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@@ -1,10 +1,11 @@
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---
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topic: what runs on it
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status: accepted
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status: superseded
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date: 2026-09-29
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deciders: jochen
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reconstructed: false
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extends: 02-DECISIONS/0144-anything-on-a-machine-may-call-anything-on-it.md
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superseded-by: 02-DECISIONS/0146-connectivity-is-checked-by-name-per-hosting-form.md
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---
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# 145. A module checks what the mesh claims is reachable, and it checks itself
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@@ -0,0 +1,125 @@
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---
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topic: what runs on it
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status: accepted
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date: 2026-09-29
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deciders: jochen
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reconstructed: false
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extends: 02-DECISIONS/0145-a-module-checks-what-the-mesh-claims-is-reachable.md
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supersedes: 02-DECISIONS/0145-a-module-checks-what-the-mesh-claims-is-reachable.md
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---
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# 146. Connectivity is checked by name, per hosting form, with a valid certificate
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## Context
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[ADR 0145](0145-a-module-checks-what-the-mesh-claims-is-reachable.md) decided that a module checks what
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the mesh claims is reachable, from where the callers are, because the mesh reported four machines healthy
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for eleven hours while a module could not reach its database
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([issue 145](../04-ISSUES/145-a-machine-reads-healthy-while-its-modules-cannot-reach-each-other/00-report.md)).
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That decision stands. What it got wrong is everything about *what* is dialled.
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It dialled a raw port on each machine's address. Three things are wrong with that:
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- **A raw port is not how anything in this mesh is reached.** A real caller resolves a name, the proxy
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answers it, and the proxy reaches the service. A check that dials a port tests the last hop of a path
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with four hops in it, and the three it skips — resolution, the proxy, the certificate — are where most
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of the mesh's connectivity actually lives.
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- **It tested one hosting form.** A module is software that delivers services, and it may deliver them
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from a container, from a unit the mesh writes for its own code, or from a unit a package ships. Those
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are three different paths to the same machine, and the outage that produced this was two of them
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disagreeing. A probe served one way measures one way.
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- **It said nothing about certificates.** An internal name that resolves, routes and answers over TLS
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that nothing can verify is not a working path; it is a working path for whoever holds the proxy's
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trust and nobody else.
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## Decision
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**Each hosting form gets its own endpoint, its own route and therefore its own name.** On every machine:
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| name | what serves it |
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| `connect-docker.<node>.internal` | a container |
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| `connect-process.<node>.internal` | the mesh's own code, in a unit the mesh writes |
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| `connect-unit.<node>.internal` | a unit a package ships |
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and the same set under each machine's public domain where it has one — `connect-docker.<domain>` and its
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siblings. The names are the instrument: a failure reads as *`connect-docker.g14.internal` did not answer*,
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which says which machine and which hosting form without anybody interpreting anything.
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**Every machine checks every machine, by name, over TLS, verifying the certificate.** Not a port, not an
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address: resolve the name, connect, complete the handshake, check the certificate against the authority
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that should have issued it — the mesh's own for an internal name, a public one for a public name. That is
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the whole path a real caller takes, and each step failing is reported as itself.
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**No name is written anywhere.** The machines come from the roster the mesh already renders as a fact, and
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the labels are the module's. A machine that joins appears in every other machine's roster on the next
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push, and they begin checking it without an edit.
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**And the module arrives on a machine because the machine exists, not because somebody assigned it.** A
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machine that joins and does not have it is worse than unchecked: every other machine is already dialling
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its names, so it reads as broken everywhere until someone notices. This is the part the mesh cannot
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currently express — see below — and it is the part that makes the rest safe.
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**What survives from 0145**, unchanged: it reports and repairs nothing; one failure is not a fault and a
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path is broken after consecutive runs with the count travelling with the result; findings are said on the
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bus, because a finding in a file on the machine is what this exists to end; and the bus is the one path
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that cannot report its own failure, so an emit that does not land is written locally and nowhere else.
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## What this needs that the mesh does not have
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Named here rather than assumed, because each is a decision of its own and this record is not the place to
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make them:
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1. **A module that every machine has.** `ScopeNode` means *at most one holder per node* — an exclusivity
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rule, not an obligation — and nothing assigns a module at enrolment. Today the resolver, the packet
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filter, ssh and intrusion prevention are each assigned per machine by hand, which is the same gap
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wearing different clothes.
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2. **A container running a module's own bundle.** A `process` runs the mesh's own compiled code with no
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image; a `container` needs an image of the module's own, which means a Dockerfile — the thing the
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`bundle` artifact exists to abolish. Nothing in the catalogue runs a bundle in a container, so
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`connect-docker` has no shape yet.
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3. **A unit a package ships, for `connect-unit`.** The `service` resource puts an existing unit into a
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state and deliberately installs none, so this form needs a package that serves a port — and naming a
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program the machine may not have is
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[issue 136](../04-ISSUES/136-a-module-may-name-a-program-the-machine-does-not-have/00-report.md).
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4. **A machine's public domain in the roster fact.** The fact carries each machine's name, mesh name,
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address and operator account. The public names cannot be composed without the domain.
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5. **Something that installs the mesh's own root on a machine.** This is
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[issue 129](../04-ISSUES/129-nothing-makes-a-machine-trust-the-meshs-authority/00-report.md), open
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since before any of this. Until it is closed, every internal name will fail certificate verification
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from every machine — correctly, because nothing can verify it. That is the checker working, and it is
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worth saying in advance so the first run is not read as the checker being broken.
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## Consequences
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- **A failure names the machine and the hosting form.** That is the whole gain over a port: eleven hours
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became two runs under 0145, and under this it also becomes one line that says where to look.
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- **The checker surfaces issue 129 immediately**, and will report every internal name unverifiable until
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it is fixed. A reader must be told that before the first run rather than after.
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- **Five things must be built before this is what it says it is**, and until they are, what exists is a
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port dial from one position — useful, and not this.
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- **What got harder:** a module with three hosting forms of the same trivial service is a strange thing to
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read. It is justified only because those three forms are how the mesh actually runs software, and a
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checker that tested one of them would keep the class of outage it exists to catch.
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## How it is checked
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- **A name per hosting form answers from every machine**, asserted by name and not by port.
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- **A certificate that does not verify is reported as that**, distinctly from a name that does not resolve
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and a port that does not answer — three faults, three owners.
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- **A machine that joins is checked by every other machine without an edit**, asserted by adding one to a
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bed and looking at what the others dial on their next run.
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- **A machine that joins has the module**, which is gap 1 above and is the assertion that cannot be
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written yet.
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- **The measured outage is still caught**: the path from a container to a service on its own machine is
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closed and `connect-docker.<that node>.internal` fails from that machine while the others still pass.
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## References
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- [ADR 0145](0145-a-module-checks-what-the-mesh-claims-is-reachable.md) — superseded; its core stands
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- [ADR 0138](0138-an-assignment-binds-an-endpoint-and-says-how-far-it-reaches.md) — the two reaches these
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names come from
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- [ADR 0066](0066-public-routing-is-name-agnostic.md) — a label plus a domain, which is why no name is written
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- [issue 129](../04-ISSUES/129-nothing-makes-a-machine-trust-the-meshs-authority/00-report.md) — what the
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internal names will fail on until it is closed
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- [issue 145](../04-ISSUES/145-a-machine-reads-healthy-while-its-modules-cannot-reach-each-other/00-report.md)
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Block a user