buzz/docs/operator-community-deletion.md

Community Deletion Operator Job

Buzz executes whole-community deletion through the typed, one-shot /usr/local/bin/buzz-admin deletions drain command. The Helm chart can schedule that command as a Kubernetes CronJob; it does not call relay HTTP and it does not add another queue or retry service.

Postgres remains the handoff and source of truth. A run claims only requests that the deletion store considers runnable, heartbeats the existing lease, and resumes from durable checkpoints. concurrencyPolicy: Forbid prevents scheduled pod overlap, backoffLimit: 0 prevents Kubernetes Job retries, and the deletion store remains authoritative when a pod exits, reaches its deadline, or is replaced.

Enablement

The CronJob is disabled by default. Production deployments should use an existing Secret and a dedicated, pre-created service account:

secrets:
  existingSecret: buzz-operator-secrets

operatorJobs:
  deletionDrain:
    enabled: true
    schedule: "*/5 * * * *"
    activeDeadlineSeconds: 3600
    terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 30
    serviceAccountName: buzz-deletion-drain
    podLabels:
      tags.datadoghq.com/service: buzz-deletion-drain
    podAnnotations:
      sidecar.istio.io/inject: "false"
    resources:
      requests:
        cpu: 100m
        memory: 256Mi
      limits:
        cpu: "1"
        memory: 1Gi

Set s3.endpoint, s3.bucket, s3.region, and s3.addressingStyle in chart values. The selected Secret must contain DATABASE_URL and REDIS_URL; it may contain BUZZ_S3_ACCESS_KEY and BUZZ_S3_SECRET_KEY when the object store uses static credentials. The pod receives only those connection values and the four non-secret S3 settings. It does not receive BUZZ_RELAY_PRIVATE_KEY, BUZZ_GIT_HOOK_HMAC_SECRET, RELAY_URL, or the full Secret through envFrom. The pod also disables service-account token automounting and Kubernetes service link environment injection because the executor does not call the Kubernetes API or discover cluster Services.

Leaving operatorJobs.deletionDrain.serviceAccountName empty falls back to the relay's own service account. automountServiceAccountToken: false only suppresses the projected token inside the pod; it does not detach the identity. Cloud IAM bindings attached to that service account — IRSA on EKS, Workload Identity on GKE — are resolved by the node/metadata path and still apply, so the drain pod inherits the relay's cloud permissions. Create a dedicated service account with only the object-store permissions listed below and name it explicitly if you want the executor's IAM blast radius to be smaller than the relay's.

The S3 principal needs the relay's normal object permissions plus bucket-level s3:ListBucketVersions and object-level s3:DeleteObjectVersion for every tenant-owned prefix. This also applies to never-versioned buckets because S3 reports their objects with the null version id.

Runbook

1. Confirm database migrations are current and the deletion request has crossed the explicit inventory and approval boundary with buzz-admin deletions inspect <request-id>.

2. Confirm the selected Secret contains the required keys and the S3 principal has version-list and exact-version delete permissions.

3. Enable the CronJob and inspect its rendered command and environment before rollout.

4. Locate the rendered CronJob by label rather than by guessing its name:

   kubectl get cronjob -n <namespace> \
     -l app.kubernetes.io/component=deletion-drain,app.kubernetes.io/instance=<release>
   

   The name is <fullname>-deletion-drain. buzz.fullname collapses to the release name when the release name already contains the chart name, so helm install buzz ... renders buzz-deletion-drain, not buzz-buzz-deletion-drain.

5. Start one staffed manual run with kubectl create job --from=cronjob/<cronjob-name> <job-name>.

6. Follow pod logs and re-run buzz-admin deletions inspect <request-id> to verify lease, checkpoint, retry, blocked, and terminal state.

7. If a run fails or times out, fix the recorded dependency or permission failure. Do not add Kubernetes retries: the next scheduled drain consults the durable retry/checkpoint state and resumes only when the store allows it.

Deadlines, termination, and the retry budget

activeDeadlineSeconds is a Kubernetes-side limit, and the deletion store does not learn why a pod went away. Two consequences matter when reading state:

• A DeadlineExceeded Job is not recorded as a deletion retry. Shutdown releases the claim without recording one, so retry_count and blocked_at do not advance. Only the object-store drain checkpoints per manifest chunk and resumes mid-stage; every other stage restarts from its beginning on the next run. A deadline that keeps landing inside one of those non-resumable stages therefore repeats indefinitely: each run increments attempts and burns the window again while the retry budget never moves and the request is never blocked.
• Diagnose this from both sides. buzz-admin deletions inspect <request-id> shows a rising attempts with a flat retry_count and no last_error; Kubernetes holds the reason. The chart labels the CronJob and the drain pods, but not the generated Jobs, so find the attempts with kubectl get pods -n <namespace> -l app.kubernetes.io/component=deletion-drain and read the condition with kubectl describe job <job-name>.

Size activeDeadlineSeconds for the longest single stage this community will run, not for the average run. To recover, either raise the deadline and let the schedule pick the request back up, or take one staffed run with buzz-admin deletions run <request-id> outside the CronJob's deadline.

terminationGracePeriodSeconds is a best-effort window, not a guarantee. The drain command handles SIGTERM and releases its lease cleanly when it wins the race, but a pod that is still working when the grace period expires is SIGKILLed with the lease still held. Nothing is lost: the durable lease simply expires (60s by default, heartbeated every 10s) and the next run reclaims the request with a fresh lease generation, which fences any straggler write from the killed process. Expect up to roughly a lease duration of delay before the request is runnable again; do not raise the grace period expecting a clean handoff.

The current owner self-serve relay admission records an owner-origin request at submitted and intentionally performs no inventory or approval synchronously. The deletion engine rejects submitted and inventoried requests at its explicit approval boundary. Automating the privileged inventory/approval step is therefore a separate control-plane slice; enabling this CronJob alone does not make a newly accepted owner request destructive.

The chart has no existing PrometheusRule or provider-neutral CronJob alert integration. Operators must alert on failed/missed Jobs and long-running active Jobs in their deployment platform. Adding a chart-native alert abstraction is debt, not part of this job contract.