2026-09-30 08:36:48 +00:00
2 changed files with 110 additions and 0 deletions
@@ -62,6 +62,24 @@ you it works.
  today and nothing will be until a machine differs — which is exactly how long a field like this stays
  invisible.

+## The machine already says what it is
+
+Found while filing [issue 160](../160-a-machine-says-little-about-itself-and-only-when-asked/00-report.md):
+every machine reports its architecture and kernel in the same profile that carries its capabilities, and
+the mesh keeps them.
+
+```
+ ace    | amd64 | linux
+ g14    | amd64 | linux
+ novox  | amd64 | linux
+ shanks | amd64 | linux
+```
+
+Nothing in the control plane reads either, and `node show` prints the capabilities beside them without
+printing them. **So a fix does not need a new fact from the machine** — matching an artifact's declared
+system against what a machine reported is possible today, and the missing piece is only the comparison
+and a compiler told what to target.
+
 ## Where to look

 The compile invocation is assembled in `mesh-controller internal/builder`, and for Go it would need
@@ -0,0 +1,92 @@
+---
+status: open
+opened: 2026-09-30
+located-in:
+  - mesh-host internal/profile (what a machine collects about itself)
+  - mesh-controller internal/inventory (what the mesh keeps of it)
+  - mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller (node show, which displays a part of it)
+fixed-by:
+amended-design:
+---
+
+# 160 — A machine says little about itself, and only when the mesh asks it something
+
+*Filed as a to-do rather than a fault: nothing is broken by it today. `open` is the status this
+repository has for "written down, nobody has started" — there is no `todo`.*
+
+## What is wanted
+
+**When a machine joins, the mesh should collect as much as it reasonably can about it**, and refresh
+that daily or thereabouts. It already asks what the machine *can do*; what it is made of is the same
+question one level down, and the mesh has no habit of asking it.
+
+## What is already collected, which is more than it looks
+
+A machine reports, and the mesh keeps:
+
+| | |
+|---|---|
+| eight capabilities | container-runtime, firewall, graphical-session, overlay, package-manager, privileged, seat, service-manager — each with a version or a reason it is absent |
+| **its architecture and kernel** | in the same profile, beside the capabilities |
+| which links face outside it | read from its own routing table on every apply |
+| the version of the host running on it | added 2026-09-30 |
+| what it found and is holding | on an adopted machine |
+| what is reachable on it | every listening socket and published port, on an adopted machine |
+| the firewall it was found with, and the tunnel it carried | on an adopted machine |
+
+**The architecture and the kernel are already there and nothing reads them.** Measured on the mesh:
+
+```
+ ace    | amd64 | linux
+ g14    | amd64 | linux
+ novox  | amd64 | linux
+ shanks | amd64 | linux
+```
+
+`node show` prints the capabilities and not these two. No code in the control plane reads either.
+
+## What is missing
+
+**The facts.** Nothing is collected about memory, disk, the processor beyond its architecture, the
+distribution and its version, whether the machine is virtual or physical, its uptime, its timezone, how
+many cores it has. Several of those are what somebody actually wants when deciding where a module
+should go, and the comment on module placement already imagines them: *"`seat: card1-DP-1`, an
+architecture, an amount of memory"*.
+
+**The refresh.** A machine publishes what it knows about itself **after an apply**, and the five-minute
+reconcile publishes nothing. So the mesh's picture of a machine is as old as the last time it sent that
+machine something — found the same day while checking host versions, where three machines read as
+having said nothing until each was pushed
+([issue 087](../087-the-controller-cannot-tell-a-host-is-too-old/01-resolution.md)). A daily refresh is
+the same missing mechanism: a machine saying something on its own schedule rather than only when spoken
+to.
+
+**Somewhere to read it.** Whatever is collected has to be visible, or it joins the architecture in
+being true and unread.
+
+## The pattern this is the third instance of
+
+Three times in one day the mesh was found to be collecting something and reading it nowhere:
+
+- what an adopted machine holds — reported since the adoption work, and no surface counted it until
+  [issue 125](../125-a-hold-is-not-a-line-in-the-apply-report/01-resolution.md);
+- the host version — reported for a week, and the control plane's own copy of the report did not have
+  the field ([issue 087](../087-the-controller-cannot-tell-a-host-is-too-old/00-report.md));
+- the architecture and kernel — collected, stored, read by nothing, found today by being asked whether
+  the host is built for more than one processor
+  ([issue 159](../159-an-artifacts-system-is-checked-and-then-ignored/00-report.md)).
+
+**Collecting is the easy half and it is the half that gets done.** Whatever this issue adds should say,
+in the same breath, which surface shows it — or it will be the fourth.
+
+## Why it is not urgent
+
+Every machine in this mesh is `amd64` and every one reports so. One architecture is enough for now, and
+that is a decision rather than an oversight: a second processor is a second build of every component,
+and nothing needs one.
+
+## How a fix is checked
+
+A machine's own account of itself is visible in one place; it names at least what is listed as missing
+above; the newest of it is no older than a day on a machine nobody has pushed to; and a machine that
+cannot determine one of them says so rather than reporting a zero.