FluxCD soldiers 5

1. Force Reconcile (most common)

# Reconcile a kustomization and pull latest git source
flux reconcile kustomization <name> --with-source

# Reconcile just the git source
flux reconcile source git flux-system

# Reconcile a specific HelmRelease
flux reconcile helmrelease <name> -n <namespace>

# Reconcile a HelmRepository (force re-fetch chart index)
flux reconcile source helm <name> -n <namespace>

When: You pushed a commit and don’t want to wait for the poll interval. --with-source on a kustomization reconciles its referenced GitRepository first.

2. Suspend / Resume (reset failure state)

flux suspend helmrelease <name> -n <namespace>
flux resume helmrelease <name> -n <namespace>

When: A HelmRelease has exhausted its retry budget (e.g. 10 failures) and is stuck. Even after pushing a fix, Flux won’t retry because the failure counter is maxed out. Suspend/resume resets the counter and forces a fresh reconciliation with current values.

Also works for kustomizations:

flux suspend kustomization <name>
flux resume kustomization <name>

Why not just reconcile? flux reconcile only triggers a new attempt if retries remain. Once retries are exhausted, the controller stops trying. Suspend/resume is the reset.

3. Check Status

# Overview of all Flux resources
flux get all

# Specific resource types
flux get kustomizations
flux get helmreleases -A
flux get sources git
flux get sources helm -A

# Detailed events on a HelmRelease
kubectl describe helmrelease <name> -n <namespace>

# Watch for changes
flux get helmreleases -A -w

4. Debugging

# Check Flux controller logs
flux logs --kind=HelmRelease --name=<name> --namespace=<namespace>

# Check all Flux controller logs
flux logs --all-namespaces

# Verify local values against chart schema before pushing
helm repo add <repo> <url>
helm repo update
helm template <release> <repo>/<chart> -f values.yaml

# Check what revision Flux sees
flux get sources git

Tags:

#flux #kubernetes

Daniel Michaels 🇦🇺