .spec.initContainers[*]}{.name}{" "}{.command}{"\n"}{end}'
kubectl -n <sandbox-namespace> get pod <sandbox-pod> -o jsonpath='{range .spec.containers[*]}{.name}{" "}{.command}{"\n"}{end}'
kubectl -n <sandbox-namespace> logs <sandbox-pod> -c openshell-network-init --tail=200
kubectl -n <sandbox-namespace> logs <sandbox-pod> -c openshell-supervisor-network --tail=200
kubectl -n <sandbox-namespace> logs <sandbox-pod> -c agent --tail=200

Corporate upstream proxy

When the deployment routes sandbox egress through a corporate HTTP forward proxy, the operator-owned settings render under [openshell.drivers.kubernetes] from the Helm upstreamProxy values. Absent proxy configuration preserves direct-dial egress; any present-but-invalid value fails closed at gateway startup (validate_upstream_proxy_config) rather than silently reverting to a direct connection. Confirm the rendered configuration first:

kubectl -n openshell get configmap openshell-config -o jsonpath='{.data.gateway\.toml}' | grep -E 'https_proxy|no_proxy|proxy_auth_secret_(name|key)|proxy_auth_allow_insecure|proxy_connect_by_hostname'
helm -n openshell get values openshell | grep -A8 upstreamProxy

Only http://host:port forward proxies are supported; https:// proxy URLs and plain-HTTP egress are out of scope and rejected. Proxy credentials require topology = "sidecar" — combined topology shares the credential mount with the workload, so the gateway rejects credentials there. The credential Secret named by proxy_auth_secret_name must exist in the sandbox namespace with the key named by proxy_auth_secret_key, and Kubernetes will not create keys longer than 253 bytes or named ./...

The proxy arguments and credential mount are injected only into the container that runs network supervision (the agent container in combined topology, the openshell-supervisor-network sidecar in sidecar topology). The one-shot openshell-network-init container and the process agent container in sidecar topology must never receive them. The credential is projected read-only as the openshell-upstream-proxy-auth volume at /run/openshell/upstream-proxy-auth and passed as --upstream-proxy-auth-file; it must never appear in env, annotations, or command arguments.

kubectl -n <sandbox-namespace> get secret <proxy-auth-secret> -o jsonpath='{.data}' >/dev/null && echo "secret present"
kubectl -n <sandbox-namespace> get pod <sandbox-pod> -o jsonpath='{range .spec.containers[*]}{.name}{" "}{.command}{"\n"}{end}' | grep -- '--upstream-'
kubectl -n <sandbox-namespace> get pod <sandbox-pod> -o jsonpath='{range .spec.containers[*]}{.name}{": "}{range .volumeMounts[*]}{.name}{" "}{end}{"\n"}{end}' | grep upstream-proxy-auth
kubectl -n <sandbox-namespace> get events --sort-by=.lastTimestamp | grep -Ei 'secret|MountVolume' | tail -n 20

A missing Secret or wrong key leaves the pod stuck with a MountVolume.SetUp failed / secret ... not found event. If the pod starts but egress still fails, the corporate proxy itself is the next suspect: policy- approved TLS CONNECT requests that time out after policy evaluation usually mean the proxy URL is unreachable from the sandbox namespace, or a cluster-internal destination that should be direct is missing from no_proxy. Inspect the network supervisor logs for CONNECT and upstream-proxy decisions:

kubectl -n <sandbox-namespace> logs <sandbox-pod> -c openshell-supervisor-network --tail=200 | grep -Ei 'upstream|connect|proxy'

Step 7: Check VM-Backed Gateways

Use the VM driver logs and host diagnostics available in the user's environment. Verify:

• The VM driver process is running and reachable by the gateway.
• The runtime rootfs exists and matches the expected architecture.
• Host virtualization support is enabled.
• The sandbox supervisor can establish its callback connection to the gateway.

Then run:

openshell status
openshell logs <sandbox-name>

Corporate upstream proxy

When VM sandbox egress routes through a corporate HTTP forward proxy, the operator-owned settings live under [openshell.drivers.vm] and the gateway forwards them to the openshell-driver-vm subprocess as --https-proxy, --no-proxy, --proxy-auth-file, --proxy-auth-allow-insecure, --proxy-connect-by-hostname, and --proxy-ca-bundle. Both the gatew

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