CONSOLE-5196: Refresh admin auth mid-run to prevent session expiry cascade

[shahsahil264]

Analysis / Root cause:

Playwright CI runs all ~300 e2e tests using a single storageState (saved OAuth session cookies) created once at the start of the run. The OpenShift OAuth session has a fixed TTL, and with 300+ tests running across 2 workers (~50 min total runtime), the session can expire mid-run — typically around test ~220 when dev-console tests begin.

When the session expires:

1. warmupSPA navigates to / but the console backend rejects the stale cookie
2. The browser is redirected to oauth-openshift.../oauth/authorize then auth/callback
3. The page lands on the last-visited page (Topology) instead of a page with page-heading
4. page-heading is never found so the test fails
5. The storageState file on disk is never updated, so every subsequent test loads the same stale cookies causing a cascade failure (10-20+ tests fail in a row)

This has caused repeated CI failures across multiple migration PRs (#16741, #16751), where all dev-console, topology, and webterminal tests fail with identical warmupSPA OAuth redirect errors — despite the test code being correct (proven by passing on runs where auth holds).

Solution description:

Split the test suite into two phases with a re-authentication step between them:

• Phase 1 (early packages): smoke, console — depend on admin-auth (original login)
• Re-auth: admin-auth-refresh — depends on Phase 1 completing, re-runs the login flow and overwrites kubeadmin.json with a fresh session
• Phase 2 (late packages): dev-console, helm, knative, olm, topology, webterminal — depend on admin-auth-refresh

This ensures that late-running test packages always start with a fresh OAuth session, eliminating the cascade failure pattern.

Changes:

• playwright.config.ts: Split packages array into earlyPackages and latePackages, added admin-auth-refresh project between them with correct dependency ordering
• e2e/setup/admin-auth-refresh.setup.ts: New setup file that performs the same login as admin-auth.setup.ts to refresh the storageState

Screenshots / screen recording:
N/A (CI infrastructure change, no UI changes)

Test setup:
Tested locally against a live OCP 5.0 cluster. Verified:

• admin-auth creates initial kubeadmin.json
• admin-auth-refresh re-logs in and overwrites kubeadmin.json
• dev-console tests run successfully with the refreshed session (10/10 passed, zero auth redirect failures)

Test cases:

• CI run completes without auth expiry cascade in late test packages
• All existing tests continue to pass (no behavioral change to test execution, only dependency ordering)

Browser conformance:
N/A (no UI changes)

Additional info:
This complements PR #16780 which reduced runtime by setting WORKERS=2. That fix brought runtime from ~2h to ~50min, but session expiry still occurs non-deterministically depending on the ephemeral cluster OAuth token lifetime. This PR eliminates the root cause by refreshing auth before the second half of the suite runs.

[openshift-merge-bot]

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[openshift-ci-robot]

@shahsahil264: This pull request references CONSOLE-5196 which is a valid jira issue.

Warning: The referenced jira issue has an invalid target version for the target branch this PR targets: expected the epic to target the "5.0.0" version, but no target version was set.

Details

In response to this:

…scade

Auth storageState is created once at test start. On CI with 300+ tests and 2 workers (~50 min runtime), the OAuth session can expire mid-run, causing every subsequent test to fail with an OAuth redirect in warmupSPA.

Split test packages into early (smoke, console) and late (dev-console, helm, knative, olm, topology, webterminal) phases with a re-login between them. The admin-auth-refresh project re-authenticates and overwrites kubeadmin.json before late packages start.

Analysis / Root cause:

Solution description:

Screenshots / screen recording:

Test setup:

Test cases:

Browser conformance:

• Chrome
• Firefox
• Safari (or Epiphany on Linux)

Additional info:

Reviewers and assignees:

Instructions for interacting with me using PR comments are available here. If you have questions or suggestions related to my behavior, please file an issue against the openshift-eng/jira-lifecycle-plugin repository.

[openshift-ci]

Skipping CI for Draft Pull Request.
If you want CI signal for your change, please convert it to an actual PR.
You can still manually trigger a test run with /test all

[coderabbitai]

Walkthrough

Changes

Playwright authentication flow

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Kubeadmin storage state refresh frontend/e2e/setup/admin-auth-refresh.setup.ts	Adds conditional kubeadmin login using environment-configured console settings and saves the authenticated storage state.
Early and late project dependencies frontend/playwright.config.ts	Splits package projects into early and late groups and routes late projects through the new admin-auth-refresh setup project.

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant Playwright
  participant AuthRefreshSetup
  participant WebConsole
  participant StorageState
  participant LatePackages
  Playwright->>AuthRefreshSetup: run admin-auth-refresh setup
  AuthRefreshSetup->>WebConsole: perform kubeadmin login
  WebConsole-->>AuthRefreshSetup: authenticated browser context
  AuthRefreshSetup->>StorageState: save kubeadmin storage state
  StorageState-->>LatePackages: provide adminStorageState
  LatePackages->>WebConsole: run package tests

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Suggested reviewers: rhamilto

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 15

✅ Passed checks (15 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Stable And Deterministic Test Names	✅ Passed	The PR adds one static Playwright title and no Ginkgo It/Describe/Context/When names with dynamic data in the touched files.
Test Structure And Quality	✅ Passed	No Ginkgo test code was changed; this PR only adds/updates Playwright setup/config, so the Ginkgo-specific quality check is not applicable.
Microshift Test Compatibility	✅ Passed	PASS: The PR only adds Playwright setup/config changes; no new Ginkgo It/Describe/Context/When tests or MicroShift-unsafe APIs/features were added.
Single Node Openshift (Sno) Test Compatibility	✅ Passed	No new Ginkgo tests were added; the PR only changes Playwright setup/config and contains no multi-node or SNO-specific assumptions.
Topology-Aware Scheduling Compatibility	✅ Passed	PASS: Only Playwright test setup/config changed; no deployment manifests, controllers, or topology/node-scheduling logic were added.
Ote Binary Stdout Contract	✅ Passed	PR only changes Playwright setup/config; no main/init/TestMain/suite-level stdout writes or console/log calls were added.
Ipv6 And Disconnected Network Test Compatibility	✅ Passed	No new Ginkgo tests or IPv4/external-network assumptions found; the added Playwright setup logs into the cluster console only.
No-Weak-Crypto	✅ Passed	The diff only adds Playwright auth/setup flow; no MD5/SHA1/DES/RC4/3DES/Blowfish/ECB, custom crypto, or secret comparisons appear.
Container-Privileges	✅ Passed	No container/K8s manifests were changed, and the edited TS files contain none of the flagged privilege settings.
No-Sensitive-Data-In-Logs	✅ Passed	No logging in the changed files; credentials are used for login only and not printed or emitted.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title is concise, Jira-prefixed, and accurately summarizes the auth-refresh change.
Description check	✅ Passed	All required sections are present and substantive; only the reviewers/assignees section is left blank.

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests

---

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[openshift-ci]

[APPROVALNOTIFIER] This PR is NOT APPROVED

This pull-request has been approved by: shahsahil264
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[shahsahil264]

/pipeline required

[openshift-merge-bot]

Scheduling tests matching the pipeline_run_if_changed or not excluded by pipeline_skip_if_only_changed parameters:
/test e2e-gcp-console
/test e2e-playwright

[shahsahil264]

@rhamilto Can you PTAL!
Thanks

[rhamilto]

/test e2e-playwright

[openshift-ci]

@shahsahil264: all tests passed!

Full PR test history. Your PR dashboard.

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