# Incident log — what broke and what it taught (append-only)

## 2026-09-07 ~20:00 CT — shared-box degradation (RESOLVED 09-08)

One box (152.53.37.179, mail.knownelement.com) hosts gitea, redmine,
discourse, GLPI, pwvault, and fronts my.knownelement.com. During the
incident:

- Gitea `git-receive-pack` → HTTP 500 on ANY ref (pushes impossible);
  `POST /api/v1/repos` → plain-text 404. Reads + `POST /api/v1/markdown`
  worked fine — partial failure, not an outage.
- my.knownelement.com → HTTP 500 leaking
  `"Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost'"` (a MySQL root credential
  breakage in whatever backs that vhost).
- pwvault: unauthenticated endpoints answered in 0.2s, but AUTHENTICATED
  `/api/sync` hung to timeout — a lock/db-layer signature. All vault item
  reads fleet-wide were down; nothing credential-driven could proceed.
- tsys-cloudron (tailscale 100.107.35.78, self-signed cert — use `curl -k`)
  404'd its hostname; with `Host: my.knownelement.com` it served the same
  JSON as the public vhost (proxy topology). devbox/preprod/sectestbed
  cloudron peers were offline for 1–2 days.

Lessons: (1) when several "unrelated" systems on that box fail at once,
treat it as one box incident — file one ticket, verify recovery per system;
(2) HTTP-status-only checks lie — the vault was "up" (200s on static paths)
while 100% of useful reads hung; test the authenticated path you actually
need; (3) correlate carefully — the MySQL leak was the public box's vhost,
not the cloudron control box; wrong attribution sent diagnosis down a
rabbit hole (see #939 correction).

## 2026-09-07 — identity/SSO archaeology (the reason this skill exists)

- The August "10 identities enrolled + TOTP" batch captured NO seeds. coo's
  TOTP is therefore enforced-but-unrecoverable; no admin reset exists in
  this Cloudron version. Every future enrollment MUST store the seed.
- `creds/sec-*` / `creds/sre-*` (Sep 07 batch, by VpEngOps) used ONE shared
  password across cloudron+gitea+redmine+discourse, and the stored password
  already fails Cloudron auth (401 tested). Shared passwords are banned
  (#942); treat those items as stale until their owning lane remediates.
- Several "admin" vault candidates resolved to the founder's personal
  reachableceo accounts (gitea id 3, redmine user 5) and none were admin
  (gitea: 403 "user should be the site admin"; redmine: 403 on /users.json).
  They now carry RESTRICTED notes. The compliant Cloudron admin lever is the
  `api-token` user's token in `creds/cloudron`.
- Debug order that works for auth weirdness: (1) what identity does this
  credential ACTUALLY resolve to (call /user or /users/current)?
  (2) does the route exist at all (SPA-bundle grep beats guessing)?
  (3) is the failure at nginx (HTML status pages) or the app (JSON errors)?

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**Records:** Redmine #942 — https://projects.knownelement.com/issues/942 · Discourse docs home: https://community.turnsys.com (skill topic pending admin-key provisioning, tracked on #942)