During the 2026-10-09 outage the control node's resolver stayed active while it no longer listened on
its private address, and nothing on the mesh could ask that address a question or show which sockets
were bound. netcheck_dns takes server (and tcp) to ask one resolver alone and say its response code;
netcheck_listening reads the kernel's socket tables, as ss -lunt does, with the owning program where
the tool's account may see it and a sentence where it may not.
docker_events asked for three hours across the 2026-10-09 resolver outage on the control node answered
zero events: the runtime keeps only its last ~256 events in memory, and health-check execs filled them
with the last ten minutes. The answer now carries held, oldest_held and complete, and a history line
when the window reaches further back than what the runtime still holds. The type filter moves into the
tool, since the history's start is only known from all of it.
user-dirs.dirs is shell assignments meant to be sourced by a shell, and a setting is pasted into it as
it is, so a folder of $HOME/x"; <command>; X=" set through the verb would add a command of the
caller's. With the file trusted again, the three folders are set at the controller's terminal alone
until settings are typed and quoted at render.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds new: modules/betterbird, sent nowhere; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 compose)
A composer window whose class is not Betterbird's own was not seen, so a restart could lose its message.
Each step of a restart now has a bound short enough that all of them together, taken in full, stay
under the runtime's 30 s: 3 s for the window tree, 8 s to quit, 3 and 5 s to start, 4 s to see it.
A setting is pasted into picom.conf as it is, so a backend of xrender"; write-pid-path = "… adds an
option of the caller's: picom would then overwrite any file the operator can write. With the file
trusted, both settings are set at the controller's terminal alone until settings are typed and quoted
(hq issue 346).
A window mapped but left unpainted, or stale after a workspace switch, is a known failure of picom's glx
backend with damage tracking on some drivers, and the first suspect for the empty calendar reminder on
the workstation. Research 037 already found the backend to depend on the machine's driver. Both become
preferences whose defaults are today's (glx, use-damage true), so nothing changes until a machine is
given xrender or use-damage false to test it.
A window that is unmapped or on a hidden workspace was cut from the screen anyway, which shows what is
there instead of it. An inline image of up to 4 MiB could not cross the bus, whose largest message is
1 MiB; it is now held to 700 KiB and halved in size until it fits, saying so.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds new: modules/betterbird, sent nowhere; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 compose)
A restart ended Betterbird with whatever a composer held; now it refuses while a Msgcompose window is
open unless discard_unsent says the operator agreed, and answers within the runtime's 30 s. A
preference's value could carry an address, a user%40domain@host URI, a host or the home; those are
masked, recent-folder, account and cloud-file preferences and every add-on preference but the theme's
id are withheld, and a request for everything is refused. A log kept the token after Bearer or Basic.
The reminder test's Betterbird counted as the operator's and left its profile behind when it ended on
its own; it is now left out everywhere and its unit removes the profile when it stops.
A reminder window that showed as transparent and empty could not be looked at: the window manager's
list leaves dialogs out and says nothing a compositor goes by, and xwd -id refused a window of a
32-bit visual with BadColor (X_QueryColors). xorg_windows answers every window with its class, and
on request its depth, type, state, role and own opacity; a window's screenshot is now cut from the
whole screen as the compositor shows it, and inline answers the image for a session that cannot
read the machine's files. Declares xorg-xwininfo, which both now use.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds new: modules/betterbird, sent nowhere; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 compose)
A calendar reminder showed as a transparent, empty window on shanks and no tool could say which
window it was or which preferences Betterbird ran with. The module owns one file, the user.js its
setting prefs fills, which its tools place whole into the profile Betterbird uses and never over an
operator's own; it reads named preferences without credentials or accounts, restarts Betterbird under
the user manager so its output reaches the journal, checks what it promises, and shows a reminder on
demand from a throw-away profile so a fix can be proved without the operator's calendar. No package:
betterbird-bin is the AUR's.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds claude-code → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 compose)
mesh/repo-check pass: THE CHANGE ALTERS ITS OWN CHECK (merge-check.sh, merge-check-typescript.sh): main's version judged it; the change's judges the pull r…
Removing a rule from the operator's own home changes what their sessions
obey as surely as placing one: an agent could remove the rule that
constrains it (hq issue 340).
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds claude-code → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 compose)
mesh/repo-check pass: THE CHANGE ALTERS ITS OWN CHECK (merge-check.sh, merge-check-typescript.sh): main's version judged it; the change's judges the pull r…
On the nodes where the agent runs as the operator, the home scope wrote the
operator's own ~/.claude, whose rules and skills load in every session, and
any node's tool could be addressed from another (hq issue 340). Take it
only for the serving node, where its home is an agent account's own; never
place a bus item in the operator's home. Ignore the built binary.
Instructions, output styles, skills, commands and subagents for every node
or some reach every session as the mesh's own word, and the tools cannot
tell an agent from the operator; the operator decided they are set at the
terminal until a surface of their own updates them (hq issue 340). They
are settings keys, each text a list of lines; the home scope stays free.
It had not been run before a merge: its expected list lacked gitea_commit_statuses since that tool came,
and now gitea_contains. The catalogue's TypeScript check, merged in from #151, runs it.
Merge order on a protected trunk was the whole proof; the review asked for ancestry. The gitea module
gains gitea_contains, a read-only compare of two commits (total_commits 0 is contained), and mesh-delivery
asks it once per pair, off the lock like its plan ask, keeping the answer on the delivery. A forge that
cannot say leaves the merge held, not covered. Merge order stays the cheap first filter.
A later delivery now carries a module only when its own check passed (so a merge held without a passing
check is closed only by one that passed), its walk is of its own merge commit on the same trunk, and its
steps say the module reached every machine running it, not one. The words say what is known: a later
merge that contains it was delivered.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds claude-code → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 compose)
A byte-order mark, a flow mapping or a merged key hid a key the line scan
looked for, and @path read any file into every session the item reached
(hq issue 340 review).
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds claude-code → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 compose)
The tool runner is not told who called, so a hook, a managed setting, a
permission rule or a tool server registered through these tools could come
from an agent confined on another node and run as the operator there
(hq issue 340). They are set at the controller's terminal now; a skill,
subagent or command that runs something by itself is refused too, kept
hooks and settings are never rendered, and claude_code_registrations
lists what is registered and by which node.
A held delivery asked a person a question with no right answer: four hq merges that build nothing,
merges adding a module the controller sends nowhere, controller merges whose change a later walk of
the same trunk already delivered, and a group member held because its composed check had not yet
answered. Only stop could end them, which marks a delivered change as an error on its pull request.
- A merge whose plan moves no module (nothing, or only a new module sent nowhere) is delivered at once.
- A new final state, covered: every module a merge moves was sent by a finished walk of a later merge
into the same trunk, which contains it. Shown as success on the pull request; a group counts it as
delivered.
- A group member waits published while its composed check is asked and unanswered, and a member held
for it is lifted back to published once it passes for the heads that merged.
Read again each tick, so the deliveries already held end by themselves after the rollout.
Third review of #147. The run writes as root into /var/lib/zfs-scrub (0700, root's), apart from the
operator account's error counts in /var/lib/zfs-tools, and refuses a folder that is a link, open to
others or someone else's, and a file that is a link: a new file opened O_NOFOLLOW|O_EXCL, renamed over.
With mesh-controller #170 a file that asks for a setting counts as trusted
unless it says otherwise, and its settings are set at the controller's
terminal alone (hq issue 339). These two are a person's own notifier look and
folder names in their home, which nothing else trusts.
The second review of #147 found three blockers before the home server.
1. ${setting:} was not filled in a unit's name, so the distribution timers would have reached the
machine as "zfs-scrub-weekly@${setting:scrub-pool}.timer". mesh-controller #171 fills it and refuses
any value that is not a unit-name part. The module's own schedule needs no setting in a name now: the
node-engine's timer for the scheduled process zfs-mesh-scrub fires `zfs-tools scrub-run` every quarter
of an hour, and the run reads the pool, cadence, day and time from the configuration file.
2. The run does what upstream's zfs-scrub@.service does: if a scrub is running it waits for it with
zpool wait -t scrub, otherwise it starts one and waits. It never pauses or stops a scrub, and the unit
has no ExecStop. A resilver defers the scrub. The served slot is kept in /var/lib/zfs-tools.
3. Unassigning left the pool with no schedule. mesh-host #66 (hq ADR 0269, proposed) gives the
distribution timer back running and enabled. The README says not to unassign before it is merged.
Also: the run comes before the distribution timers in the declaration; the day and time are checked
against fixed sets and reach no unit file (an invalid value runs nothing); a due scrub not started an
hour after its time is a warning; the error counts outlive a restart in a small state file.
The safety review of the first version found it safe for the pool's data and asked for these fixes before
it goes on the home server:
- zfs_snapshot: no recursive. Every answer gives the dataset's free space and the pool's capacity, and
says that the snapshot holds every block deleted or overwritten until it is destroyed by hand.
- A command that runs out of time is ended with its whole process group. An act that timed out is
answered from the list, or as "outcome unknown", never as "NOT DONE".
- The watch runs as the operator account.
- The event follower reads ZFS's queue from its start, with a cursor per boot, so the pool's import and
any downtime reach the journal once. It writes "dropped N events", kills zpool before waiting for it,
and exits non-zero after five failed follows in a row.
- Past error counts are a warning, and counts that rise are unhealthy.
- The guard test catches .Run(, exec.Command(, exec.CommandContext( and process starts.
- The fixtures and the parser follow OpenZFS 2.4.4's own printers: human scan sizes under -p, no iostat
section lines, error scrubs, per-vdev rebuild resilvers, paused scrubs.
The operator also asked the module to own the scrub. A timer and a service of the module's own run
zpool scrub -w -- <pool> from the scrub-pool, scrub-cadence, scrub-day and scrub-time settings. In the
same declaration, the distribution's weekly and monthly timers for that pool are held stopped and
disabled, so exactly one schedule scrubs it. zfs_scrub shows the schedule and the next run, with any
resilver's progress. zfs_scrub_start, zfs_scrub_pause and zfs_scrub_stop act with why. The health check
warns of a late or failed scrub and of a running resilver, and is unhealthy for a resilver that finished
with errors.
On the build node, in UTC, the fixture's creation time was the fake clock's own instant, so the test
could not tell the list's time from the clock's. A day and a half earlier is apart from it everywhere.
The home server's pool holds the operator's media library, and no mesh tool could say whether it is
healthy, how full it is, when it was last scrubbed or what snapshots exist; the only way was a login.
This module reads all of it with fixed zfs and zpool commands (list, get, status, iostat, events,
history) and has one act, zfs_snapshot, which only adds a snapshot: refused for an unknown dataset, a
name outside [A-Za-z0-9._-], an existing snapshot or no why; run as sudo -n zfs snapshot -- ds@name;
answered from zfs list afterwards, with any other snapshot that came or went meanwhile; recorded as the
event snapshot.taken. No destroy, rollback, set or send exists, and a test holds every command to its
verb.
Health (ADR 0240): zfs_health on the watch process, unhealthy for a pool not ONLINE, device or data
errors, a pool past 90 % full or no ZFS at all; past 80 % and a scrub older than 35 days are warnings.
Beside it, the event follower (zpool events -f, as root) keeps ZFS's errors in its journal past a
reboot and is judged by its unit, the check the module does not run itself. No seat (ADR 0121), no
package: ZFS is the machine's.
execute runs any command as the operator account, which can become root
without a person. The operator withholds it on the control-node until a
call needs a person's approval (hq ADR 0268); the other machines keep it
for now. The setting execute (serve by default) is written into a
root-owned file the tools bundle reads at start, and anything but serve
withholds the verb, so the machine's runtime does not offer it.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds postgres, sent nowhere; no bus step; 2 wait(s) for a person; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 …
A reader given a privilege WITH GRANT OPTION that passed it on made the
plain revoke fail with dependent privileges exist; the pass still listed the
table as revoked and logged it every minute. The pass now retries such a
change with CASCADE, which reaches only grants that came from the reader,
reads the grants back, reports as revoked only what is gone, and says what
is still held and why when anything is.
A setting changed through mesh-controller.settings rewrote dunstrc, but the
running dunst kept the old font and width until the next login. Declare the
package's dunst.service in the account's manager, without a state, with
reload-on the configuration, so the node-engine runs its ExecReload
(dunstctl reload) and what is on screen stays. Add dunst_reload to do the
same on demand and say the font and width the files set.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds postgres, sent nowhere; no bus step; 2 wait(s) for a person; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 …
A superuser's REVOKE acts as the table owner, so a grant to the reader made
by a role holding GRANT OPTION survived it while the report said revoked.
Each grant is now revoked under SET ROLE to its grantor, the grants are read
back, and anything still held is reported as a failure. The role was
altered every minute with its password in the statement, which a server
logging DDL would record and which could collide with a first query; it is
now altered only when an attribute, a setting or the password has drifted,
one ensure at a time. SECURITY DEFINER functions and views the reader may
use reach data without a grant on it, so every pass lists them. The README
says the name filter is a backstop and that the read-only session default
can be turned off by a statement.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds postgres, sent nowhere; no bus step; 2 wait(s) for a person; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 …
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds postgres, sent nowhere; no bus step; 2 wait(s) for a person; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 …
mesh_store_reader held pg_read_all_data, so every caller of mesh-store.query
and postgres_query could read every column the store holds: the signing key
nodes trust, sealed secrets, password hashes. The reader now holds no role;
each minute, on every database, its memberships are revoked and its grants
brought to what the consumer's contribution lists under readable, minus any
column or table whose name says it holds a secret. Before a statement runs,
the reader's own session is asked which secret columns it can read and the
statement is refused if any; a statement naming a known secret table is
refused before it is sent.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds new: modules/mounts, modules/nfs-server, sent nowhere; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without (…
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds new: modules/mounts, modules/nfs-server, sent nowhere; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without (…
The review of #136 found a share could squash every client to root, be
judged at a symlink's name rather than its folder, sit inside or above a
backup repository deeper than one level, export an unmounted dataset's
empty folder, go to every address in the private network's range, and
stay exported after the module left. Each is now refused or closed, with
a test that reproduced it first:
- a folder owned by uid or gid 0 is refused;
- the path is resolved through symlinks and every check runs on the real
folder, which the export line names;
- a share inside a backup repository (any parent) or holding one within
four levels is refused, and a look cut short by its bound refuses;
- every line carries mp, or mp=<its filesystem's mount point>;
- a share goes only to the nodes this machine's grants setting names and
whose mounts module wants it on the bus, at the lower access, at the
roster's address inside the range; nothing without wants;
- the process is declared before its config, so on unassignment it finds
the config gone, removes its export file and lets the shares go;
- confirm accepts the seat's string "true".
mesh/merge-gate fail: builds new: modules/mounts, modules/nfs-server, sent nowhere; no bus step; a manifest the change touches fails the module check: modu…
A machine mounts what its assignment names: a node's share from the
provision nfs-share, whose path it reads from nfs-server's state on the
bus, and occasional sources (an SMB device, a disk) whose absence is a
state, not a fault. apply writes and arms the unit pairs as root; watch
tries each source and judges the health; the operator's fstab lines are
taken over only through adopt, on their word, once the replacement is
armed. SMB logins are an outside party's secret, given with secret accept.
jochen
mesh-admin
jschoubben