oxidecomputer / oxidecomputer/omicron

Nexus panicked on no CA certs loaded in some of the background tasks

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Rust
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Description

On rack2, I found a nexus core file and the log search indicates that it panicked due to the lack of a CA cert:

thread 'tokio-rt-worker' (41) panicked at clients/dns-service-client/src/lib.rs:5:1:
called `Result::unwrap()` on an `Err` value: reqwest::Error { kind: Builder, source: General("No CA certificates were loaded from the system") }
{"msg":"authorize result","v":0,"name":"nexus","level":20,"time":"2026-07-19T06:15:56.133544466Z","hostname":"oxz_nexus_6a11df2d-df48-415e-a5d4-bd591d593c96","pid":20384,"background_task":"aban
doned_vmm_reaper","component":"BackgroundTasks","component":"nexus","component":"ServerContext","name":"6a11df2d-df48-415e-a5d4-bd591d593c96","result":"Ok(())","resource":"Database","action":"Q
uery","actor":"Some(Actor::UserBuiltin { user_builtin_id: 001de000-05e4-4000-8000-000000000002 (built_in_user), .. })"}
note: run with `RUST_BACKTRACE=1` environment variable to display a backtrace
[ Jul 19 06:16:06 Stopping because all processes in service exited. ]
[ Jul 19 06:16:06 Executing stop method (:kill). ]
[ Jul 19 06:16:06 Executing start method ("ctrun -l child -o noorphan,regent /opt/oxide/omicron-nexus/bin/nexus /var/svc/manifest/site/nexus/config.toml &"). ]
[ Jul 19 06:16:06 Method "start" exited with status 0. ]

I am pretty sure we have certs at the time (we aren't crossing the expiration date right at that moment).

The rack had 21.0.0-0.ci+git3e5bafe8ad9 when nexus panicked.

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Research direction

Start at clients/dns-service-client/src/lib.rs:5:1 and inspect the unwrap that panics when reqwest reports that no system CA certificates were loaded. Use the rack logs from version 21.0.0-0.ci+git3e5bafe8ad9 to trace why certificates were unavailable in the background task; done means Nexus no longer panics in this condition and the failure is handled appropriately.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
backend
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
48/100

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