Skip to content

Workload volume declarations: ownership, backup, and retention #150

Description

@vishr

Why these are tracked together

Three open issues change what a workloads.*.volumes[] entry means, and each was
filed against a different symptom. They share one substrate, so deciding the
entry shape once is cheaper than touching that schema node three times.

#141 and #142 both add properties to the same node. #148 is a defect in the
planner and retention, and is included here because it is the third thing that
turns on what a volume entry means — a mount that is release-scoped versus one
that is external host state.

Verified state on main (checked at 5e03da0)

  • hasReleasePathDependency (internal/onebox/workload_plan.go:139) marks any
    workload with a relative bind non-retainable, and that case is evaluated above
    the revision comparison (workload_plan.go:70), so retain is unreachable for
    those workloads. feat(deploy): retain workloads whose relative bind-mount content is unchanged #148's reproduction is accurate.
  • RetentionCandidates (internal/release/retention.go:80) protects evidence
    ids, active schedule leases, the current release and its predecessor chain, and
    the activation and secret checkpoints. It never inspects live container mounts,
    so feat(deploy): retain workloads whose relative bind-mount content is unchanged #148's "hard part" is real: a container retained past the chain would mount a
    pruned release directory.
  • A volume entry today has exactly mode, name, path, source. mode is the
    rw/ro enum and a relative source is schema-forced to ro.
  • backup: exists only under a services entry that declares a driver
    (properties/services/additionalProperties/anyOf[1]), and its implementation is
    wal-g and PostgreSQL specific (internal/engine/backup_postgres.go,
    backup_postgres_ops.go, and the renderService wiring in
    internal/app/services.go:350). There is no driver-neutral copy engine to reuse.
  • ob doctor already names the gap Allow backup: on workload volumes, not only managed services #142 describes
    (cmd/ob/doctor.go:496), and docs/product.md:53 lists workload-volume backups
    under "Not owned today".

Decisions that belong here rather than in a child

The entry shape, decided once. #141 proposes host_path, uid, gid and
mode. host_path duplicates the existing source, and mode collides with the
existing rw/ro enum on the same node. A nested block — for example
host: {uid, gid, mode} — leaves the existing keys alone and gives #142 a place
to sit beside it. Whatever is chosen, both children should be written against it
before either is implemented.

Which volumes backup: can attach to. #142's proposal attaches it to an
absolute bind source. Sampling the config corpus, most durable workload state is
in named volumes rather than binds — ext-gitea (data), ext-immich
(upload), ext-n8n (storage), ext-plausible (data), ext-paperless
(pgdata, redisdata). A backup contract that reaches only bind sources would
miss the common case. This is also a partial answer to #142's own open question
about whether one application's inventory is representative.

Whether #142 is taken at all. It moves a documented product boundary and
needs a copy engine that does not exist yet. That is a product decision, not a
backlog pull, and it should be settled before the schema work in #141 assumes it.

Where a declared-path check runs. #141's comment proposes the shared host
prerequisite gate. RequireHostPrerequisites
(internal/app/prerequisites.go:182) takes only a Runner and asserts three
constant Docker commands, so project-declared paths need a sibling gate called
from the same three sites — internal/engine/bootstrap.go:83,
internal/app/preflight.go:84 and internal/engine/preflight.go:33 — rather than
a widened signature.

Suggested order

  1. Support declarative ownership for bind-mounted host directories #141 — smallest, and a directory the platform backs up should be one the
    platform provisioned.
  2. feat(deploy): retain workloads whose relative bind-mount content is unchanged #148 — independent of the schema decision and the only one with measured
    production cost, so it need not wait on Allow backup: on workload volumes, not only managed services #142.
  3. Allow backup: on workload volumes, not only managed services #142 — only after the product boundary question is answered.

Related, not part of this

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    enhancementNew feature or request

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

      Milestone

      No milestone

      Relationships

      None yet

      Development

      No branches or pull requests

      Issue actions