hashicorp / hashicorp/consul

Service defaults `MaxFailures` accepts negative numbers

Open
#11,517 0 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub
theme/connect type/bug
Dominant language
Go
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Forks
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Avg merge
1d 18h
Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

#### Overview of the Issue

`MaxFailures` can be set to a negative integer but it will be converted to an unsigned integer when sent to Envoy.

```hcl
Kind = "service-defaults"
Name = "frontend"
Protocol = "http"
UpstreamConfig {
Defaults {
PassiveHealthCheck {
MaxFailures = -1
}
}
}
```

```console
curl -s localhost:19000/config_dump?format=json | grep -A 2 outlier

"outlier_detection": {
"consecutive_5xx": 4294967295
},
```

### Thoughts

On the one hand, it's doing what I want, which is to essentially disable passive health checking. On the other hand, it seems kinda not good that we're just converting it into an unsigned int.

Maybe we could have `-1` mean "disable outlier detection" and anything other than that throw an error?

### Consul info for both Client and Server

Consul 1.10.3

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by tracing validation and Envoy conversion for the service-defaults path `UpstreamConfig.Defaults.PassiveHealthCheck.MaxFailures`, then reproduce the negative-value behavior shown by the `/config_dump?format=json` command. Confirm the intended handling of `-1` and other negative values with maintainers; done should include explicit behavior and coverage for the selected validation or conversion outcome.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
go
Domain
networking
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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