Troubleshooting

Use this section to resolve issues that can occur during a Helm upgrade.

StatefulSet immutable field error

If helm upgrade fails with an error similar to the following, the new chart version changed an immutable field in one or more StatefulSet specs:

UPGRADE FAILED: cannot patch "msr4-harbor-database" with kind StatefulSet:
StatefulSet.apps "msr4-harbor-database" is invalid: spec: Forbidden:
updates to statefulset spec for fields other than 'replicas', 'ordinals',
'template', 'updateStrategy', 'revisionHistoryLimit',
'persistentVolumeClaimRetentionPolicy' and 'minReadySeconds' are forbidden

Kubernetes does not allow in-place updates to StatefulSet spec fields outside those listed in the error. Delete the affected StatefulSet objects using --cascade=orphan, which removes the controller objects while leaving their pods and PersistentVolumeClaims intact, then re-run the upgrade.

Use --cascade=orphan

Always use --cascade=orphan when you delete StatefulSets as part of this workaround. Omitting this flag causes a cascading deletion that removes pods and can trigger PVC deletion, depending on the persistentVolumeClaimRetentionPolicy. This results in data loss.

kubectl delete statefulset \
  <RELEASE-NAME>-harbor-database \
  <RELEASE-NAME>-harbor-redis \
  <RELEASE-NAME>-harbor-trivy \
  -n <NAMESPACE> --cascade=orphan

Not every StatefulSet is affected in every upgrade. Delete only the StatefulSets named in the error output. If your deployment uses external PostgreSQL and Redis/Valkey, msr4-harbor-database and msr4-harbor-redis aren't present.