The state directories say place "." — the assignment's own root — and
every bind, secret, own-secret, receives and grants path references it
as ${dir:state}/…; grants directories that are their own resources are
placed by id. gitea's two coincidence strings from the first pass
(${dir:data}base.json — resolving correctly by pure concatenation) are
spelled honestly now. What still says /var/lib is inside containers —
the software's contract — or under /var/lib/mesh, the mesh's own
plumbing, which the requirements unification absorbs next. Every
resolved path is byte-identical to what runs; landing this is a no-op
on the node, and the converter checks its own boundaries this time.
Each resolves to <root>/mailu/<id> — the maildir at
/var/lib/mailu/data-mail, certs at data-certs, and so on. Landing this
is a window, not an edit: seventeen renames on the node (the nested
data/ tree flattens to the ids), then the full stack recreated, because
a changed volume path does not recreate a container by itself (hq 126).
Ids are untouched on purpose — a renamed id orphans its held record,
and the mail spool is the wrong place to learn what a removal step does
with one.
The /services paths were the adopted-node pattern doing its job: take
replaced containers over the predecessor's data without moving a byte
(gitea set it — 'its data never moved'). With every cutover done the
exception has no reason left, and the operator called it: a nox
module's world is /var/lib/<module>, data included. Six modules
repathed; mssql keeps its /services path deliberately — it is still
held, HAL-run, and moves at its own take. Both trees are one
filesystem, so each move is a rename.
The env block carried the key twice — mailu-webmail from #79's address
sweep, and a stray =webmail further down that survived it. Last write
wins in an env file, so the front resolved a name that answers nowhere
on the mesh's network and 502'd every logged-in webmail request. Latent
since the cutover: the SSO redirect the checks watched never touches
the upstream; the operator's first real login did.
Take one (#90) died on two real edge bugs, both fixed and pinned by
tests in mesh-controller (#66: autocert 404s unknown tokens itself;
#67: the internal authority 403s every public name before the token
lookup). The challenge path verified end to end reaching mailu's own
nginx before this flip.
The letsencrypt flavor served certbot's April-expired state to live IMAPS
users within minutes: autocert's HTTPHandler answers 404 itself for
tokens it does not hold and never consults the fallback for challenge
paths, so mailu's own client cannot answer through the path-scoped
route. cert flavor (valid to Nov 27) until route-proxy's handler
actually falls through.
PR #82 set TLS_FLAVOR=cert as the honest interim while the predecessor's
proxy owned /.well-known/acme-challenge outright. route-proxy took port
80 today and its handler passes unknown tokens through to routed paths
by design — the one line #82 promised, made now. The copied cert (valid
to Nov 27) stays on disk untouched; mailu's own certbot takes over from
here.
The declared 0700 was applied at take and broke mail quietly: postfix's
master runs as root but pickup and smtpd drop to uid postfix, and a
spool root they cannot traverse is a maildrop they cannot scan and a
rewrite socket they cannot open — auth succeeded and MAIL FROM hung.
0755 root is exactly what postfix's own set-permissions makes of
/var/spool/postfix. Fixed live by chmod first; declared here so the
next push stops undoing it.
letsencrypt was the aspiration and cannot work yet, proven live: the
predecessor's own ACME machinery owns /.well-known/acme-challenge on
port 80 outright (unknown tokens get its 404) and its entrypoint
redirect owns every other path — the hand-authored passthrough never
matched anything, which is why mailu's certbot state had quietly
expired in April while the copied files carried the name. cert flavor
serves those files (valid to Nov 27). Mailu certifying itself becomes
possible the day route-proxy takes port 80, whose handler falls through
unknown tokens by design — that flip is one line here, made then.
The front resolves its upstreams from *_ADDRESS, defaulting to the bare
compose service names — admin, antispam — and reads the 1.9-era HOST_*
not at all. Phase 1 never noticed because the predecessor's service
names WERE the defaults; the mesh's containers are mailu-*, and the
front answered 502 asking docker for a name nothing carries. The dead
vocabulary goes; every upstream is named as the container actually is.
2024.06's admin refuses to serve behind a resolver that does not
validate DNSSEC — found live as an unhealthy admin, 454s on submission
and a 500 webmail, with the runtime's forwarder validating nothing. The
unbound this module always shipped becomes reachable: pinned at the
predecessor's own address on the module network (the subnet the mesh
adopted), and named as dns by the nine containers that resolve anything.
Stands on mesh-host #26, which gave the vocabulary these two fields.
1.9's admin served on 80; 2024.06's gunicorn listens on 8080, and the
runtime's fetch failed against the old port the moment the broker
credential let it try.
Phase 1 (MAILU-CUTOVER.md) upgraded the live stack 1.9→2024.06 and its
lessons land here as pins: every image is the digest running and
verified tonight — webmail under the name 2024.06 actually uses (the
draft's roundcube pin misled a whole hop), antivirus on the upstream
clamav image with the signature DB in its own directory (the mailu-built
image ended at 2.0), and the front trusting the proxy address the live
config actually names. The welcome-mail texts ride along for parity.
TLS_FLAVOR stays letsencrypt deliberately where the live .env says cert:
the cert files are copies whose HAL-era renewal hook died with HAL
(expiry Nov 27); mailu managing its own issuance through the existing
ACME passthrough is the fix, and the files remain on disk as the
fallback flavor if first issuance misbehaves during the window.
PORTS defaults to 25,80,443,465,993,995,4190 in 2024.06 — submission on
587 among the closed, which is what every client of this server uses.
The same parity decision the listens already state, now stated where the
software reads it.
Five gaps between the draft and what actually runs, each verified live
before being written down:
- front published bare 80 — the machine port Traefik holds; now the
predecessor's own mappings (7080:80, 7443:443) plus the 110/143/995
parity ports the draft dropped. Pruning legacy protocols is its own
deliberate change, not a cutover side effect.
- TLS_FLAVOR said cert, which nothing supplies; live is letsencrypt —
mailu runs its own certbot, state already on disk, HTTP-01 answered
through a path-scoped route contribution (priority above the web one).
- the web route said http:7080, the redirect-loop shape; it now says
what the hand-authored file always knew: https 7443, insecure.
- automx was absent entirely: the autoconfig responder is now a second
artifact (its Containerfile moved in from the predecessor's images
dir, base declared per ADR 0097), a container on a real data dir —
the anonymous-volume loss of 2026-08-10 stays fixed — and the three
public names are route contributions.
- and the reason this moved ahead of de-spiegel: mailu now provides
smtp. A consumer contributes the account it sends as; the provisioner
creates <account>@<domain> via the admin API and applies the minted
password every reconcile (ADR 0048). The domain is served on the
binding so a consumer composes its own login from mesh facts.
route-adapter learns to say no: a contribution over https, scoped to a
path, or carrying a policy is skipped aloud rather than written into a
file shape that cannot say it — plain http into a TLS listener was the
concrete wrong file this prevents. The hand-authored files keep covering
those routes until the mesh's own proxy takes over, exactly as today.
hq issue 091, measured 2026-09-22: 14 of 46 modules with containers fix the
machine side of a published port in their own manifest -- a fact about one
machine (which port HAL happened to publish it on) written into a
definition meant for any node. ADR 0038 already says the mesh assigns the
machine side and a module says only what it needs; the machinery already
does it (internal/inventory/ports.go's PortFor, declaration.go's
publishedOn rewrites a bare port automatically). These 14 just never
complied.
Fixed 11 of them -- stripped to the bare software port, letting assignment
take over: de-spiegel, gitea, hello-web (the demo module), mailu, mssql,
n8n, novox.be, only-office, photos, photos-eef, photos-filip.
Left alone, the two defensible kinds the issue names: postgres/lavinmq/
distribution (foundation, genesis-rewritten per ADR 0100 -- the number in
the manifest is a default, not a claim) and unifi (protocol/
device-discovery fixes the number; nothing else can find the controller).
gitea was a live one, not just a tidiness fix: its manifest said 2222:22,
but the actual adopted, running container is on 222. Harmless while held,
but the next 'take' would have recreated it on the wrong port and broken
SSH git access. Recorded 222 as novox's own setting for it (settings set
gitea -node novox) so that doesn't happen.
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).
From the survey of every env-file secret (ADR 0086, issue 041): amqp-ping,
minio, mongodb and grafana use the _FILE twin their software honours;
mesh-catalog and model-usage read DATABASE_URL_FILE (a file the mesh
templates, mounted where only the runtime reads it); grafana's secret files
belong to its own account. Two dead deliveries removed: a line nothing read
in amqp-email-forwarder, and mailu's secret.env on four containers that
never read it. The 25 exceptions that remain carry the surveyed reason —
convertible and awaiting a bed, convertible through a generated config file,
the application's own code, or not convertible.
ADR 0086. mesh-controller mounts its six own secrets and names them with
_FILE twins, so no credential of its own reaches its environment. The 35
containers that still read a secret through an env-file carry
secrets-in-environment with the reason; converting each where its software
accepts a path is the per-module work of issue 041.
keycloak, mailu, minio, mongodb, mssql, nextcloud, portainer, redis,
umami and verdaccio get the Dockerfile + build section the eight
buildable modules already had; their runtime containers name the
artifact instead of a placeholder digest.
One convention, settled (060's open question, informed by 061): the
runtime container runs serve mode with every serve-time entrypoint in
MESH_TOOL_MODULES — tools serve, events flow, and a provider's
provisioner reconciles in the same process with the broker connected.
postgres, gitea and lavinmq are retrofitted from args-run provisioners,
which served no tools and emitted lifecycle events nowhere.
route-proxy is deferred: its build context is the mesh-controller
repository, a cross-repo shape the build section cannot yet express.
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
Add a `route` contribution (requires/contributes/binds) to every web app so
each gets a Host-routed public name via route-proxy, mirroring the
de-spiegel/only-office pattern:
- novox: gitea, keycloak, nextcloud, umami, invoicing, verdaccio, registry,
and mailu (single mail.novox.be -> 7080; admin/webmail/api ride that port).
- ace: grafana, sonarr, radarr, lidarr, bazarr, ombi, tautulli, jackett,
nodered, searxng, home-assistant, bookshelf, baserow.
Split photos so its three sites each get a name: photos keeps server +
admin-client (photos.novox.be), and new photos-eef (eef.novox.be) and
photos-filip (filip.novox.be) modules carry the client sites.
The production FQDN stays the literal default; a per-node .incus name is a
settings override applied where the mesh runs, not a manifest hardcoding.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
The whole-mesh-novox lab validation found three modules unresolvable: a
provision-consuming module's minted login is mesh_<node>_<module>, and on novox
`mesh_novox_only_office`(22)/`_de_spiegel`(21)/`_amqp_email_forwarder`(31)
overflow the 20-char S3 access-key cap (ADR 0049). Added a short `slug` each
(office/spiegel/emailfwd → 17/18/19 chars). Also fixed mailu's roundcube image:
the pinned digest returns "manifest unknown" from ghcr; corrected to the real
:1.9 digest.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
Rebuild the mailu manifest from the running production deployment as the
source of truth, and finish wiring its tool runtime.
- Full 11-container topology: front, smtp, imap, admin, antispam, antivirus,
webmail, webdav, fetchmail, resolver, redis — real ghcr.io/mailu images
pinned by digest at tag 1.9 (clamav/radicale/fetchmail digests newly fetched).
- Admin DB now consumes the mesh postgres-database provider (requires +
contributes + binds + secrets, DB_* templated from ${bound}/${secret}),
replacing the bundled postgres:13 admindb the live stack still runs.
- Full config env from the live containers as a plain env-file; SECRET_KEY,
the admin API token and the initial-admin password become own-secrets;
DB password comes from the provider secret. No secret values hardcoded.
- Enable the Mailu admin REST API (API=true, WEB_API, API_TOKEN own-secret) so
the ported tools can reach it — the live deployment runs this API OFF.
- mesh-mailu tool runtime on the mailu network: admin API over the module
network, token from the mounted own-secret, docker.sock for the doveadm mail
reads, broker + mergeable config with restart-on.
- client.ts fromEnv reads the API token from its mounted own-secret file
(MESH_MAILU_API_KEY_FILE), matching the cloudflare-dns/umami pattern.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
Give each settings-config runtime a mergeable config file with its own id
(runtime-config) — the previous "config" collided with modules that already own a
config directory, so ten runtimes mounted a config file no resource declared. Point
each runtime's restart-on at it, so a settings change recreates the runtime and it
re-reads the new value (needs the mesh-host container restart-on fix on
issue/009-container-restart-on). Proven: runtime-restart-on-config e2e green.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
Nineteen modules gain a broker-bound runtime container that serves the module's
tools under its own scoped account: bazarr, gitea, grafana, home-assistant,
icecast, influxdb, jackett, keycloak, mailu, nextcloud, nodered, nzbget, ombi,
photos, portainer, qbittorrent, searxng, tautulli, verdaccio.
Config is the assignment's, not the manifest's (ADR 0051): each client's fromEnv
overlays a settings-merged config file (MESH_<M>_CONFIG_FILE) over its env
fallbacks, so URL and credentials come from `settings set`, with the URL defaulting
to the server on the node. nextcloud and mailu also mount the docker socket for
their exec-based tools.
Proven in the mesh-lab: assigned-grafana green — settings deliver the URL and token,
the runtime reads the merged config and serves grafana's tools under the scoped
account, with nothing in the manifest. Two gaps this surfaced are filed as hq
issues 008 (a provider runtime's seal key) and 009 (a settings change does not
restart a container runtime).
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
The review found broker own-secret paths drifting: mostly /var/lib/<module>/
broker, but grafana/redis/icecast/nextcloud carried a '-module' suffix to dodge
a collision with the service's own /var/lib/<name> data, and photos sat under
/etc. Normalized to one collision-free namespace a service never owns:
/var/lib/mesh/<module>/broker, with a mesh-state directory resource for the
parent, across 24 modules. audit-logger is grandfathered (lab-proven, referenced
by the assigned test, and it has no service to collide with). All 33 manifests
parse; no client hardcoded a path, so nothing in code moved.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
Email server. Users/aliases/domains over the admin REST API, mail read via
doveadm in the imap container; ten tools. Emits user/alias created/deleted by
polling and diffing the admin API, so a change in the web admin is announced
as readily as one via a tool. Consumes nothing — deliberately, since mutating
mail accounts off another module's event could silently lose mail. Typechecks
against the sdk; manifest parses.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
Each module becomes modules/<name>/ holding module.json, with room for
the rest of what a module is — its tools, health checks, provisioning,
lifecycle — which the conversion from hal still has to bring across.
The flat <name>.json was only the resource-declaration half.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
jschoubben