jschoubben
2c322cb2fb
Its image is FROM scratch and runs as 65534. The host writes a sealed own-secret 0600,
owned by root, which is right — but the module then bind-mounted those three files into
the container and told the process to open them. It cannot:
$ docker run --rm -v <0600 root file>:/run/secrets/inventory:ro \
-e MESH_STORE_INVENTORY_FILE=/run/secrets/inventory mesh-control:development status
MESH_STORE_INVENTORY_FILE names /run/secrets/inventory ... and it cannot be read:
open /run/secrets/inventory: permission denied
Measured on a workstation, not reasoned about. Every other module in this catalogue gets
away with the same mount because its runtime container runs as root; this one does not,
and genesis (novox/hq ADR 0067) would have stopped at step 9 with a control-plane module
that starts and cannot open a context.
The connections go through the env file this module already has instead. That file is
mode 0600 and is read by the container runtime's client, which is root — the same reason
the broker's URL has always reached the process this way. It also sidesteps the inode
that a file bind mount pins (290be37, step-ca): --env-file is read afresh at create, and
restart-on names it.
The own-secrets stay exactly as they were, because the installer delivers the substrate's
real connection strings into them with `secret accept` before the first push — the mesh
did not make those credentials and cannot invent them.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
mesh-catalog
The Novox Mesh catalogue. The modules the mesh builds, provisions and runs — as manifests, one
per module under modules/.
This is data, not a control-plane concern. The manifests describe what a module is: what it
provides, what it requires, the seats it claims, the resources the host applies for it. The
engine that reads them — parsing, eligibility resolution, sealing, declaration emission — lives
in the control plane (novox/mesh-control, internal/catalogue), which consumes this repository
as a build source. The host (novox/mesh-host) applies the declarations the control plane emits.
Neither is here.
What a module is, and is not
A module is one thing the mesh can run, named once, described completely by its manifest. A
manifest names its image (pinned by digest), the resources the host owns for it (directories,
files, the container, the private network it joins), what it requires from a provider and what
it provides to consumers, and the sealed secrets it needs filled on the machine.
- Core mesh components are not modules. The node host, the substrate, the control-plane
contexts and the surfaces are the mesh itself; they ship as their own repositories
(
mesh-host,mesh-substrate,mesh-control,mesh-surfaces,mesh-sdk), not from here. - Standalone applications are not here either. A larger application lives in its own repository with its manifest at the root, registered with the mesh as a build source (novox/hq ADR 0010). This repository holds the modules the mesh maintains as its shared catalogue; an application the mesh merely hosts keeps its manifest beside its own code.
So there is one home for the catalogue the mesh owns, and every application that runs on the mesh rather than being of it carries its own — both reach the pipeline the same way, as a registered source.
Layout
modules/<name>.json one manifest per module
Flat, because the catalogue's shape carries no meaning: a module is found by its name and described by its manifest, and what relates two modules — a shared seat, a claim, a provider/consumer edge — is data inside the manifests, not a directory the tree encodes (novox/hq, the domain-grouping question closed in favour of seats, claims and tags).
The manifest contract
The shape a manifest must satisfy is owned by the control plane's catalogue engine and is what
validates a manifest before a machine ever sees it — a stray key, a consumer contributing the
wrong provision field, an image that nothing builds. That validation belongs with this
repository and is being re-homed here from mesh-control; until it is, the pipeline is the
gate — it builds each module and refuses a manifest it cannot resolve.
Where the reasoning lives
Design and decisions are in novox/hq:
02-DECISIONS/0002-everything-is-a-module.md— one unit, no second mechanism02-DECISIONS/0010-applications-live-in-their-own-repository.md— why applications are not here02-DECISIONS/0030-the-repository-structure.md— the repositories, and the open tier-4 question this repository answers03-DESIGN/00-as-is/10-module-catalogue.md— the catalogue's shape, and what it records