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Author SHA1 Message Date
mesh-admin 75a8f6abc7 Merge pull request 'Issues 143 and 144: the found firewall is neither retired nor all of it' (#176) from issue/143-and-144-the-found-firewall into main 2026-09-28 23:36:10 +00:00
jschoubben 862253518f Issues 143 and 144: the found firewall is neither retired nor all of it
Both found by converging the control node — the first machine with a firewall to
flip, since the two before it had none.

143: the preview and the flip both say the found firewall is disabled. The node
reported converged, 372 resources applied, nothing failed, and ufw is still
enabled and active. A converged node's declaration carries no resource that would
disable it; the sentence is printed by the command and nothing implements it.

144: ufw was never what filtered the traffic that mattered there. Fifty forwarded
openings converged through it had matched zero packets, while a chain the
predecessor installed in the container runtime's pre-accept hook did the work —
in memory only, recreated by nothing. The mesh's filter now covers that path, so
the machine no longer depends on it, but the chain remains and is the only thing
refusing the bus and the registry, which the design requires reachable from
anywhere so a machine can enrol before it has a private address.
2026-09-29 01:36:08 +02:00
mesh-admin 51ef3eb7e2 Merge pull request 'ADR 0142: the mesh delivers its own components as binaries' (#175) from decision/0142-mesh-delivers-its-own-components into main 2026-09-28 22:51:44 +00:00
jschoubben 346e613995 ADR 0142: the mesh delivers its own components as binaries, not container images
Measured: the host is a binary somebody copied to four machines, owned by no
package and built by nothing, while the controller, catalogue, builder and vault
are container images publishing no ports at all. Same language, same project,
same kind of work, delivered two ways — and the difference is not a judgement
about either, it is that images are the only delivery that works.

What it costs: genesis must raise a container runtime before the control plane
can exist; updating the control plane goes through a registry the control plane
runs; a host change cannot be rolled out at all; and compiling the language the
mesh is written in is not a capability of the builder, so the controller is built
from a hand-written Dockerfile — the incantation the bundle toolchain exists to
abolish.

Third-party software stays a container: the store, the registry, the broker are
somebody else's build. The container runtime stays on the machine for modules.
What changes is that the control plane no longer needs it to exist.

The receiving half is already built and tested (ADR 0141). Staged: compile Go, an
artifact names its target, deliver a binary, the host first, then the rest, genesis
last.
2026-09-29 00:51:42 +02:00
mesh-admin 25ca9898d5 Merge pull request 'ADR 0141: a progressive insight on what delivery costs' (#174) from decision/0141-progressive-insight-on-delivery into main 2026-09-28 22:32:17 +00:00
jschoubben 709c095387 ADR 0141: a progressive insight — the delivery is not 'nothing new'
The record claimed a version reaches a machine as an ordinary archive with
nothing new needed. Two things it needs do not exist: no toolchain can compile
the host (the list is typescript and python, and the control plane, also Go, is
built as an image from a Dockerfile instead), and nothing interpolates a built
version into a resource path, so nothing can ask for .../versions/<version>/.

The decision, the options weighed and every consequence stand — the host half is
merged and tested. What was understated was the cost, so it is corrected in place
and dated rather than superseded.
2026-09-29 00:32:14 +02:00
mesh-admin c262de3833 Merge pull request 'ADR 0141: the host delivers its own successor' (#173) from decision/0141-the-host-delivers-its-own-successor into main 2026-09-28 22:22:28 +00:00
jschoubben a815433214 ADR 0141: the host delivers its own successor, and versions live side by side
The supervision was already right — a clean exit means the host stood aside and
the launcher runs what is on disk, failures are counted, and a rollback happens
at the limit. Two things made it dead code: nothing told the running host a
successor was waiting, and the rollback resolved its known-good version through
pacman, which no machine here uses and which two of three operating systems do
not have.

Keeping a version rather than a path was the clue. Versions live side by side in
directories named for them; the newest runs; the running one stands aside between
reconciles; a reconcile that completes records itself and retires what is older
than its predecessor; rollback starts that predecessor. No new resource kind and
nothing new on the bus — an archive already fetches by digest, and the path
written is never the path executing.

Answers issue 142.
2026-09-29 00:22:04 +02:00
mesh-admin 61dc90e508 Merge pull request 'Issue 142: the host is the one thing the mesh does not deliver' (#172) from issue/142-the-host-is-not-delivered into main 2026-09-28 22:03:58 +00:00
9 changed files with 551 additions and 5 deletions
@@ -0,0 +1,154 @@
---
topic: what runs on it
status: accepted
date: 2026-09-29
deciders: jochen
reconstructed: false
extends: 02-DECISIONS/0005-the-node-host.md
---
# 141. The host delivers its own successor, and versions live side by side
## Context
[Issue 142](../04-ISSUES/142-the-host-is-the-one-thing-the-mesh-does-not-deliver/00-report.md). A
merge builds every changed module and the control plane — which is itself a module — and the result
reaches the machines running it with nobody asking. The host is the exception: it is not a build
target, no declaration delivers it, and every machine in this mesh runs a byte-identical binary that
somebody built on a workstation and copied out.
The half that *recovers* from a bad host exists. `internal/upgrade` can tell that the executable this
process started from was replaced on disk, and it records which version last completed a reconcile.
The launcher counts consecutive failed starts, calls a rollback at the limit, and treats a clean exit
as the host standing aside so that the next loop runs whatever is on disk now. That supervision is
complete and correct.
Two things make it dead code:
- **`Replaced()` is called by nothing but its own tests.** Nothing tells the running host that a
successor is waiting.
- **The rollback resolves a version through the machine's package manager** — `pacman -U` from the
package cache. No machine here has the host installed as a package, so the recovery cannot run on
any of them; and being written in one package manager's terms, it cannot run on two of the three
operating systems the host is built for — [ADR 0005](0005-the-node-host.md) builds one binary per
operating system, pinned at link time.
**The record already points at the answer.** What is kept is a *version*, not a path. Keeping a
version is only useful to something that can choose between versions present on the machine, which is
what the package manager was being asked to do. The versions can simply be on disk.
## Considered Options
1. **Deliver the host as a package, as the rollback assumes.** Rejected: it needs a package built and
a repository trusted per operating system, three of each, and the existing `package` resource
asserts presence and deliberately never a version — "version is the package manager's business and
the mesh does not hold a second opinion about it" — so it cannot ask for a particular host anyway.
Heaviest of the three and the only one that is different on every machine.
2. **Write the new binary over the running one.** Rejected on a fact: a running executable cannot be
truncated, and `archive` opens what it unpacks with `O_TRUNC`. It could be made to write and
rename, which is better hygiene and worth doing for its own sake, but it buys nothing here that
option 3 does not, and it leaves rollback with nowhere to go back to.
3. **Versions side by side; the newest retires the old.** Adopted.
## Decision
**A host version is delivered as an archive into a directory named for it, and never over a running
one.** The declaration names it like any other archive — fetched by digest, the digest checked before
anything is unpacked. Nothing new travels, no new resource kind, and no change to how archives are
applied, because the path being written is not the path being executed.
**The launcher starts the most recently delivered version.** That is what "the newest" means: the
version whose directory arrived last. It reads no pointer and follows no link — the mesh creates no
links ([ADR 0012](0012-the-mesh-creates-no-symlinks.md)) — and the version is in the path, so nothing
has to be told what is running.
**The running host stands aside for a successor, and only between reconciles.** Finding a newer
version delivered, it finishes the reconcile it is in and exits cleanly. The launcher already reads a
clean exit as exactly this and starts what is on disk now. A host that stood aside mid-apply is the
half-configured machine this project exists to prevent, so the check happens at the boundary and
nowhere else.
**A version that completes a reconcile records itself, and retires what came before it.** The
known-good record is written as it is today. Then versions older than the one before the running one
are removed: the running version and its predecessor are kept, which is exactly what a rollback
needs, and nothing else accumulates.
**Rollback starts the previous version instead of reinstalling a package.** At the failure limit the
launcher pins the known-good version and starts that, once. The second failure is still a different
diagnosis — the previously working version does not run either, so it is the machine and not the
binary — and the halt is unchanged. No package manager, no package cache, and the same script on every
operating system.
**A machine says which host version it is running,** on the report it already sends, beside the other
facts it states about itself. Without it nothing can say a machine is behind, so "every machine
current with its source" cannot include the host.
## Progressive insight — 2026-09-29, the same day
**The delivery is not "nothing new", and this record said it was.** The decision above stands and is
built: versions side by side, the newest runs, the running host stands aside between reconciles, a
completed reconcile retires what is older than the predecessor, rollback picks a directory. What was
wrong was a claim about how a version reaches a machine. The paragraph on delivery said the
declaration "names it like any other archive… nothing new travels, no new resource kind"; the second
half is true and the first is not, because two things the delivery needs do not exist:
- **Nothing can compile it.** A `bundle` artifact is compiled by a closed list of toolchains —
typescript and python — whose own comment says adding a language is a decision, because a language
used by *modules* needs an SDK carrying the broker client, the event envelope and tool serving. The
host uses none of that: it is what applies modules, not one of them. So the obligation that list
warns about attaches to a module written in a language, not to the language being buildable, and
the control plane — also written in Go — is built as an image from a Dockerfile rather than through
a toolchain at all.
- **A version cannot reach the path.** An `archive` resource names a fixed path in the manifest, and
nothing interpolates the built version into it, so nothing can ask for
`…/versions/<version>/`.
Neither changes what was decided, which options were weighed, or any consequence: the shape is
unaffected and the host half is merged and tested. What it changes is the cost, which this record
understated as none. The remaining work is a way to build the host and a way to name a version in a
path, and until both exist nothing delivers a version and every machine takes the fallback — which is
what every machine does today.
## Consequences
- **The host becomes a build target and a module** — a module whose resource is the next host, applied
by the host that is running. The bootstrap is not circular because the two are different versions in
different directories.
- **Rollback becomes usable on every machine**, having been usable on none. It also stops being
written in one operating system's terms.
- **One copy by hand remains, once.** The first host that understands versioned directories cannot be
fetched by a host that does not. That copy is the last, and it is the honest cost of the change
rather than a step in the design.
- **Two versions occupy disk instead of one.** About nine megabytes. The predecessor is the price of a
rollback that does not depend on a cache somebody else may clean.
- **What got harder:** a host must now be able to find its own successor and to judge when it is safe
to stand aside. Both are between reconciles, which is the only moment the host is not mid-change.
- **A machine that is never told a newer version keeps running what it has**, indefinitely and
visibly, because its report says which version that is.
## How it is checked
- **A delivered version is run, and the old one is not.** A bed delivers a second version to a machine
running the first; the host exits between reconciles, the launcher starts the new one, and the
machine reports the new version. This fails against the previous behaviour, where nothing notices a
delivered version at all.
- **It stands aside between reconciles and never inside one.** Asserted by delivering a version while
an apply is in flight: the apply completes, and the exit follows it.
- **A version that will not start is rolled back to its predecessor, once**, and the second failure
halts with the machine named rather than the binary — asserted with no package manager involved.
- **A completed reconcile retires what is older than the predecessor**, and never the predecessor
itself, because that is what a rollback needs. Asserted on the directory afterwards.
- **The report names the running version**, asserted end to end rather than on the function that reads
it, since the point is that the control plane can tell a machine is behind.
- **The launcher picks the newest delivered version** with no pointer file and no link, asserted by
delivering two and checking which runs.
## References
- [ADR 0005](0005-the-node-host.md) — the host, and what its supervision is for
- [ADR 0010](0010-delivery.md) — a declaration is owned resources; this adds no kind to it
- [ADR 0012](0012-the-mesh-creates-no-symlinks.md) — why the version is in the path
- [ADR 0005](0005-the-node-host.md), *it is built per operating system* — why a rollback written in
one package manager's terms was wrong for two of three
- [issue 142](../04-ISSUES/142-the-host-is-the-one-thing-the-mesh-does-not-deliver/00-report.md) — the
measurement
@@ -0,0 +1,158 @@
---
topic: the mesh
status: accepted
date: 2026-09-29
deciders: jochen
reconstructed: false
extends: 02-DECISIONS/0141-the-host-delivers-its-own-successor.md
---
# 142. The mesh delivers its own components as binaries, not as container images
## Context
Measured on the control-node, 2026-09-29:
| what | how it runs | publishes |
|---|---|---|
| host | a binary on the machine | — |
| controller, catalogue, builder, vault | containers | nothing |
| store, registry, broker | containers | ports |
**The mesh's own software is delivered two ways, and the difference is not a property of the
software.** The host and the controller are both written in the same language, both the mesh's own,
both doing the mesh's own work. One is an image fetched from a registry. The other is a file somebody
copied to four machines, owned by no package, built by nothing
([issue 142](../04-ISSUES/142-the-host-is-the-one-thing-the-mesh-does-not-deliver/00-report.md)).
**The reason is not a judgement about either, it is that images are the only delivery that works.**
There is no way to put a binary on a machine. The host is hand-copied because of that, and the
controller is an image because of that. Neither was chosen on its merits.
What it costs, all of it measured rather than argued:
- **Genesis must raise a container runtime before the control plane can exist.** The bundle carries
three images and one of them is the controller, *"in the bundle for the same reason they are: there
is nothing to fetch it with yet"*
([design 07](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/07-the-foundation.md)). So the hardest moment in the mesh's life
has a prerequisite that the thing being started does not need.
- **Updating the control plane depends on the control plane.** Its image is fetched from the registry,
which is a container the controller manages.
- **A change to the host cannot be rolled out at all.** Every machine here runs a byte-identical
hand-copied binary. A change merged yesterday reached none of them.
- **Compiling the language the mesh is written in is not a capability of the builder.** The bundle
toolchains are typescript — real, with a registered base module — and python, which is named in the
list and absent from the catalogue. The controller is built as an image from a Dockerfile, which is
the per-repository incantation the bundle toolchain exists to abolish
([design 18](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/18-building-a-module.md)).
The half that *receives* a binary safely is already built and tested
([ADR 0141](0141-the-host-delivers-its-own-successor.md)): versions side by side in directories named
for them, the newest run, the running one standing aside between reconciles, retirement keeping the
predecessor, and a rollback that chooses a directory. What is missing is everything that puts one
there.
## Considered Options
1. **Leave it as it is.** Rejected: it is not a design, it is the reach of one mechanism. And it is
what makes a host change undeliverable.
2. **Containerise the host too**, so everything is delivered one way. Rejected: the host is what
starts the container runtime and what applies containers. A host in a container is the bootstrap
problem made total, and the machine would have no way back from a bad one.
3. **Deliver the mesh's components as operating-system packages.** Rejected for the reason
[ADR 0141](0141-the-host-delivers-its-own-successor.md) rejected it for the host: a package and a
trusted repository per operating system, three of each, and the `package` resource asserts presence
and deliberately never a version.
4. **Binaries for the mesh's own components, containers for third-party software.** Adopted.
## Decision
**The mesh's own components are delivered as binaries on the machine.** The host, the controller, the
catalogue, the builder, the vault — the software this project writes. They are delivered by the
mechanism [ADR 0141](0141-the-host-delivers-its-own-successor.md) built: an archive, fetched by
digest, unpacked into a directory named for its version, with the running one standing aside between
reconciles and a rollback that chooses the predecessor.
**Third-party software stays a container.** The store, the registry, the broker. They are somebody
else's build, they are already adopted as modules
([ADR 0078](0078-the-store-and-broker-are-modules.md)), and an image is the right way to carry
somebody else's software. **The container runtime remains required** — modules use it — so this
removes a dependency from the control plane, not from the machine.
**The builder compiles the languages the mesh is written in.** A toolchain for Go, with a base module
providing the compiler, exactly as typescript has. The obligation the toolchain list warns about — an
SDK carrying the broker client, the envelope and tool serving — attaches to a *module* written in a
language, not to the language being compilable. None of these components is a module in that sense;
the host is what applies modules.
**An artifact says what it targets.** A compiled binary is per operating system, pinned at link time
([ADR 0005](0005-the-node-host.md)), and a toolchain deliberately takes nothing from the module,
because anything a module could override there it would be writing a Dockerfile to override. So the
target is a property of the artifact rather than of the recipe, and one artifact declared per target
is one build each.
**A component's version comes from where it sits, not from its linker.** It is unpacked into a
directory named for its version, so it can read its own version from its path. The stamp goes, and
with it the need for a build to know what it will be called.
**Genesis carries a binary reference where it carried an image reference.** The principle does not
change — the bundle names a thing by digest and the host fetches it, pinned because nothing can
resolve a version when no mesh exists — and the container runtime stops being a prerequisite for the
control plane. It stays a prerequisite for the store and the broker, which is where it belongs.
**The order is staged, and each step stands alone.** Compiling Go; an artifact naming its target;
delivering a binary; the host as the first component delivered; the controller, catalogue, builder and
vault out of their containers; genesis last. Genesis is last for the reason it is always last: it
matters for a machine nobody has yet, and every earlier step is provable on a mesh that exists.
## Consequences
- **One delivery for the mesh's own software**, so a change to the host ships the way a change to the
controller does, and neither is copied by hand.
- **The control plane stops depending on a container runtime and on its own registry.** Both remain on
the machine for other reasons; neither gates the control plane's own life any more.
- **`Replaced()`, the known-good record and the launcher's rollback stop being dead code.** They were
written for this and have been called by nothing but their tests.
- **Four more components gain a rollback they do not have.** Today a bad controller image is recovered
by an operator; under this it is recovered the way a bad host is.
- **Two versions of each component occupy disk.** Around nine megabytes each. The predecessor is what a
rollback needs.
- **Genesis gets smaller, not larger.** One fewer image to carry and one fewer runtime to raise before
the control plane.
- **This does not make the components smaller or simpler.** They are the same programs; what changes is
how they arrive. A reader expecting the containers to have been hiding complexity will not find any.
- **What got harder:** the builder gains a language, artifacts gain a target, and the mesh gains a
second kind of thing it must deliver correctly — one where getting it wrong takes the control plane
down rather than a module. That is why the host is first: it is the component whose recovery is
already built and tested.
## How it is checked
- **A component is delivered and runs, with nothing copied by hand.** A bed builds the host from its
repository, delivers it to a machine running an older one, and the machine reports the new version.
This fails today at the first step, because nothing builds it.
- **Each target is built once and only the matching one is delivered.** Asserted by declaring an
artifact per operating system and checking that a machine is offered the one it can run — a host
built for another is what ADR 0005's link-time pin exists to refuse.
- **A component reads its version from its path**, asserted by unpacking the same bytes into two
differently named directories and seeing each report its own.
- **A bad component is rolled back without an operator**, for the host first: a version that will not
start is replaced by its predecessor once, and the second failure halts naming the machine.
- **The control plane comes up with no registry reachable**, which is the dependency this removes —
asserted by raising it with the registry stopped.
- **Genesis raises a control plane with no container runtime running**, and raises the store and the
broker afterwards. Last, and on a machine with nothing on it.
- **A published port count that does not change.** The mesh's own components publish nothing today, so
moving them out of containers must not open anything — asserted on the machine's reachable set before
and after, which the converge preview already reads.
## References
- [ADR 0141](0141-the-host-delivers-its-own-successor.md) — the receiving half, already built
- [ADR 0005](0005-the-node-host.md) — the host, its supervision, and one binary per operating system
- [ADR 0078](0078-the-store-and-broker-are-modules.md) — why third-party software stays a container
- [ADR 0006](0006-the-substrate-and-the-control-plane.md) — what genesis must raise, and in what order
- [issue 142](../04-ISSUES/142-the-host-is-the-one-thing-the-mesh-does-not-deliver/00-report.md) — the
measurement that started this
- [design 07](../03-DESIGN/01-to-be/07-the-foundation.md) — the bundle's three images, one of them the
controller
+2
View File
@@ -142,6 +142,7 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py fail if stale
- **0131** — [Everything on the mesh speaks to the broker seat, and AMQP is not a provision](0131-everything-on-the-mesh-speaks-to-the-broker-seat.md)
- **0132** — [A seat carries the tools its holder must serve](0132-a-seat-carries-the-tools-its-holder-must-serve.md)
- **0134** — [The mesh says what it applied](0134-the-mesh-says-what-it-applied.md)
- **0142** — [The mesh delivers its own components as binaries, not as container images](0142-the-mesh-delivers-its-own-components-as-binaries.md)
### Its tiers, from the bottom up
@@ -221,6 +222,7 @@ python3 00-META/checks/index.py fail if stale
- **0138** — [An assignment binds an endpoint and says how far it reaches](0138-an-assignment-binds-an-endpoint-and-says-how-far-it-reaches.md)
- **0139** — [A network is forwarded because a module declared it](0139-a-network-is-forwarded-because-a-module-declared-it.md) *(superseded)*
- **0140** — [The filter constrains what arrives from outside, and says nothing about a machine's own guests](0140-the-filter-constrains-what-arrives-from-outside.md)
- **0141** — [The host delivers its own successor, and versions live side by side](0141-the-host-delivers-its-own-successor.md)
### How it is built
+44 -1
View File
@@ -2,8 +2,9 @@
layer: to-be
status: in-progress
code: [mesh-host]
updated: 2026-09-22
updated: 2026-09-29
decisions:
- 02-DECISIONS/0141-the-host-delivers-its-own-successor.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0100-a-node-in-use-is-adopted-before-it-is-converged.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0102-the-mesh-writes-into-a-shared-file-never-over-it.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0103-what-an-adopted-node-holds-and-what-its-guard-refuses.md
@@ -423,3 +424,45 @@ ignored an instruction and "applied" would be a lie. Applying stays one at a tim
is not. **Checked** by the link's unit tests on the drain, and by the genesis bed's settle wait,
which counts on a node catching up to the newest declaration rather than the oldest.
## The host delivers its own successor
*2026-09-29, from a change to the host that could reach no machine —
[issue 142](../../04-ISSUES/142-the-host-is-the-one-thing-the-mesh-does-not-deliver/00-report.md),
settled by [ADR 0141](../../02-DECISIONS/0141-the-host-delivers-its-own-successor.md).*
A merge builds every changed module and the control plane, and the result reaches the machines running
it with nobody asking. The host was the exception: not a build target, named by no declaration, and
identical on every machine because somebody had copied it there.
The supervision needed for this was already right. A clean exit from the host means it has stood aside,
and the launcher's next turn runs whatever is on disk. Consecutive failed starts are counted, a
rollback happens at the limit, and a second failure halts with the machine named rather than the binary.
What was missing was smaller than it looked: nothing told the running host a successor was waiting, and
the rollback resolved its known-good *version* through one operating system's package manager, which no
machine here used.
Keeping a version rather than a path was the clue. That is only useful to something that can choose
between versions present on the machine — so the versions live side by side:
- **A version arrives as an archive, in a directory named for it.** The ordinary resource, fetched by
digest and checked before anything is unpacked. The path written is never the path being executed, so
replacing a running binary — which the kernel refuses — never comes up.
- **The launcher starts the most recently delivered version**, reading no pointer and following no
link, because the version is in the path.
- **The running host stands aside between reconciles and never inside one.** Standing aside mid-apply is
the half-configured machine this document exists to prevent.
- **A version that completes a reconcile records itself and retires what is older than its
predecessor.** The predecessor stays, because that is what a rollback needs.
- **Rollback starts that predecessor** instead of reinstalling a package: no package manager, no cache
somebody else may clean, and the same script on every operating system.
- **A machine says which host version it runs**, on the report it already sends, so being behind is
answerable at all.
One copy by hand remains, once: the first host that understands versioned directories cannot be fetched
by a host that does not.
*How it is checked* is stated with the decision — a second version delivered to a running machine is
run and reported; the exit follows an in-flight apply rather than interrupting it; a version that will
not start is rolled back once and the second failure halts; a completed reconcile retires what is older
than the predecessor and never the predecessor; and the newest of two delivered versions is the one
that runs.
+23 -2
View File
@@ -11,8 +11,9 @@ code:
- mesh-catalog modules/postgres
- mesh-catalog modules/lavinmq
- mesh-lab test/integration/mesh.test.ts (a bare machine becomes a mesh)
updated: 2026-09-22
updated: 2026-09-29
decisions:
- 02-DECISIONS/0142-the-mesh-delivers-its-own-components-as-binaries.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0100-a-node-in-use-is-adopted-before-it-is-converged.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0088-the-foundation-filters-before-anything-listens.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0004-a-node-and-how-it-joins.md
@@ -314,4 +315,24 @@ of a database and pushed to over the broker. What arrived and what did not is th
**One fault, and it was in the joining.** The token did not say what the mesh calls the machine,
so enrolment needed a flag its own help said it did not — and failed at the broker with an empty
username. Recorded in ADR 0004 as the fifth thing a token carries.
username. Recorded in ADR 0004 as the fifth thing a token carries.
## The mesh's own components arrive as binaries
*2026-09-29 —
[ADR 0142](../../02-DECISIONS/0142-the-mesh-delivers-its-own-components-as-binaries.md).*
The bundle carries three images and one of them is the controller, *because there is nothing to fetch
it with yet*. That reasoning holds and its conclusion changes: the controller is carried as a **binary**
reference rather than an image reference, pinned by digest exactly as before. Nothing about the bundle's
shape moves — it names a thing and the host fetches it — and the container runtime stops being something
genesis must raise before the control plane can exist. It still raises one, for the store and the broker,
which is where somebody else's software belongs.
The mesh's own components — the host, the controller, the catalogue, the builder, the vault — are
delivered as binaries into directories named for their versions, by the mechanism
[ADR 0141](../../02-DECISIONS/0141-the-host-delivers-its-own-successor.md) describes. Third-party
software stays a container. The split is not about isolation; it is about who built the thing.
Measured before deciding it: the mesh's own components publish no ports at all, so this opens nothing.
Only the store, the registry and the broker publish, and they are staying as they are.
+26 -1
View File
@@ -5,8 +5,9 @@ code:
- mesh-controller cmd/mesh-builder
- mesh-controller internal/builder
- mesh-catalog modules/builder
updated: 2026-09-25
updated: 2026-09-29
decisions:
- 02-DECISIONS/0142-the-mesh-delivers-its-own-components-as-binaries.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0111-a-build-source-is-on-the-git-seat-or-external.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0097-a-vendor-image-is-a-declared-build-input.md
- 02-DECISIONS/0096-an-upstream-image-is-copied-between-registries.md
@@ -263,3 +264,27 @@ ships one and wrong for code the mesh built, which has no unit until the mesh wr
**Tools, hooks and consumers are not further modes**, which is the test of whether three is the
right number: they are loaded by a tool host, and a tool host is a process that stays up.
## The builder compiles the languages the mesh is written in
*2026-09-29 —
[ADR 0142](../../02-DECISIONS/0142-the-mesh-delivers-its-own-components-as-binaries.md).*
The toolchain list was typescript and python, and only typescript had a base module in the catalogue.
Meanwhile the control plane — written in the language this project is mostly written in — was built as
an image from a hand-written Dockerfile, which is the per-repository incantation this whole mechanism
exists to abolish.
So the list gains Go, with a base module providing the compiler exactly as typescript has one. The
obligation the list's own comment warns about — an SDK carrying the broker client, the event envelope
and tool serving — attaches to a **module** written in a language, not to the language being
compilable. The mesh's own components are not modules in that sense; the host is what applies modules.
**And an artifact says what it targets.** A compiled binary is per operating system, pinned at link
time, and a toolchain deliberately accepts nothing from the module — anything a module could override
there it would be writing a Dockerfile to override. The target is therefore a property of the artifact,
not of the recipe: one artifact declared per target, one build each.
A component's version stops being stamped in at link time. It is unpacked into a directory named for
its version, so it reads its version from its own path, and a build no longer has to know what it will
be called.
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ located-in:
- mesh-host cmd/mesh-host
- mesh-controller (no build source for the host; no resource delivers it)
fixed-by:
amended-design:
amended-design: 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/05-the-node-host.md
---
# 142 — The host is the one thing the mesh does not deliver
@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
---
status: located
opened: 2026-09-29
located-in:
- mesh-controller internal/catalogue (a converged node's declaration)
- mesh-host internal/apply/opening.go
fixed-by:
amended-design:
---
# 143 — Converging a machine does not retire the firewall it found, and says it does
## What was observed
The control-node was converged on 2026-09-29, the first machine with a found firewall to be flipped —
the two converged before it had none.
The preview said, and the flip repeated:
```
the found firewall (ufw) is disabled, never flushed: its configuration stays on disk
...
sent: the host loads the mesh's filter and disables the firewall it found
```
The mesh then reported the node `converged`, 372 resources applied, nothing failed. Afterwards, on the
machine:
```
systemctl is-enabled ufw -> enabled
systemctl is-active ufw -> active
```
And the declaration that was sent carries no resource that would disable it. A converged node's
declaration has no adoption block at all, and nothing in its 372 resources names the found firewall.
The sentence is printed by the command; no resource implements it.
## Why it matters beyond this instance
**It is a stated behaviour that does not happen, reported as success** — the fault this repository
exists to catch, and
[ADR 0100](../../02-DECISIONS/0100-a-node-in-use-is-adopted-before-it-is-converged.md) states it as
part of what the flip *is*: "loads the mesh's derived filter in place of its refusal-only table, and
retires the found firewall by disabling it, never by flushing".
**It could only be found on the first machine that had one.** The two machines converged before this
had no firewall to retire, so the step had never run, and nothing reported that it had not. That is
the same shape as [issue 136](../136-a-module-may-name-a-program-the-machine-does-not-have/00-report.md):
a step that is silent when it does nothing.
**The machine is left doubly filtered, which is not what either firewall describes.** Every base chain
at a hook runs and a drop in any is final, so the machine now enforces the *intersection* of the mesh's
derived filter and a rule set left by the system being replaced. Nothing is broken by that today —
measured from outside, mail, the proxy and git-over-ssh answer and the databases and admin interfaces
are refused — but the machine's behaviour is described by neither of the two things claiming to
describe it, and the stale set includes a rule for a broker that no longer exists.
**And returning the node to adopted would be wrong in the other direction.** ADR 0100 says that
restores the found firewall by enabling it again; enabling something that was never disabled is
harmless, but the mesh's belief about which firewall is in force has been wrong in both modes.
## Open questions
- Which side owns retiring it — a resource in the declaration, so it is applied and reported like
everything else, or the flip as an act? A resource seems right: the flip is otherwise entirely
expressed as one, and an act that only the command performs cannot be re-checked on a later
reconcile.
- What should a reconcile do if the found firewall is enabled again by hand, or by a package update?
Convergence is a state, so presumably re-disable it and say so.
- Should the preview say what it *will* do rather than what it does, until a step exists that does it?
The wording was read as evidence twice in one session.
- Is there a check that a sentence the mesh prints corresponds to a resource it sends? This is the
second time today that a printed claim and a sent declaration disagreed.
@@ -0,0 +1,70 @@
---
status: located
opened: 2026-09-29
located-in:
- mesh-host internal/apply/opening.go
- mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller (the converge preview)
fixed-by:
amended-design:
---
# 144 — A predecessor's rules outlive the firewall the mesh found, and the mesh cannot see them
## What was observed
The mesh reports one thing about a machine's existing filtering: `firewall found: ufw`. On the
control-node, ufw was never what filtered the traffic that mattered.
Measured on 2026-09-29, before the machine was converged:
- ufw filters connections *to the machine*. It does not filter connections to a container's published
port, which arrive on the forwarded path where the container runtime accepts them before ufw's
forward chains are reached. Around thirty ports were published that way.
- Every one of the mesh's own forwarded openings, converged through ufw, had matched **zero packets** —
fifty rules in that chain, none ever matched, while the chain itself had passed 1.6 million
established packets. The restrictions read as applied and were inert.
- What actually kept those ports off the internet was a chain the predecessor installed in the
container runtime's own pre-accept hook, allowing the deliberately public ports and the private
ranges and dropping the rest on the outward link. Confirmed from outside: the proxy answered, the
container manager did not.
- That chain exists only in the running kernel. The persisted rule file is the distribution's empty
default, and nothing on disk recreates the chain.
After the flip, the mesh's own filter is loaded and does cover the forwarded path, so the machine no
longer depends on that chain. But **the chain is still there**, and it is now the only thing refusing
two ports the mesh believes are open: the bus and the registry, which
[ADR 0100](../../02-DECISIONS/0100-a-node-in-use-is-adopted-before-it-is-converged.md) requires be
reachable from anywhere so a machine can enrol and pull before it has a private-network address. The
mesh's rendered filter accepts both from anywhere. From outside, both are refused.
## Why it matters beyond this instance
**"The firewall found" is a kind, and filtering is not all in one place.** The host identifies one
front-end and reports it. A machine can carry rules from several sources — the front-end's own, the
container runtime's, an intrusion-prevention chain, and whatever a predecessor installed directly —
and the mesh's account of what filters the machine names exactly one of them.
**So adoption's central promise was half-true in both directions.** What the mesh converged through
the found firewall on the forwarded path did nothing at all, and what did the work was invisible to it.
A machine was reported as filtered by a mechanism that was not filtering.
**And convergence cannot retire what it cannot see.** Even once
[issue 143](../143-converging-does-not-retire-the-firewall-it-found/00-report.md) is fixed and the found
firewall is disabled, this chain remains, silently narrowing the machine below what the mesh's own
filter says. A rule the mesh did not write, cannot list, and will not remove — which today breaks the
enrolment path the design guarantees.
**The safe direction is not the same as the correct one.** Being more closed than intended broke nothing
visible, which is exactly why it went unnoticed for as long as the mesh has been on this machine.
## Open questions
- Should the host report every place the machine filters from, rather than one kind — the front-end,
the runtime's hooks, and any chain it does not recognise, named so a person can look?
- What should the mesh do about rules it did not write and does not understand? Reporting them seems
right; removing them cannot be, and leaving them silent is what produced this.
- Does an opening converged through a found firewall need a check that it can actually take effect?
Fifty rules matching nothing would have been visible from the counters at any point.
- Is the bus and the registry being reachable from anywhere still what the mesh wants on a machine that
faces the internet? The design says yes, for enrolment. It deserves asking on its own rather than
being answered by a leftover.