[e2e] When testing MachineDeployment rolling upgrades and in-place taint propagation is failing

[arshadd-b]

Which jobs are flaking?

periodic-cluster-api-e2e-main

Which tests are flaking?

1. When testing MachineDeployment rolling upgrades and in-place taint propagation Should successfully upgrade Machines upon changes in relevant MachineDeployment fields

dashboard link: https://storage.googleapis.com/k8s-triage/index.html?pr=1&job=.*cluster-api.*e2e.*main&test=When%20testing%20MachineDeployment%20rolling%20upgrades%20and%20in-place%20taint%20propagation%20&xjob=.*-provider-

Since when has it been flaking?

could see failure from 15/11/2025
https://prow.k8s.io/view/gs/kubernetes-ci-logs/logs/periodic-cluster-api-e2e-main/1989612616221200384

Testgrid link

https://testgrid.k8s.io/cluster-api-core-main#capi-e2e-main

Reason for failure (if possible)

Machines must not be replaced through in-place rollout
Expected
    <bool>: false
to be true
[FAILED] Failed after 0.018s.
The function passed to Consistently failed at /home/prow/go/src/sigs.k8s.io/cluster-api/test/e2e/md_rollout.go:280 with:
Machines must not be replaced through in-place rollout
Expected
    <bool>: false
to be true

No response

Anything else we need to know?

No response

Label(s) to be applied

/kind flake
One or more /area label. See https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cluster-api/labels?q=area for the list of labels.

[k8s-ci-robot]

This issue is currently awaiting triage.

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[arshadd-b]

Was checking the code and logs, I guess after this PR merge this test started failing
https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cluster-api/pull/12966/files