4. Troubleshooting

4.1. `stork-agent`

This section describes the solutions for some common issues with the Stork agent.

Issue

A machine is authorized in the Stork server successfully, but there are no applications.

Description

The user installed and started stork-server and stork-agent and authorized the machine. The “Last Refreshed” column has a value on the Machines page, the “Error” column value shows no errors, but the “Daemons” column is still blank. The “Application” section on the specific Machine page is also blank.

Solution

Make sure that the daemons are running:

Kea Control Agent, Kea DHCPv4 server, and/or Kea DHCPv6 server
BIND 9

Explanation

If the “Last Refreshed” column has a value, and the “Error” column value has no errors, the communication between stork-server and stork-agent works correctly, which implies that the cause of the problem is between the Stork agent and the daemons. The most likely issue is that none of the Kea/BIND 9 daemons are running. stork-agent communicates with the BIND 9 daemon directly; however, it communicates with the Kea DHCPv4 and Kea DHCPv6 servers via the Kea Control Agent. If only the “CA” daemon is displayed in the Stork interface, the Kea Control Agent is running, but the DHCP daemons are not.

Issue: After starting the Stork agent, it gets stuck in an infinite “sleeping” loop.
Description: stork-agent is running with server support (the --listen-prometheus-only flag is unused). The try to register agent in Stork server message is displayed initially, but the agent only prints the recurring sleeping for 10 seconds before next registration attempt message.
Solution 1.: stork-server is not running. Start the Stork server first and restart the stork-agent daemon.
Solution 2.: The configured server URL in stork-agent is invalid. Correct the URL and restart the agent.

Issue: After starting stork-agent, it keeps printing the following messages: loaded server cert: /var/lib/stork-agent/certs/cert.pem and key: /var/lib/stork-agent/certs/key.pem
Description: stork-agent runs correctly, and its registration is successful. After the started serving Stork Agent message, the agent prints the recurring message about loading server certs. The network traffic analysis to the server reveals that it rejects all packets from the agent (TLS HELLO handshake failed).
Solution: Re-register the agent to regenerate the certificates, using the stork-agent register command.
Explanation: The /var/lib/stork-agent/certs/ca.pem file is missing or corrupted. The re-registration removes old files and creates new ones.

Issue: The cert PEM file is not loaded.
Description: The agent fails to start and prints an open /var/lib/stork-agent/certs/cert.pem: no such file or directory could not load cert PEM file: /var/lib/stork-agent/certs/cert.pem error message.
Solution: Re-register the agent to regenerate the certificates, using the stork-agent register command.

Issue: A connection problem to the DHCP daemon(s).
Description: The agent prints the message problem with connecting to dhcp daemon: unable to forward command to the dhcp6 service: No such file or directory. The server is likely to be offline.
Solution: Try to start the Kea service: systemctl start kea-dhcp4 kea-dhcp6
Explanation: The kea-dhcp4.service or kea-dhcp6.service (depending on the service type in the message) is not running. If the above commands do not resolve the problem, check the Kea Administrator Reference Manual (ARM) for troubleshooting assistance.

Issue: stork-agent receives a remote error: tls: certificate required message from the Kea Control Agent.
Description: The Stork agent and the Kea Control Agent are running, but they cannot establish a connection. The stork-agent log contains the error message mentioned above.
Solution: Install the valid TLS certificates in stork-agent or set the cert-required value in /etc/kea/kea-ctrl-agent.conf to false.
Explanation: By default, stork-agent does not use TLS when it connects to Kea. If the Kea Control Agent configuration includes the cert-required value set to true, it requires the Stork agent to use secure connections with valid, trusted TLS certificates. It can be turned off by setting the cert-required value to false when using self-signed certificates, or the Stork agent TLS credentials can be replaced with trusted ones.

Issue: Kea Control Agent returns a Kea error response - status: 401, message: Unauthorized message.
Description: The Stork agent and the Kea Control Agent are running, but they cannot connect. The stork-agent logs contain similar messages: failed to parse responses from Kea: { "result": 401, "text": "Unauthorized" } or Kea error response - status: 401, message: Unauthorized.
Solution: Update the /etc/stork/agent-credentials.json file with the valid user/password credentials.
Explanation: The Kea Control Agent can be configured to use Basic Authentication. If it is enabled, valid credentials must be provided in the stork-agent configuration. Verify that this file exists and contains a valid username, password, and IP address.

Issue: During the registration process, stork-agent prints a problem with registering machine: cannot parse address message.
Description: Stork is configured to use an IPv6 link-local address. The agent prints the try to register agent in Stork server message and then the above error. The agent exists with a fatal status.
Solution: Use a global IPv6 or an IPv4 address.
Explanation: IPv6 link-local addresses are not supported by stork-server.

Issue: A protocol problem occurs during the agent registration.
Description: During the registration process, stork-agent prints a problem with registering machine: Post "/api/machines": unsupported protocol scheme "" message.
Solution: The --server-url argument is provided in the wrong format; it must be a canonical URL. It should begin with the protocol (http:// or https://), contain the host (DNS name or IP address; for IPv6 escape them with square brackets), and end with the port (delimited from the host by a colon). For example: http://storkserver:8080.

Issue: The values in /etc/stork/agent.env or /etc/stork/agent-credentials.json were changed, but stork-agent does not register the changes.
Solution: Restart the daemon.
Explanation: stork-agent reads configurations only at startup.

Issue: The values in /etc/stork/agent.env were changed and the daemon was restarted, but the agent still uses the default values.
Description: The agent is running using the stork-agent command. It uses the parameters passed from the command line but ignores the /etc/stork/agent.env file entries. If the agent is running as the systemd daemon, it uses the expected values.
Solution: Load the environment variables from the /etc/stork/agent.env file before running the CLI tool. For example, run . /etc/stork/agent.env.
Explanation: The /etc/stork/agent.env file contains the environment variables, but stork-agent does not automatically load them; the file must be loaded manually. The default systemd service unit is configured to load this file before starting the agent.

4. Troubleshooting

4.1. stork-agent

4.1. `stork-agent`