bug: Kubernetes supervisor Pod is BestEffort QoS, so eviction terminates the sandbox
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- Dominant language
- Rust
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Description
User Story
As a platform operator running OpenShell sandboxes on a shared Kubernetes cluster, I want the per-sandbox supervisor Pod to declare resource requests, so that node memory pressure does not silently terminate running agent sandboxes.
Problem Statement
The RFC 0012 Kubernetes topology creates a companion supervisor Pod per sandbox. That Pod is built in supervisor_pod() (crates/openshell-driver-kubernetes/src/sandbox_runtime.rs) with no resources block, and the driver config exposes no field to add one — KubernetesSandboxRuntimeConfig offers only supervisor_image and supervisor_image_pull_policy.
With no requests or limits, the supervisor Pod is assigned BestEffort QoS, which makes it the first candidate the kubelet evicts under node memory pressure. The workload Pod does receive resources (template limits are mirrored into requests), so the pair is asymmetric: the more carefully a sandbox is sized, the larger the gap between the two Pods' eviction priority.
Eviction of the supervisor is not recoverable in place:
- The supervisor Pod sets
restartPolicy: Never, so the kubelet does not restart it. - On losing the boundary connection the sandbox freezes the owned workload process tree and opens a 30-second reconnect window.
- That window admits only the same supervisor process.
SandboxConnectionRegistry::attach(crates/openshell-sandbox-backend/src/sandbox_auth.rs) pins the firstsupervisor_instance_idit accepts and returnsWrongSupervisorInstancefor any other. A recreated Pod is a new process with a new ephemeral instance ID. - The session-rotation lineage that would admit a signed successor is not wired up on this path —
SandboxConnectionRegistry::newaccepts_session_idand_session_rotationand ignores both.
When the window expires, the sandbox terminates the workload. An unrelated memory-hungry Pod scheduled onto the same node can therefore destroy running agent sandboxes.
Impact / Why This Matters
Agent sandboxes are long-running and carry uncommitted work in the PVC-backed /sandbox workspace. Losing one mid-run costs the user that session, and the trigger is a node condition the sandbox owner has no visibility into or control over. Because the supervisor is also the component holding the gateway session, the failure surfaces as a sandbox that stops responding rather than as an obvious infrastructure eviction.
The only workaround today is cluster-side: apply a LimitRange to the sandbox namespace so Kubernetes injects default requests into the supervisor Pod. That is insufficient because it is invisible to OpenShell, applies the same defaults to every Pod in the namespace including workload Pods that already carry their own sizing, and must be rediscovered and reapplied by every operator independently. It also cannot be tuned per sandbox profile — a supervisor doing TLS interception and L7 inspection for a busy agent has a materially different footprint from one relaying an idle session.
A related consequence worth deciding on separately: because the scheduler sees zero requests for supervisor Pods, node capacity planning undercounts them entirely. On a node packed with sandboxes this makes memory pressure more likely, which feeds back into the eviction path above.
Acceptance Criteria
- The Kubernetes supervisor Pod declares CPU and memory requests by default, placing it above BestEffort QoS.
- Operators can override the supervisor Pod's requests and limits through
[openshell.drivers.kubernetes]configuration. - The defaults are documented in
docs/reference/gateway-config.mdx. - A unit test asserts the rendered supervisor PodSpec carries resource requests.
- Decide and record whether an evicted or otherwise replaced supervisor should be able to resume a running generation through the existing session-rotation claims, or whether termination remains the intended behavior.
Reproduction Steps
- Deploy the gateway with the Kubernetes compute driver and create a sandbox.
- Inspect the supervisor Pod's QoS class:
Observekubectl get pod os-supervisor-<sandbox-id> -n <sandbox-namespace> \ -o jsonpath='{.status.qosClass}{"\n"}'BestEffort. - Drive the node hosting that Pod into memory pressure, or evict it directly:
kubectl delete pod os-supervisor-<sandbox-id> -n <sandbox-namespace> - Observe that the supervisor Pod is not restarted, and that the sandbox's workload is terminated after the reconnect window elapses rather than recovering.
Environment
- OpenShell:
mainat c1f2e718 (RFC 0012 isolation architecture, PR #2942) - Compute driver: Kubernetes
- Applies to all
workspace_modevalues
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start with supervisor_pod() and KubernetesSandboxRuntimeConfig in crates/openshell-driver-kubernetes/src/sandbox_runtime.rs, then read SandboxConnectionRegistry in crates/openshell-sandbox-backend/src/sandbox_auth.rs. Review docs/reference/gateway-config.mdx and the existing Kubernetes driver tests. Done means default and configurable supervisor resources are rendered and documented, the resource test passes, and the session-rotation behavior is explicitly decided and recorded.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- kubernetes, rust
- Domain
- backend, documentation, infrastructure
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Active
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 45/100