kind-cluster

name	kind-cluster
description	Use when setting up, running, or tearing down a Kind cluster for smee-sidecar system tests, or when system tests fail in CI

Kind Cluster for System Tests

Overview

System tests deploy the sidecar into a Kind cluster and verify event relaying, health check round-trips, liveness probe failure/recovery, and file-based health status across six phases.

When to Use

• Running system tests locally
• Debugging system test failures in CI
• Iterating on sidecar behavior with a real Kubernetes environment

Prerequisites

kind, kubectl, podman (or docker), and curl (used by run-system-test.sh).

Quick Setup

kind create cluster --name smee-test

# Prefer podman (repo convention). kind load docker-image reads the docker daemon only.
podman build -t smee-sidecar-test:latest .
podman save smee-sidecar-test:latest -o /tmp/smee-sidecar.tar
kind load image-archive /tmp/smee-sidecar.tar --name smee-test

# With docker instead:
# docker build -t smee-sidecar-test:latest .
# kind load docker-image smee-sidecar-test:latest --name smee-test

kubectl apply -f test/config/system-test-setup.yaml
kubectl wait --for=condition=Available deployment/smee-server --timeout=60s
kubectl wait --for=condition=Available deployment/smee-client --timeout=60s

test/scripts/run-system-test.sh

What Gets Deployed

test/config/system-test-setup.yaml creates:

1. smee-server — gosmee server on port 3333, exposed via service on port 80
2. smee-client + sidecar — gosmee client forwarding to localhost:8080 (the sidecar). Shared emptyDir volume at /shared
3. dummy-downstream — echo server logging received requests on port 8080

Pod runs as non-root 65532, read-only root filesystem, fsGroup: 65532.

Test Phases

The test (test/scripts/run-system-test.sh) runs six phases (0 through 5):

0. Verify probe scripts exist and are executable
1. Initial health (0 restarts, metric=1, file success) and event relaying to dummy-downstream
2. Scale down smee-server to break communication
3. Health degrades (metric=0, file failure); gosmee-client restarts (its liveness probe runs check-smee-health.sh on the shared health file — the test watches containerStatuses[0], not the sidecar container)
4. Restore smee-server
5. Recovery, stability, and ongoing health-file updates

Tear Down

kind delete cluster --name smee-test

Common Mistakes

• Using kind load docker-image with podman: This reads from the docker daemon's image store. Use podman save + kind load image-archive instead.
• Stale port-forwards: If tests fail mid-run, leftover port-forwards block re-runs. Kill with pkill -f "kubectl port-forward".
• Mismatched timing: system-test-setup.yaml sets HEALTH_CHECK_INTERVAL_SECONDS=10 and HEALTH_CHECK_TIMEOUT_SECONDS=8 (production defaults are 30/20). If you change timing, update those env vars and the sleep/retry loops in run-system-test.sh.
• CI cluster name: GitHub Actions uses cluster_name: kind via helm/kind-action; local setup above uses --name smee-test — only matters if you run kind commands manually.
• Faster iteration: After initial setup, rebuild and reload without recreating the cluster:

  podman build -t smee-sidecar-test:latest . && \
    podman save smee-sidecar-test:latest -o /tmp/smee-sidecar.tar && \
    kind load image-archive /tmp/smee-sidecar.tar --name smee-test && \
    kubectl rollout restart deployment/smee-client