step-ca's root certificate, its key and that key's password were own secrets — random
bytes the mesh minted, which no certificate is (novox/hq 04-ISSUES/076). The mesh
mints only the CA password now; step-ca makes its root at first start and serves it
at /roots.pem, which the manifest now names beside the ACME directory. The route
proxy fetches that root over the mesh network in a run-once step before it starts,
instead of being handed a served fact that could only be written before anything ran
(ADR 0098).
gitea, umami, influxdb, icecast and mailu require a secret and keep each of theirs
under a local name (novox/hq ADR 0094); the broker account stays their own. The
route proxy's recipe starts FROM the bases its manifest declares (ADR 0097).
One name per thing, per the HQ glossary: the module/container/image/binary/repo
becomes mesh-controller, the seat the-controller, and the store+broker pair the
foundation (embedded base bundles, default template and example lock renamed with
their go:embed directives). No behaviour change — a pure vocabulary rename.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01D6qtiYU3P9jk3pnAXyAFyx
An identity is `mesh_<node>_<slug-or-name>` and a backend keeps 20 characters
(an S3 access key). Overflow makes a module unresolvable, and this catalogue
was finding it one module at a time, on a raise: route-proxy on novox is 22,
home-assistant on ace is 23. Two found by hand where a sweep would have found
eighteen.
So the whole catalogue was swept instead, against the longest node name the
mesh actually has (`shanks`, six characters) rather than against the node each
module happens to sit on today — a module is assigned somewhere, and where is
not a property of the manifest. That leaves eight characters for the identity
source, and eighteen modules were over it.
Slugs added, chosen to stay greppable in a provider's user list:
anthropic-consumer claude openai-consumer openai
anthropic-manager anthmgr portainer portain
audit-logger audit public-acme pubacme
bookshelf books qbittorrent qbt
cloudflare-dns cfdns resolv-conf resolv
confluence confl resolved-split-dns splitdns
home-assistant hass route-proxy rproxy
invoicing invoice verdaccio verdacc
mosquitto mosq
nextcloud ncloud
A slug changes the login the mesh mints, so a module already provisioned under
its full name is re-minted under the slug and its old login withdrawn — which
is the provisioner's ordinary business, but it is a change, not a no-op.
Checked with the real parser: every one of the 66 manifests through
`catalogue.ParseManifest`, and every module's `CheckIdentity` against all four
node names. 0 problems, where the same check over the parent commit reports 44.
Piece A + B of ADR 0056, completing the internal-CA work in ff01ada.
Selectable issuer. acme-ca is now a role two providers can satisfy: step-ca
(internal CA) or the new public-acme (a fact-only module, no container/listen)
that serves Let's Encrypt production. A mesh assigns one or the other to satisfy
route-proxy's `requires: acme-ca`.
One directory shape for both. A provider serves the ACME directory's parts the
way the mesh already models any reachable service -- an address (`at`), a `port`
and a `path` -- and route-proxy composes `https://<at>:<port><path>`. step-ca
lets the mesh fill `at` (its node) and `port` (its single listen) and serves only
`path`; public-acme, not being a mesh service, serves all three (overriding `at`
with the public host). Same composition either way.
Empty root means the system trust store. Both providers serve `root`: step-ca
the operator root PEM (settled per mesh), public-acme an empty string. route-proxy
writes it to the CA bundle file unconditionally; the binary now reads an empty
bundle as "the root is already trusted by the OS" and falls back to system roots
(examples/route-proxy/main.go, committed on the mesh-control ADR-0056 branch).
step-ca inits from the operator's root. The operator's root cert, root key and
root-key password are mounted at the smallstep entrypoint's default init paths
(/run/secrets/root_ca.crt, root_ca_key, root_ca_key_password) with the matching
DOCKER_STEPCA_INIT_*_FILE vars, so `step ca init` adopts the operator's root
instead of self-generating one -- the CA that signs is the CA route-proxy trusts.
Route names are labels, not FQDNs. Every routed module now contributes a `label`
(the leftmost subdomain) instead of a full public hostname; the node's public
domain composes the name. Apex (novox.be) is left as a full name -- composeName
has no empty-label/apex convention yet (mesh-control follow-up).
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
Piece C of ADR 0056: an internal authority certifies routed names by the same
path a public one would, with the proxy pointed at whichever issuer the mesh
names and trusting that issuer's root.
step-ca (new): provides acme-ca (mesh scope), listens 9000 from mesh, persists
its CA home under uid 1000. The root CA cert reaches consumers as a served
value settled from a per-mesh operator setting (no baked root); the init
password and root key are sealed secrets, not literals. No route-name -> IP
hosts map (that is Piece B). Upstream smallstep/step-ca pinned by Docker Hub
digest.
route-proxy: requires + binds acme-ca. ACME_DIRECTORY is composed on the
consumer side from ${bound:acme-ca:at}:${bound:acme-ca:port}, and ACME_CA_BUNDLE
is a file whose content is ${bound:acme-ca:root} -- both from the binding,
replacing the hardcoded directory and the baked root PEM.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
route-proxy is the shipping form of the reference reverse proxy (novox/hq
ADR 0007, 08-connectivity section 3): it provides route, is given every
consumer as the file at receives.route, and forwards by the Host header. It
ships the Go proxy from mesh-control/examples/route-proxy via a multi-stage
Dockerfile; no broker, own-secret or provisioner, since it only reads the file
the mesh writes.
ACME_DIRECTORY defaults to Let's Encrypt staging and is overridable per node to
production, so there is no hardcoded production default -- resolving novox/hq
04-ISSUES/004. hello-web is a minimal consumer that requires route and
contributes name+port, to exercise the grant.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
jschoubben