IneffectiveSelector

This message occurs when a workload selector in policies like AuthorizationPolicy, RequestAuthentication, Telemetry, or WasmPlugin does not effectively target any pods within the Kubernetes Gateway.

Example

You will receive similar messages like:

Warning [IST0166] (AuthorizationPolicy default/ap-ineffective testdata/k8sgateway-selector.yaml:47) Ineffective selector on
Kubernetes Gateway bookinfo-gateway. Use the TargetRef field instead.

when your policy’s selector matches a Kubernetes Gateway.

For example, when you have a Kubernetes Gateway pod like:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  annotations:
    istio.io/rev: default
  labels:
    gateway.networking.k8s.io/gateway-name: bookinfo-gateway
  name: bookinfo-gateway-istio-6ff4cf9645-xbqmc
  namespace: default
spec:
  containers:
  - image: proxyv2:1.21.0
    name: istio-proxy

And there is an AuthorizationPolicy with a selector like:

apiVersion: security.istio.io/v1
kind: AuthorizationPolicy
metadata:
  namespace: default
  name: ap-ineffective
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      gateway.networking.k8s.io/gateway-name: bookinfo-gateway
  action: DENY
  rules:
  - from:
    - source:
      namespaces: ["dev"]
    to:
    - operation:
      methods: ["POST"]

If you have both targetRef and selector in the policy, this message will not occur. For example:

apiVersion: telemetry.istio.io/v1
kind: Telemetry
metadata:
  name: telemetry-example
  namespace: default
spec:
  tracing:
  - randomSamplingPercentage: 10.00
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      gateway.networking.k8s.io/gateway-name: bookinfo-gateway
  targetRef:
    group: gateway.networking.k8s.io
    kind: Gateway
    name: bookinfo-gateway

How to resolve

Make sure you are using the selector field for sidecars or Istio Gateway pods, and use the targetRef field for Kubernetes Gateway pods. Otherwise, the policy will not be applied.

Here is an example:

apiVersion: telemetry.istio.io/v1
kind: Telemetry
metadata:
  name: telemetry-example
  namespace: default
spec:
  tracing:
  - randomSamplingPercentage: 10.00
  targetRef:
    group: gateway.networking.k8s.io
    kind: Gateway
    name: bookinfo-gateway