[HarryMoss]

Summary

This adds a dedicated Kubernetes E2E lane that starts a real OTLP collector and checks traces from a successful sandbox operation. Missing gateway or compute-driver spans fail the lane clearly. It completes the collector-validation work remaining after #5348.

Related Issue

Closes #3767

Changes

• Add a tracing task and CI matrix row using the existing gateway harness.
• Check expected operations, resource attributes, valid IDs and shared gateway-to-driver validation context within a bounded deadline.
• Recheck the saved receipt against collector data so a zero shell status cannot hide a skipped probe.
• Preserve partial logs and reclaim owned resources on success, failure, timeout and handled cancellation.
• Support normal single-file and merged-file KUBECONFIG selection, fix empty-array handling on macOS Bash and update the test guidance.

Release Notes

Adds an explicit collector-backed Kubernetes tracing validation lane.

Testing

• 21 checker/lifecycle tests and affected Python lint/format/type, Markdown and diff checks pass on source tree d4a19edd0b60374f3a6ea355e7a8dad1fedb352c.
• Client-only configuration regression covers single-file and merged-file kubeconfigs without contacting a server.
• Unit and E2E coverage added, including missing receipts, incorrect attribution/context, skipped probes and process cleanup.

Real Linux ARM64 Kubernetes/Collector positive, missing-export and SIGTERM cleanup controls passed on the preceding tree 2047c903b723005e5276884d62d45b76fc516e16, using base-pinned CLI/images from af8182f7b. The final follow-up changes only configuration selection, its regression and CI documentation; those cluster controls were not rerun or relabelled for this revision. Workflow, Helm and Bash checks remain applicable to their unchanged files. Standalone ShellCheck retains the base's one existing SC2034 warning.

Temporary resources were removed. No full workspace CI or backend-retention pass is claimed. Please apply area:build, topic:observability and test:e2e so the new collector lane runs in NVIDIA CI. Maintainer and workflow code-owner approval remain pending.

Checklist

• Follows Conventional Commits.
• Commits are signed off for DCO.
• Test and development guidance updated.

Architecture documentation changes are not applicable to this test-infrastructure contribution.

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