Shoot hibernation stuck in Hibernating state due to gardener-controller-manager connectivity loss

Problem Context

When Gardener’s controller‑manager loses connectivity to a seed cluster, the Shoot resource is left in the Hibernating condition, even though spec.hibernation.enabled has been set to false. The controller appears to use a cached status that is not refreshed until connectivity is restored.

Goal

Identify the mechanism that causes the stale cache to persist, determine how to detect it, and find a configuration or workflow that clears the stale state so the Shoot can transition to Awakening or Ready.

Constraints and Uncertainty

The Gardener release in use does not provide a documented cache‑refresh interval for hibernation reconciliation, and the logs do not indicate a timeout or retry policy for seed‑connection failures.

Specific Questions

• What internal data structure does gardener-controller-manager use to store the last known Shoot hibernation status, and how is it updated during seed‑disruption?
• Which API calls or events trigger a cache invalidation for a Shoot’s hibernation condition?
• Can a configuration flag or annotation force the controller to re‑evaluate the hibernation state immediately after connectivity is restored, or is manual intervention required?