docs(operator): correct where a timed-out stage's logs actually live

[ayuskauskas]

Important

Base this work on feature/package-as-jobs, not main.

The Jobs migration (#223) is integrating on that branch. main does not yet execute
packages as Jobs, so a PR opened against main will be missing the code this depends
on. feature/package-as-jobs merges to main once #305 lands.

That branch squash-merges, so if your branch is stacked on another PR in this epic,
replay only your own commits when restacking:
git rebase --onto origin/feature/package-as-jobs <last-inherited-commit>

Part of #223. Refs #449 — this corrects the claim; the underlying gap is tracked there.

The claim that was wrong

The Jobs release notes promised:

A stage killed by its own deadline additionally gets a ~16KiB log tail snapshotted into the Job's nodewright.nvidia.com/last-logs annotation

It does not. A per-attempt stageTimeout fails the pod in place rather than deleting it, so the timed-out attempt survives as an ordinary full-log archive and snapshotFailureLogs deliberately skips ("a genuine failed archive already holds full logs"). I wrote that sentence in #402 from the pre-#402 design, where a Job-level deadline could delete the running pod.

Manual validation found the annotation empty in every package-stage case, twice:

Case	Build	last-logs
stage timeout (stageTimeout: 20s, SLEEP_LEN: 600)	93caf2ac	empty — logs read from the archive pod, showing the SIGTERM
kubelet-refused attempts	93caf2ac	empty
unpullable image (stageTimeout: 60s)	93caf2ac	empty
stage timeout, re-run after main merged	3e3886ea	empty
unpullable image, re-run	3e3886ea	empty

What it says now

That the archive holds the logs for a timed-out attempt, and that the last-logs fallback belongs to the interrupt Job's whole-stage deadline — the one case where the pod really is deleted.

Deliberately not claiming the fallback works for package stages, because per #449 it currently cannot fire for them at all: the snapshot is gated on FailureTarget, which a package Job only reaches once the final attempt has already failed, at which point either a genuine archive exists (skip) or no live pod remains to read. Fixing that is #449's job; this PR just stops the release notes promising something users will not find.

Docs only — no code, no test changes.

[coderabbitai]

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ℹ️ Recent review info

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Run ID: 3c64eb5e-cc10-4b8b-a4ce-dfafef6ee518

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 3e3886e and 61b0e07.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• operator/RELEASE_NOTES.md

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Failure-log handling now retains full logs for stage-timeout failures. When interrupt-job pod deletion occurs, the Job annotation records a best-effort log tail of approximately 16 KiB. The previous stage-timeout annotation snapshot was removed.

Estimated code review effort: 1 (Trivial) | ~3 minutes

Mergeability Score: ⚪ Minimal · up to 61b0e

This documentation-only change corrects the release-note description of where timed-out stage logs are stored without changing runtime behavior. No actionable merge-blocking risk remains after normal checks and review.

Suggested reviewers: lockwobr, anouarmohamed, rice-riley

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly identifies the documentation correction about where timed-out stage logs are stored.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description directly explains the release-notes correction and the distinction between archive logs and the last-logs annotation.
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.

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch jobs-migration/449-release-notes-lastlogs

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