By Tomy Hsieh
I’m trying out the latest Gateway API on DOKS, following this tutorial.
I apply the exact same yaml provided to provision a Gateway, but when I try to get the gateway, it says:
> kubectl get gateways
NAME CLASS ADDRESS PROGRAMMED AGE
cilium-gateway-http cilium Unknown 3m14s
instead of the PROGRAMMED=true indicated in the tutorial.
Furthermore, I notice the Cilium GatewayClass provided by DO seems to have some issues:
> kubectl describe gatewayclass cilium
Name: cilium
Namespace:
Labels: c3.doks.digitalocean.com/component=cilium
c3.doks.digitalocean.com/plane=data
c3.doks.digitalocean.com/variant=ebpf
doks.digitalocean.com/managed=true
Annotations: <none>
API Version: gateway.networking.k8s.io/v1
Kind: GatewayClass
Metadata:
Creation Timestamp: 2025-10-31T05:32:49Z
Generation: 1
Resource Version: 1502
UID: 9e7488ed-5ed3-47ee-b599-b0c731dd5a6f
Spec:
Controller Name: io.cilium/gateway-controller
Description: The default Cilium GatewayClass
Status:
Conditions:
Last Transition Time: 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z
Message: Waiting for controller
Reason: Pending
Status: Unknown
Type: Accepted
Events: <none>
Notice the Message says “Waiting for controller”, and the timestamp seems like a placeholder.
Can confirm the cluster is running on the latest version
> kubectl version
Client Version: v1.34.1
Kustomize Version: v5.7.1
Server Version: v1.33.1
I’ve tried to create another cluster in a different region, but they all result in the same error.
What can go wrong here?
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Hi there,
It looks like the Cilium GatewayClass controller isn’t getting picked up properly, the Waiting for controller message usually means the Cilium agent or gateway controller isn’t running or hasn’t registered yet with the Gateway API. You could try checking if the cilium-gateway-controller pod is running in the kube-system namespace or see if there are any errors in the cilium-operator logs.
That said, since this seems to be happening across clusters and regions, it might point to something on the managed side of DOKS. I’d suggest keeping your support ticket open so the DOKS team can check if the GatewayClass controller is currently deployed correctly in your environment.
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