Adventure 01: Echoes Lost In Orbit | 🟢 Easy: Broken Echoes

Challenges
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Welcome to the first challenge in the Open Ecosystem Challenge series! Your mission: restore interstellar communication by fixing a broken GitOps setup. This is a hands-on troubleshooting exercise using Kubernetes and Argo CD.

The entire infrastructure is pre-provisioned in your Codespace — Kubernetes cluster, Argo CD, and sample app are ready to go. You don’t need to set up anything locally. Just focus on solving the problem.

:bullseye: The Challenge

The Echo Server is misbehaving. Both environments seem to be down, and messages are silent. Your mission: investigate the Argo CD configuration and restore proper multi-environment delivery.

:brain: What you’ll learn:

  • How Argo CD ApplicationSets work
  • How to reason about templating and sync policies
  • How drift detection and self-healing operate in GitOps workflows

:clipboard: Objective:

By the end of this challenge, you should:

  • See two distinct Applications in the Argo CD dashboard (one per environment)
  • Ensure each Application deploys to its own isolated namespace
  • Make the system resilient so Argo CD automatically reverts manual changes made to the cluster
  • Confirm that updates happen automatically without leaving stale resources behind

:alarm_clock: Deadline: Wednesday, 10 December 2025 at 09:00 CET

:information_source: You can still complete the challenge after this date, but points will only be awarded for submissions before the deadline.

:chart_increasing: Level: :green_circle: Beginner

:rocket: Quickstart

  1. Fork the Open Ecosystem Challenges repo
  2. Launch a Codespace with the Adventure 01 | :green_circle: Beginner (Broken Echoes) configuration
  3. Fix the errors in adventures/01-echoes-lost-in-orbit/beginner/manifests/appset.yaml

:open_book: Check out the full story & walkthrough guide for detailed step-by-step instructions.

:white_check_mark: Verification & Submission

  1. Run the smoke test in your Codespace:

    adventures/01-echoes-lost-in-orbit/beginner/smoke-test.sh

  2. If it succeeds, commit and push your changes to your fork’s main branch

  3. Trigger the verification workflow on GitHub Actions (Actions tab → Verify Adventure → Run workflow)

  4. Submit your solution by replying to this topic with:

    • The URL of your fork
    • Screenshot of your successful workflow run (showing :white_check_mark:, workflow name, and username)

:open_book: Need help? See the Verification Guide for detailed instructions.

:straight_ruler: Community Guidelines

  • :toolbox: Keep solutions vendor-agnostic; no promotional content
  • :locked: This is a public forum; don’t post secrets or internal data
  • :raising_hands: Be respectful and constructive (see our Code of Conduct)

:speech_balloon: Need Help?

Ready to restore the echoes? :rocket: Good luck, and we can’t wait to see your solutions!

8 Likes
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I just solved the first challenge :tada:

Verification screenshot:

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License: MIT

Screenshot 2025-11-23 at 11.45.44 AM
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GitHub - rohitbc23/open-ecosystem-challenges: Hands-on, recurring prompts designed to help you practice Cloud Native, OpenTelemetry, AI/ML, and other open source skills.

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IM stuck
According to the manual I have to see a port
But on my github I do not see it

Can someone help me with this ?

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you really have to create the Codespace using a custom configuration, then selecting “New with Options” and selecting “Adventure 01” as Dev Container configuration

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Verify Adventure

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Thank you — that was fun! :slight_smile:
I’m already looking forward to the next challenges.

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I did these steps so I think I did made a custom configuration

Fork the Open Ecosystem Challenges repo

  1. Launch a Codespace with the Adventure 01 | :green_circle: Beginner (Broken Echoes) configuration

  2. Fix the errors in adventures/01-echoes-lost-in-orbit/beginner/manifests/appset.yaml

if I miss some steps I never read somewhere how to make that custom configuration

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Hey @RoelofW :slight_smile:

There’s a more detailed guide available in the documentation: 🟢 Beginner: Broken Echoes - Open Ecosystem Challenges

The ports tab is visible from within the Codespace → you need to connect to one of your Codespaces and then there should be a “Ports” tab at the bottom of VS Code:

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Thanks

And one question left

I have this in my .yaml file
namespace: argocd

How do I make this work

❌ Namespace ‘echo-staging’ does not exist

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That’s actually part of what you need to solve in the challenge! :bullseye:

We’ll publish a complete walkthrough after the challenge deadline (December 10), so you can see the full solution and compare approaches.

In the meantime, the ArgoCD docs on ApplicationSets might give you some helpful hints.

Good luck! :rocket:

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With some thinking and trying I solved it

Github url : GitHub - RoelofWobben/open-ecosystem-challenges: Hands-on, recurring prompts designed to help you practice Cloud Native, OpenTelemetry, AI/ML, and other open source skills.

Verification screenshot :

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nice challenges. I hope there will be a lot more very soon

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Solved the challenge successfully: GitHub - theharithsa/open-ecosystem-challenges: Hands-on, recurring prompts designed to help you practice Cloud Native, OpenTelemetry, AI/ML, and other open source skills.

Here is the screenshot of the successful run:

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2 Likes
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Still a little problem.

When I crtl + click on the argo cd link I get a lot of 502 errors.

Anyone a idea how to solve that ?

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Which browser are you using? I was getting the same error then I changed from Comet to Chrome and it worked.

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I use Firefox and off all the times I tried it worked one time