---
status: located
opened: 2026-10-01
located-in: [mesh-controller cmd/mesh-controller/network.go (onTheNetwork resolves every machine unchecked and skips one that refuses, saying nothing)]
fixed-by:
amended-design: []
---

# 188 — A refusal inside "who is on the network" drops a machine silently, and every symptom points elsewhere

## What was observed

At 15:28Z on 2026-10-01 the controller rolled to a build that refuses a machine with two modules
answering one provision and no pin naming which (mesh-controller 195). The control node had two
issuers of `acme-ca`. From that moment every plan of the control node failed with *step-ca has a
content that says `${machine:at}`, and this machine says mesh-range or name*; `seats` listed every
seat as unheld; the build machine refused the builder's and the proxy's builds with *no clone base
for that seat — nothing holds it*; and the roll-out of the next controller was refused with the
`${machine:at}` words. Not one of those names the cause. It was found by running the previous image
as a one-shot beside the current one and reading the difference, forty minutes later.

## Why this is here

`onTheNetwork` decides which machines have an address by resolving each one, unchecked, and
*skipping* any whose resolution errs. A machine skipped there has no `at`, so its own plan fails on
the first placeholder that needs one, in another module's words; everything held on it reads as
unheld; everything built from it cannot be built. The design lets one refusal become four unrelated
symptoms and no sentence about the refusal itself. It is the same shape as
[issue 187](../187-the-mesh-tells-nobody-when-it-stops-working/00-report.md): a fault that is swallowed
where it happens and discovered where it hurts.

## What a fix needs

- A machine whose resolution refuses is said, by `onTheNetwork`'s caller or in `status`: *the
  control node does not resolve: more than one module provides acme-ca; pin one* — the resolver's
  own words, which exist and were dropped.
- A refusal that a release introduces for a machine already converged — a new rule the stored
  state does not meet — must not be silent at the roll either; the controller's prepare or first
  resolution after a roll should name every machine it now refuses.

*How this would be checked:* a controller test where one machine's unchecked resolution refuses:
`status` names the machine and the refusal, and the other machines keep their addresses.

## Resolved in the live mesh, 2026-10-01

The refusal itself was a fault of mesh-controller 195, already corrected on main by its author's
hotfix (196) when the control node was found refusing; the running controller was the one build in
between. Found by running the previous image and main's image as one-shots beside the running one
and reading which resolved. Resolved by pushing the control node from a one-shot of main's image, as
the recipe for a controller that cannot roll itself says. A pin naming the proxy's issuer
(`step-ca`, the one the previous plan had bound) was made first and kept; it changes nothing. The
design fault above stands and is fixed by mesh-controller PR `fix/a-machine-not-on-the-network-is-said`:
the dropped machine and the resolver's words are said where the drop happens.