fix: revert Gitea DB password to plaintext -- existingSecret doesn't work with this chart

Root-causes today's Gitea outage. The official Gitea Helm chart
(dl.gitea.com/charts, gitea/helm-gitea) always builds Gitea's own [database]
config directly from the plaintext postgresql.global.postgresql.auth.password
value, confirmed from templates/gitea/config.yaml:

    {{- $_ := set .Values.gitea.config.database "PASSWD" .Values.postgresql.global.postgresql.auth.password -}}

`existingSecret` only affects the bundled postgresql subchart's own credential
provisioning -- it has no effect on what Gitea itself connects with. Removing
the plaintext field in the earlier Stage 1 "secret hygiene" commit made this
silently fall back to the chart's built-in default password ("gitea", 5
chars), which got re-baked into the persisted app.ini on every pod restart
regardless of what the live Postgres role's real password was -- hence the
repeating CrashLoopBackOff no amount of Postgres-side fixing could resolve.

Restores a plaintext password (the value already live on Postgres from this
incident's recovery), with a comment explaining why, so this doesn't get
"cleaned up" back into the same breakage later. Removes the now-nonfunctional
manifests/gitea/gitea-postgres-secret.sh and its .env.example entry. Getting
this fully off plaintext would need a Config Management Plugin or similar --
not attempted here.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

.env.example

@@ -38,9 +38,6 @@ SWITCHBOT_SECRET=your_switchbot_secret_here
 # Immich database credentials
 IMMICH_POSTGRES_PASSWORD=your_password_here
 
-# Gitea database credentials (rotated off the plaintext value formerly in values/gitea.yaml)
-GITEA_POSTGRES_PASSWORD=your_password_here
-
 # Dashy weather widget API key (rotated off the plaintext value formerly in config/dashy/conf.yaml)
 DASHY_WEATHER_API_KEY=your_api_key_here
 

REFACTOR_PLAN.md

@@ -26,7 +26,9 @@ citations, and the highest-severity ones were independently re-verified
 | 8 | Documentation & DR runbook | Done, committed locally. |
 | 9 | CI & Claude Code guidance | Done, committed locally, **not pushed** (new CI automation surface). |
 
-**Secret rotation still needs you** (Stage 1): I wired up the `existingSecret`/env-injection plumbing for the Gitea DB password and Dashy API key, but I don't generate or handle the actual new credential values — that's your call per this repo's credential-handling rule. See the session summary for exact steps.
+**Correction, 2026-07-23**: the original `existingSecret`-based fix for Finding #3 was wrong and caused a real Gitea outage. Confirmed directly from the chart source (`gitea/helm-gitea` `templates/gitea/config.yaml`): `{{ set .Values.gitea.config.database "PASSWD" .Values.postgresql.global.postgresql.auth.password }}` — Gitea's own `[database]` config is *always* built from this plaintext values field, regardless of `existingSecret` (which only affects the bundled postgresql subchart's own credential provisioning, a separate concern). Removing the plaintext field made it silently fall back to the chart's built-in default password, breaking every fresh Gitea pod's DB connection. `values/gitea.yaml` is back to a plaintext (rotated) password with a comment explaining why, and `manifests/gitea/gitea-postgres-secret.sh` was removed. Getting this fully off plaintext would need a Config Management Plugin or similar — not attempted here; flagging as a real open item if it matters enough to invest in.
+
+Dashy's API key fix (env-injection via `manifests/core/apply-dashy-config.sh`) is unaffected by this and still needs you to rotate the actual key value.
 
 ### New findings from this session's live-cluster checks (not in the original audit)
 

manifests/gitea/gitea-postgres-secret.sh

@@ -1,16 +0,0 @@
-#!/usr/bin/env bash
-set -euo pipefail
-SCRIPT_DIR="$(cd "$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")" && pwd)"
-source "$SCRIPT_DIR/../../.env"
-
-kubectl create secret generic gitea-postgres-secret \
-  --namespace=gitea \
-  --from-literal=postgresql-password="${GITEA_POSTGRES_PASSWORD}" \
-  --dry-run=client -o yaml \
-  | kubeseal \
-      --controller-namespace=kube-system \
-      --controller-name=sealed-secrets-controller \
-      --format yaml \
-      > "$SCRIPT_DIR/gitea-postgres-sealed.yaml"
-
-echo "Wrote $SCRIPT_DIR/gitea-postgres-sealed.yaml"

values/gitea.yaml

@@ -45,12 +45,19 @@ postgresql:
   global:
     postgresql:
       auth:
+        # NOTE: this chart's own template (templates/gitea/config.yaml) always
+        # reads this plaintext field directly to build gitea's [database]
+        # config section -- `existingSecret` only affects the bundled
+        # postgresql subchart's own credential provisioning, not what Gitea
+        # itself connects with. There is no existingSecret-based way to keep
+        # this out of git with this specific chart short of a Config
+        # Management Plugin. Do not "clean this up" back to existingSecret
+        # without also patching the chart's config template -- doing so
+        # silently reverts to the chart's built-in default password and
+        # breaks Gitea's DB connection (confirmed the hard way on 2026-07-23).
         username: gitea
         database: gitea
-        existingSecret: gitea-postgres-secret
-        secretKeys:
-          adminPasswordKey: postgresql-password
-          userPasswordKey: postgresql-password
+        password: ySelvqn2LjZ1fdJ4OFQs5ZlK6VLxHdny
 
 service:
   ssh: