Allow `spike --help` to work without running spire-agent

[jas4711]

Hi! I'm packaging spike in Debian, and 0.8.0 was just accepted officially. However running spike --help without a running spire-agent seems to stall:

{"time":"2026-02-16T07:51:11.90421693+01:00","level":"WARN","msg":"Lock","msg":"Failed to lock memory","err":"cannot allocate memory"}

Strace suggests it is looping trying to open to spire-agent socket:

jas@frallan:~$ strace -f spike --help 2>&1|grep connect
[pid 962430] connect(3, {sa_family=AF_UNIX, sun_path="/tmp/spire-agent/public/api.sock"}, 35 <unfinished ...>
[pid 962430] <... connect resumed>)     = -1 ECONNREFUSED (Connection refused)
[pid 962430] connect(3, {sa_family=AF_UNIX, sun_path="/tmp/spire-agent/public/api.sock"}, 35 <unfinished ...>
[pid 962430] <... connect resumed>)     = -1 ECONNREFUSED (Connection refused)
[pid 962425] connect(3, {sa_family=AF_UNIX, sun_path="/tmp/spire-agent/public/api.sock"}, 35 <unfinished ...>
[pid 962425] <... connect resumed>)     = -1 ECONNREFUSED (Connection refused)
[pid 962430] connect(3, {sa_family=AF_UNIX, sun_path="/tmp/spire-agent/public/api.sock"}, 35) = -1 ECONNREFUSED (Connection refused)
^C

Is this behaviour intentional or a bug? What do you think about spike --help producing some information even when spire-agent isn't running?

/Simon

[v0lkan]

Hi @jas4711 I've been in between many things. -- noting it down to get back to this.

I'm also noting down to triage open issues :) .

Thanks for the report.

[PillaiManish]

Is this still open? I can take a look on this @jas4711, @v0lkan if so.

[v0lkan]

Not sure; let me check it out and get back here.