Root cause (confirmed via ztunnel logs): the argo-cd chart's default
NetworkPolicies only allow each component's application port (e.g. 6379
for redis), but Istio ambient mode routes ALL pod-to-pod traffic through
ztunnel's HBONE tunnel on port 15008 first - so the tunnel itself was
being blocked even though the "real" port was allowed. Every inter-pod
connection in the argocd namespace hung for exactly 10s then reset;
ztunnel's own log named it directly ("connection timed out, maybe a
NetworkPolicy is blocking HBONE port 15008"). This broke argocd-server's
Redis-backed session/cluster-info caching cluster-wide and was silently
preventing the root Application from picking up new child Applications.
Fix: additive NetworkPolicy allowing ingress on 15008 for all argocd
pods (NetworkPolicies union across multiple policies selecting a pod,
so this doesn't touch/replace the chart's rendered ones - safe across
Helm upgrades).
Also: dropped argocd from the namespace-enrollment job's waypoint list.
argocd's only AuthorizationPolicy (allow-argocd-access) is a plain
source-namespace/IP match with no L7 rules - its own status shows
"attached to ztunnel", not waypoint - so forcing L7 waypoint processing
onto the namespace was unnecessary overhead, not a security requirement.
ztunnel's mTLS still fully covers it. (This was a red herring for the
HBONE bug itself, not the fix, but a valid simplification found along
the way.)
Scooby Husky