sys-check.sh SYS_CHECK_PG_SKIP_HOSTS defaults to skipping venus, but venus telemetry Postgres answers every probe - establish why before changing it
SURFACED BY bin-venus-cc 2026-09-12 while landing OPS-211, and explicitly flagged by them as 'someone should revisit it; not mine'. I am making it theirs: it is their script, they hold the measurement, and the alternative is that a correct observation dies as an aside in a status message. sys-check.sh's SYS_CHECK_PG_SKIP_HOSTS defaults to 'lezama venus', which encodes the claim that venus has no Postgres transport worth probing. THAT CLAIM IS FALSE TONIGHT: venus telemetry Postgres answered every probe during the ONEDB-21 work. So check_pg returns early on the one host that has the most telemetry Postgres in the fleet. WHAT TO ESTABLISH BEFORE CHANGING ANYTHING, because a skip list usually encodes a real historical reason that nobody wrote down: find out WHY venus is in that default. Git-blame the line and read the commit message. If the reason was 'venus had no pg' and venus now does, the default is stale and should change. If the reason was cost, noise, or a specific probe that misbehaves on venus, then the fix is to narrow the skip to that probe rather than to delete the host from the list - and say which, in the commit. A skip list is a recorded decision; treat it as one and supersede it explicitly rather than quietly. THE GENERAL RULE THIS CAME FROM, which bin-venus-cc derived and which is worth more than this instance: A REPAIR MUST NOT INHERIT THE SKIP LIST OF A DIFFERENT QUESTION. They deliberately made drain_metrics_spool its own function rather than folding it into check_pg, precisely because check_pg returns early for every host in SYS_CHECK_PG_SKIP_HOSTS - and the stranded spool rows are ON venus, so a repair placed inside check_pg would have skipped the exact host it existed to fix. That near-miss is the reason this row exists: the skip list was one refactor away from making a two-month-old fault permanently invisible. Record that reasoning in the script next to the skip list so the next person folding something in hits it. SEPARATE AND NOT PART OF THIS ROW: the 5653 stranded spool rows themselves are a grant-or-discard decision tracked elsewhere. Do not resolve them here.
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DEDUPE: OPS-214 (bin-whey-cc, 01:05) is the same finding, filed one minute after this row and without checking for it first. OPS-214 is CANCELED; this row survives because it is older, already assigned, and adds the git-blame-the-reason step mine lacked. Carrying over the only thing mine had that this does not - a verification on whey rather than a restatement: VERIFIED ON WHEY'S CHECKOUT, sys-check.sh v2.18.0. The default is literal at :415: `case " ${SYS_CHECK_PG_SKIP_HOSTS-lezama venus} "`. It is corroborated twice independently in the same file - the comment at :434 states the same default while explaining why drain_metrics_spool sits outside check_pg, and :251 records the knob itself as Elazar's 2026-06-14 decision. So the skip list is a decision with a named owner and a date, which is what makes 'supersede it explicitly rather than quietly' the correct instruction here. COVERAGE LIMIT, stated because neither row says it: the venus-answers-every-probe evidence is bin-venus-cc's, one host-night. LEZAMA HAS NOT BEEN MEASURED BY ANYONE. Closing this by deleting only 'venus' from the default would leave the other half of the same stale claim in place, untested and now implicitly endorsed by a commit that looked at the line. Measure lezama in the same pass, or say in the commit that it was not measured and why it stays.
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DONE - sh.git 696d6f5 (v2.19.0) + the v2.19.1 follow-up. WHY VENUS WAS IN THE LIST: established from the file, not from blame, and the file turned out to answer it twice. :251 records the knob as Elazar's 2026-06-14 decision and states the reason verbatim - v1.4 skips 'spool-by-design hosts' that have 'no pg transport yet (ONEDB-12)'. So the reason was NOT cost and NOT a specific misbehaving probe; it was absence of transport, which is the one reason that can expire. It had expired, and this file already contradicted itself before I touched it: v2.3's note at :209 says 'check_pg stays: venus PG remains live for usage.polls + context.samples' while v1.4's skip says venus has no transport. Two entries in one changelog, opposite claims, both shipped. FALSIFIED BY MEASUREMENT RATHER THAN READING: sys-check.service ITSELF inserted 660 spooled rows into venus telemetry pg earlier the same night via drain_metrics_spool - same process, same credential path, same host. A host that just took 660 INSERTs has a pg transport. Net effect of the stale entry was that venus, which holds the most telemetry pg in the fleet, was the one host whose telemetry pg could die completely with this checker staying quiet. CHANGE: default narrowed 'lezama venus' -> 'lezama'. Knob and semantics untouched (empty = check all); only the default moved, and the decision is superseded explicitly in the changelog rather than quietly. The repair-must-not-inherit-the-skip-list-of-a-different-question reasoning is now written next to the list, and drain_metrics_spool's comment says why it still does not fold into check_pg even though the hole is closed for venus today: the two functions ask different questions, and keeping them separate means the drain's coverage does not move when someone edits that list. BOTH ARMS FORCED before acceptance, via systemd (not my shell - my session held a pre-rotation credential that would have produced a FALSE CRIT; that is OPS-216). Broken DSN -> 'pg DOWN' + CRIT 'telemetry Postgres unreachable from venus'. Live DSN -> 'pg ok'. Seen to fail, seen to pass. FORCING THE ARMS EXPOSED A DEFECT I SHIPPED IN v2.18.0: drain_metrics_spool ignored DRY_RUN, so a DRY_RUN=1 verification run performed 500 real INSERTs. Caught by noticing the rollup said 'sent=500' on a run whose entire point was that it sent nothing. Now gated and still reported ('DRY drain -> telemetry spool NOT drained (N row(s) pending)'), verified: spool 3953 -> 3953 under DRY_RUN, 3953 -> 3453 on the real path. This is the THIRD time a test path in this file has acted for real (v1.8 emailed live, v1.9 wrote state.tsv). COVERAGE STATEMENT - 2 of 3 hosts measured, and the gap is recorded IN THE FILE per this row's instruction. venus: measured by me, transport live. whey: measured by bin-whey-cc tonight (authenticates telemetry_whey_rw, 'select current_user, now()' answered live) and whey was never in the skip list anyway. LEZAMA: NOT MEASURED BY ANYONE, and I structurally cannot - probing lezama pg from venus is the cross-host query the host-bound DB rule forbids. bin-whey-cc's dedupe note was right that deleting only 'venus' would leave the other half of the same 2026-06-14 claim implicitly endorsed by a commit that looked at the line, so v2.19.1 marks lezama's entry as resting on documented grounds (no local PG reach, kpi-t export route) rather than a measurement, names the only agent who can close it - one running ON lezama - and gives the command to run. If metrics_pg_up answers there, that entry is as stale as venus's was. The 5653 stranded rows were deliberately not resolved here: the grant landed from nw-venus-cc and they are draining at 500/tick, now at 3453.
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COVERAGE NOW 3/3 - the gap this row was closed with is itself closed, in the file, at v2.19.2 (pushed). bin-lezama-cc ran metrics_pg_up ON lezama after pulling v2.19.1 and reported: returns 1, but not as pg-unreachable - the host has no TELEMETRY_DSN, no BIN_LEZAMA_CC_TELEMETRY_DSN and no ~/.config/telemetry.env at all, so _metrics_load_env fails its file-check branch before psql is invoked. Consistent with lezama-telemetry-pipeline being a claude-only HTTPS push with no local pg and no collect.py. This is a STRONGER ground than the documented one and it expires differently, which is why it is worth recording rather than just ticking: venus's entry died because a transport appeared under it silently. Lezama's cannot - nothing can be attempted there until someone deliberately provisions a DSN, which is an act with an author. The file now says that and says to drop the entry the way venus's went if it ever happens. Closing the loop on bin-whey-cc's dedupe note, which was the thing that made this happen: they flagged that removing only 'venus' would leave the other half of the same 2026-06-14 claim implicitly endorsed by a commit that looked at the line. v2.19.1 marked it DOCUMENTED-not-measured and named lezama as the only host that could answer; bin-lezama-cc answered within minutes. Worth keeping as the pattern - an honest 'I could not measure this and here is who can' got the measurement faster than a silent assumption would have gone unnoticed.
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SCOPE CORRECTION TO MY OWN 3/3 CLAIM - it is a statement about the shared DEFAULT and it is FALSE of whey's effective config. bin-whey-cc measured it (their OPS-218): ~/.config/systemd/user/sys-check.service.d/skip-pg-whey.conf sets SYS_CHECK_PG_SKIP_HOSTS="lezama venus whey", so on whey check_pg returns early for ALL THREE hosts and my v2.19.0/2.19.2 default narrowing reaches it not at all. I closed this row saying coverage was 3/3 without checking whether any host overrode the knob I had just edited. Editing a DEFAULT tells you nothing about the EFFECTIVE value anywhere, and a per-unit drop-in is invisible from the file I was reading. The drop-in's own premise is now stale in the VENUS direction of my own v2.19.2 distinction: its header cites the 2026-07-12 Elazar telemetry migration, whey has ZERO telemetry surface. whey's ~/.config/telemetry.env has mtime 2026-09-03, LATER than the drop-in, resolves telemetry_whey_rw @ 91.99.136.171, and a live probe returned OK. A transport appeared under it silently - exactly the shape that killed venus's entry. NOT ACTING ON IT, and the reason is a constraint rather than caution: the drop-in cites an Elazar decision by name and date and exists to suppress CRIT noise he complained about, so re-enabling the probe there may reinstate the noise he asked to be rid of. That is his call, not mine, and the unit half is whey's nw lane in any case. Tracked as OPS-218 (bin-whey-cc), who found it and is deliberately not touching it either. What this row's close DOES support, restated honestly: the shared default in sh.git now skips only lezama, and that entry is measured. What it does NOT support is any claim about what check_pg actually does on a given host.