Commit Graph
251 Commits
Author SHA1 Message Date
jschoubben fbc3d320ea A take acts on the preview it showed; a setting is judged where it is stored; a kept network and a minted secret are said (hq ADR 0163)
take ends its preview with a digest and --yes names it, as the flip does; a
changed preview or an account older than the flip allows is refused. A module
the machine holds nothing for has nothing to compare, and --yes suffices. A
published port's reach is said as the machine reported it. Every secret the
module holds on the machine is listed with where it came from, and one the
mesh minted for a service whose data was found refuses unless --mint names it.

One judgement of a module's settings against its definition, in the catalogue:
settings set refuses what cannot compose or reaches nothing, naming node,
module, layer and key; Compose leaves out a module whose definition moved
under a stored setting, the envelope says so (left_out), plan and push say it
by name, and the machine is told everything else. A stray setting no longer
refuses the whole machine where it is read (issue 096).

The per-machine setting networks keeps a found network for a taken container,
on an adopted machine only; the container's declaration carries it and the
preview names it (rule 4).
2026-10-02 11:01:09 +02:00
mesh-admin cf495e315f Merge pull request 'The proxy is told its routes and the mesh on the bus, and serves internal names to the mesh only (hq issue 191, ADR 0167)' (#207) from jschoubben/an-internal-only-route into main 2026-10-02 07:42:45 +00:00
jschoubben c9eba5f3b8 The controller's tools can issue a module its bus account
A module's account was mintable only from the controller's command line,
so a rollout that gave a module one could not be finished through the
mesh's own tools (novox/hq issue 191). The issue verb runs module issue
for a module on a machine; the caller pushes the machine after.
2026-10-02 01:55:06 +02:00
jschoubben 24f024dd74 The proxy is told its routes and the mesh on the bus, and serves internal names to the mesh only
The proxy answered every routed name to any request carrying it, so an
internal-only route would have been public under its internal name. Each
membership now carries what its module receives, from the same
composition as its received file, and every machine's private-network
address, the list the packet filter's "from the mesh" is. The proxy
follows its membership, serves internal names only to those machines and
itself, and keeps the file until the bus has spoken (novox/hq ADR 0167,
issue 191).
2026-10-02 01:46:30 +02:00
jschoubben 0a40c046cf plans --what-if: the plan a merge would produce, read before merging
Given a repository and the files a branch changes (or the modules by name), plans answers with the tiers
the merge handler would produce — the modules those files touch, what packages their source, everything
reachable along the dependency relation — and what each tier does: built and sent to its machines, or
built and left because its policy records. Saved nowhere. On the seat as plans {repository, paths|modules}.
2026-10-01 22:38:49 +02:00
jschoubben 477d3ac9a7 A plan rolls out every tier it built
A dependent rebuilt because its base moved, or a module that packages another repository's source,
keeps its source commit; the catalogue announces no move for it, and its machines kept the old image
until somebody pushed — forty-three modules after every runtime-image merge (hq issue 189). When a tier
is built, the plan now sends the machines of every module in it whose policy rolls out, once, moved
commit or not; a module whose policy records is built and left, as its policy says. The gate between
tiers waits as before for the ones a later tier is built by.
2026-10-01 22:21:42 +02:00
jschoubben 3ca1f5d26a A plan sends what it waits for
A tier whose module a later tier is built by waited for the machines running it to report after the
build — and relied on the catalogue's moved event to send them. A rebuild from the same source commit is
not a move the catalogue announces: the build machine rebuilt for a controller change kept its commit,
nothing sent it, and the plan waited on a report that would never come (2026-10-01, 19:45Z). The plan
now sends the machines running a gated module once, records when, and waits for the reports after that.
2026-10-01 21:54:40 +02:00
jschoubben 40f169229d A converged machine says its strays too
node show printed what a machine reports only for an adopted one; a converged machine holds nothing
and can still run a container nobody asked for (hq ADR 0163), so its strays are said whatever its mode.
2026-10-01 21:41:23 +02:00
jschoubben 73a34cc0a7 A take is a comparison: the preview, its refusals, the strays, and the policy said at build (hq ADR 0163)
The host now reports, for every held thing, the facts a take compares; the controller keeps them, and
take puts them beside what the module declares — the found image and its age against the declared one,
the found networks and who else is on them, ports and mounts, a found file's difference from the
declared content — and refuses a downgrade without --downgrade and a differing file without --replace
<path>. Without --yes the comparison is printed and nothing is taken. node show lists the facts and
the strays the machine reports. build and the daemon's take-in say when a module's policy rolls the
result out at once. The own-secret refusal points at the provider form for a required secret.
2026-10-01 21:25:27 +02:00
jschoubben c430ca76f0 The rest of the mesh is quiet about a machine it resolved without the excluded one's offers
With one machine excluded, the others are resolved without its offers, and one that consumes them
cannot resolve by design — the view is partial, the machine is not dropped. The line that names a
dropped machine now speaks only for the whole-mesh view (seats), where a drop is a fault (hq 188).
2026-10-01 20:53:27 +02:00
jschoubben dcf6278523 The rest of the mesh resolves each machine with its own pins, and says which machine it leaves out
The second pass of theRestOfTheMesh resolved every machine without its pins. Since a machine with two
providers of one provision is refused unless a pin names one (195/196), the control node was refused
there and vanished: every seat it holds read as unheld, the build machine refused what needs the git
seat, the roll-out was refused — and nothing said why (hq issue 188). Each machine is now resolved as
its plan resolves it, with its pins; a machine left out is named with the resolver's words.
2026-10-01 18:22:17 +02:00
jschoubben d94f9e7f9f A built-by edge orders and gates a plan; it never widens it — and plans stop
The first live plan took seventy-five modules along for a controller change: the builder packages the
controller's source, everything is built by the builder, so everything was reachable. A module built by
the build machine is not changed by a new build machine. Reachability now follows the code and build
edges only; built-by still orders a tier after the build machine and gates it on the machine's roll-out.
plans stop <id> ends a plan by hand: what was asked still builds and registers, nothing further is asked.
2026-10-01 18:16:47 +02:00
jschoubben 882687afd4 Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/main' into fix/a-machine-not-on-the-network-is-said 2026-10-01 18:16:14 +02:00
jschoubben 884c088949 A machine the network filter drops is said, not skipped in silence (hq issue 188)
onTheNetwork resolves every machine unchecked and skipped one whose resolution refused. A machine
skipped there has no address, so its own plan fails on the first placeholder that needs one, in another
module's words, every seat held on it reads as unheld, and what is built from it cannot be built — four
symptoms, none naming the refusal (2026-10-01, the control node, forty minutes). The refusal is now said
where it happens, in the resolver's own words.
2026-10-01 18:14:34 +02:00
jschoubben 89d43e0dad gofmt 2026-10-01 18:04:58 +02:00
jschoubben 09b636e628 The plans verb: what the last merges produced and where each stands (hq ADR 0162)
The mesh's seat answers plans — the recent plans with their tier, what each waits for and since when,
or one plan whole given its id — so the console reads a merge's progress where it reads everything
else, instead of a person reading the daemon's log.
2026-10-01 17:58:49 +02:00
jschoubben a69a832248 A merge produces a tiered plan the mesh keeps (hq ADR 0162)
A module's dependencies are one relation in the catalogue — stands-on, packages, built-by, declared —
answered by one call. A merge takes what moved and everything reachable from it, sorts the set into
tiers (a code dependency in the same tier, a build dependency after its base is built, a runtime
dependency after the build machine is built and running; the build machine's own base comes first,
built by the one that runs), writes the plan to the store, asks the first tier and returns. Every
outcome advances the plan; a ticker advances what outcomes cannot; a controller replaced mid-plan
resumes it. status lists open plans and names one that has waited too long.
2026-10-01 17:53:55 +02:00
jschoubben cf84117638 A pin names the module as well as the node; a node that answers twice is refused
A provider is a (node, module) pair (design 23), and the pin — the one way a
consumer names its provider — named only the node. Two modules on one node
can both answer a provision (public-acme and step-ca both offer acme-ca on
novox), and then the resolver, given a pin naming that node, took the last
provider listed: a coin flip. The same ambiguity beside the consumer was
settled by a map walk — random per plan — which is how novox's own
route-proxy got its issuer (novox/hq #258).

- `pin <node> <provision> <from-node> <module>`: both halves, always. The
  console gains `pin` and `unpin`. The provider may be on the consumer's own
  node, since two modules beside it can both answer.
- The resolver refuses ambiguity instead of picking, across machines and
  beside the consumer alike, naming every candidate as node/module and the
  form of the pin that settles it. A plain capability that grants nothing
  and serves nothing (three shells beside an editor) is not a choice to put
  to anybody and stays as it was.
- provision_pin gains a nullable module (0050); records made before are
  completed where the node they name answers once, and left for a person
  where it answers twice (0051).
- The provider of something already satisfied is looked for among what was
  assigned, not only what the walk has reached — a consumer reached before
  the provider beside it no longer loses its binding.
- The start-time check that every declared verb is runnable samples each
  verb's required arguments from its schema instead of three guessed keys.

Live consequence: a node that has two providers of one bound provision
assigned (novox: acme-ca) resolves only once pinned —
`pin novox acme-ca novox public-acme`.
2026-10-01 17:23:31 +02:00
jschoubben 853c63b181 A merge of a base rebuilds what stands on it
The controller knew which modules were built against which base artifacts and used it only when asked
(build --on). A merge that rebuilt the runtime image left forty-two modules on the old image until
somebody asked, twice, by hand (hq issue 186). The merge now takes every module standing on what moved,
through every layer, into the same rebuild, in base order — the same rebuild the flag does, asked by
the merge that made it necessary.
2026-10-01 16:09:26 +02:00
mesh-admin 1edc44b25f Merge pull request 'The store seat promises two verbs, databases and query (ADR 0159)' (#186) from feat/the-store-seat-has-verbs into main 2026-10-01 13:45:29 +00:00
jschoubben 4a6a4eadeb A push issues the memberships of the machines it told
sendTo — the path a roll-out, a rotation and a secret change take — issued memberships after its
sends (ADR 0160); the push command, which sends the same declarations through its own loop, did
not, so the one command operators run issued none. Said once in the same words after the sends.
2026-10-01 15:41:09 +02:00
jschoubben 05b90f966a A refused membership does not stop the controller
A stream publish waits for its acknowledgement as long as its context lives, and the server never
acknowledges a publish it refuses. Issuing memberships after a push used the daemon's own context, so
the one refused membership of 2026-10-01 (hq issue 183) held the controller's receive loop for good:
no report, no build outcome, no merge was heard until a restart (hq issue 185). Issuing one
membership is now bounded to ten seconds, and a push says how many could not be issued and stands —
the machines keep the shape they derive until the next push.
2026-10-01 15:30:04 +02:00
jschoubben 18958154f0 A claim may name the verbs it serves for its seat (hq ADR 0160)
The store's databases is not postgres's postgres_list_databases, and a holder may serve both. A
claim's serves names the seat's verbs the module implements for the role; absent, the module's own
tools must list every verb the seat promises, which is how a module named like its seat says they
are one and the same. Registration refuses a claim naming a verb the seat never promised, and the
credential's claims carry the claim's own verbs to the runtime.
2026-10-01 15:18:34 +02:00
jschoubben 603ad61142 The mesh issues an assignment's subjects: a membership per module on a machine (hq ADR 0160)
For every module on every machine the controller composes what that instance serves — its machine's
address always, the module's plain address in a queue when it is alone or its definition says its
instances are interchangeable — the verbs of the seats it holds at the seats' subjects, where its
events land, and what it may reach, resolved the same way for the modules it invokes. Published
beside the node's declaration on `mesh.assignment.<node>.<module>`, last per subject in a stream
that allows direct reads, and the account may read exactly its own. Composed from the same records
the bus's accounts are, so what a runtime serves and what its account may are one composition.
`instances: interchangeable` is the one fact a definition states for it.

The shape issued is the shape the mesh already had, so nothing moves when the membership arrives;
the runtime that reads it instead of deriving it is the next piece.
2026-10-01 14:43:26 +02:00
jschoubben ccae1ec303 gofmt 2026-10-01 13:58:41 +02:00
jschoubben 9fd5971212 A tool's grant covers the machine-addressed subject, and a credential names the seats its module claims (hq ADR 0159)
`invokes: [<module>.<tool>]` now grants `mesh.mod.<module>.tool.<tool>` and the same with the
machine as its last token, which is how a call reaches one machine's instance. The broker
credential the mesh writes carries `claims`: each seat the module claims, its scope, and the verbs
the seat promises, so the runtime serves them on the seat's subjects; the holder's grant, composed
from the holding, is what admits the subscription.
2026-10-01 13:58:23 +02:00
mesh-admin 05ccab2e4b Merge pull request 'The two seat commands appear in the usage text' (#94) from fix/seat-usage-lines into main 2026-10-01 11:17:51 +00:00
jschoubben 988250f37a A provider with one credential shares it with every consumer, remade for all at once (hq ADR 0158)
An offer may say `"credential": {"own": "<secret>"}`: the provider's own secret is the credential
every consumer of that provision receives, in the shape of a pair credential. The vault keeps one
value, sealed to the provider, to every consumer that holds the provision and to the operator, all
under one generation stamp; a consumer binding later, or `secret rotate` on the provider's secret,
makes a fresh value and seals it to every holder in one act, and the rotate command sends every
holding machine together. An accepted value is sealed to the consumers of the moment and never
remade: a consumer binding after it is refused with the way out (ADR 0113). The named own secret
must say how it is taken (issue 180), so the provider's start applies the file.

A need carries the shared secret's name from either side of the machine boundary; the plan mints a
consumer's copy from the provider's value. Registered manifests keep their bytes.
2026-10-01 12:26:44 +02:00
jschoubben 1469f5ff82 A module's own secret rotates when its definition says the module reads it at start (hq 180)
`secret rotate <node> <module> <name>` makes the secret anew the way the first mint did, seals it
to the machine and the operator, and sends the machine, so the module starts again on the new value
— said in the log with who asked and when, never the value. Only for a secret whose definition says
`"taken": "at-start"`: an own secret is now a path, or {path, taken}, and a definition that says
nothing of how a secret is taken is refused with the word to write, because a credential rotated
under software that never reads it again is worse than one left alone (issue 179). `applied` is
refused by name until the staged form ADR 0114 decided is built; a value given to the mesh is
refused as ADR 0113 says. `rotate` is a verb on the controller's seat with two shapes — a pair
credential by provision, an own secret by machine, module and name — so the console can ask.
Registered manifests keep their bytes: a path alone is written back as a path.
2026-10-01 11:41:49 +02:00
jschoubben ad797d8742 A routed name resolves to the node whose proxy serves it, never to a provider merely told it (hq 178)
The names region attributed a composed name to whichever labelled contribution a map yielded last.
A dashboard contributes its label to its route and to the identity provider, which must know the
public name for a redirect; so on one plan grafana.<domain> pointed at the proxy's machine and on
the next at the identity provider's, and the whole region flipped with it (forge issue 227). And a
module routed several times contributed no name at all, because the single-value reading of its
contributions is empty for the many shape.

Now every node's resolution is read first and the names are attributed across them at once: the
terminus serves the name — the provider that is not itself published under a labelled name through
another — walked in order, so one mesh yields one region. Name-agnostic, structural, deterministic.
2026-10-01 02:03:50 +02:00
jschoubben 7e4a0ecf9a Two store-backed tests rotted because nothing runs the check (novox/hq issue 177)
The converged-declaration guard still expected `hosts` on a container after c978aa7 took it off
every container, and the adopted-anchor fixture reported no outward link after ADR 0140 made a
filter depend on one. Both failed under `make check` since 2026-09-28/30; the build does not run the
check, so the mesh never saw it. The guard is re-captured with the change named — a field an older
host never sees is the one change it permits — and the fixture reports a link as a real host does.
2026-10-01 01:37:18 +02:00
jschoubben 076e0ae259 A build is taken in where its outcome is heard, and the build tool answers at once (issue 176)
The console's `build` tool answered "no build machine answered within 0s", handed a forge path to
git as written, and a build heard afterwards was recorded and never registered: recording and
registration lived only in the waiting caller, and the tool did not wait.

Now one function takes a build's outcome in — records it, parses the manifest, refuses a definition
naming an installation, registers the module with its source as the seat and path the request
carried — and both the waiting command and the daemon that follows the role's `built` event call
it. `build --wait 0` asks and returns with the id; `builds --log <id>` follows it. The seat verb
says `--self` for a repository given without a scheme.
2026-10-01 01:27:04 +02:00
jschoubben 17f7cb0d9c A build says what it does on the bus, as it happens (novox/hq ADR 0157)
The build-machine seat emits `started` and `log.<build id>` beside `built`. Every line the builder
speaks — each step, each command with its duration, and on failure the command's own output — goes
to stderr as before and onto the bus under the build's id, one subject per build, kept a week in
EVENTS with every other event. `builds --log <id>` reads it back from the stream with a consumer
that is gone when the reading is done, on the command line and as the controller's seat verb;
`builds` lists each build's id and `build` says the id it asked with.

Lines are core publishes with a sequence number, so a build is not slowed by an ack per line and a
gap is visible; `started` and `built` are awaited into the stream. The seat protocol widens
additively at the controller's next start; the holder's grant follows on the broker node's next
composition.
2026-10-01 00:43:07 +02:00
jschoubben 05d977666a A setting reaches only what declares it, the mesh places its own files, registration refuses a name
Three of novox/hq's group-4 leftovers, one branch.

Issue 173: a module's settings reached every route it contributed, every database it asked for and
every served fact its consumers read — a mail server's site name arrived at the proxy as a route
fact. A setting now overrides a key a contribution or served fact declares and adds none; a file
still merges any key, and a key nothing takes is named as stray instead of dropped silently.

Issue 174: the mesh's own files for a module — its bus credential, its merged config, its bindings —
were placed by the definition under /var/lib/mesh/<module>, 232 host paths in 50 definitions. A
directory may now say `place: "mesh"` and resolves to <root>/mesh/<module>; a directory beneath a
placed one may state its path as `${dir:<id>}/<rest>` and moves with it. The proof test resolves
both catalogues and compares: 48 definitions, no path moved. The controller's own manifest is
converted here; the catalogue in mesh-catalog.

ADR 0155: the installation check moves to registration. `module add` and a build's result both
refuse a definition that names an installation, in the check's words, with the way out; the build
stays recorded.
2026-09-30 22:29:28 +02:00
jschoubben d9dbc9a59a A definition names no installation: the check, an operator's value, a context on the git seat
InstallationProblems judges every value the mesh acts on for a name under a public top-level domain
or a public address, with prose, the world's registries, resolvers and certificate authorities
exempt, and a name a resource means on purpose declared with its reason (names-on-purpose). Run by
module check and a catalogue-wide test, not yet at registration, while the declared list shrinks.
${setting:<key>} fills a file from the assignment's settings and is refused when nothing set it.
A build context may live on the git seat; the request carries the seat's clone base (novox/hq ADR
0112, ADR 0155, issues 122 and 134).
2026-09-30 18:38:06 +02:00
jschoubben 5ea0e87059 A JSON verb's answer is its standard output alone
status --json prints its warnings beside the document; parsed from both streams together the first
status asked through the console carried no answer as data. Output stays both streams, in order.
2026-09-30 18:18:43 +02:00
jschoubben e9df5dccab The mesh's own verbs are the mesh-controller seat's tools
A seat's protocol lives in the store (migration 0047; seeded additively), a served verb carries its
description and schema, holding a mesh seat requires serving its verbs, a node-scoped seat's tool
carries the node, and the control plane serves status, nodes, node, modules, seats, builds, plan,
assign, unassign, push, build and tools on its seat by running the same commands (novox/hq ADR 0132,
ADR 0154, design 33). A grant of * reaches a role's tools; seat:<seat>.<verb> grants one.
2026-09-30 17:39:38 +02:00
jschoubben 2882b5fcb1 A module may invoke tools, and a manifest is checked where it is written
invokes: a manifest word that becomes exactly the publish grant a person's account gets (ADR 0152),
derived by the same composition; refused at parse when it names no tool. module check <file|dir>...
runs what registration runs with no store, for a manifest in any repository (hq issue 148).
2026-09-30 16:12:43 +02:00
jschoubben 46f324b10b A holder by derivation is recorded before an assignment can unsettle it (hq 170)
`assign ace postgres` made the control plane's own store unresolvable:
postgres's manifest claims mesh-store, nobody was ever recorded as its
holder, and with two eligible assignments and nothing on record both
claimed and both were refused — novox's included. ADR 0110 says the
assignment holds, by a deliberate act; ADR 0131 gave the record its force
but left a seat nobody handed over held by whichever assignment happened
to be alone.

Before acting on an assignment the controller now writes the derived
answer down: every mesh-scoped seat the store knows, resolved to exactly
one holder with nothing on record, gets that holder recorded — the same
record `seat <name> --to <node>/<module>` makes by hand. The next
assignment able to hold the seat then stands beside the holder, eligible
and silent. A seat with two derived claimants is left for a person; a
seat on record is never rewritten; seats the store does not list stay
held by derivation as before. And the refusal, when it still happens,
names the handover that records the holder.

Verified: catalogue tests against the real catalogue; the cmd suite
against a store (the only failure, TestConvergingPreviewsThenChanges…,
fails identically on main).
2026-09-30 14:39:59 +02:00
jschoubben 9a5584b1b6 Each send is numbered, inside the signed bytes
novox/hq 04-ISSUES/107. The controller already held a per-node lock while
it composed and recorded each send; the order existed and was thrown away
at the wire. Each send now takes the next number for its node, one
higher than the last, under that hold and before the body exists — so
the number is inside what the mesh signs, and a replayed older
declaration cannot borrow a newer one's.

Zero is not sent. A host reads absence as "no order claimed", which is
the shape of every declaration before this, so nothing that worked
before changes for a machine sent nothing since numbering existed.

One subtlety, and it is the one that would have read every machine as
behind for ever: the mesh decides a machine is behind by comparing the
digest of what it WOULD send against what it DID send, and a number
changes the bytes. The read-only comparison composes with the number the
machine was LAST sent, not a fresh one, so it is byte for byte what was
sent when nothing else changed.

Hosts went first and every machine runs one that understands the field.
2026-09-30 14:09:12 +02:00
jschoubben 1d9c102889 A commit has no order, so the mesh says who runs what and claims no newer
novox/hq 04-ISSUES/087. The version I shipped this morning said "N
machine(s) run an older host than another machine does" and worked it out
by comparing versions as strings. A host reports its version as a commit.
Commits have no order.

On the live mesh it named the three machines running the NEWER host as the
ones behind: `ced54d4` sorts above `04a27ca` and means nothing. An
arbitrary lexicographic result, presented as a fact, about the one thing
this was built to make trustworthy.

It now reports the split — which machines run which version — and claims
no ordering:

  4 machine(s) do not all run the same host:
    04a27ca      g14, novox, shanks
    ced54d4      ace

    a host refuses a declaration carrying a field it does not know, whole
    — so the mesh may send only what every one of these understands. Which
    of them is newer is not readable from a commit; that needs a version
    the host reports as ordered

More useful as well as more honest: the reader sees who is on which side
of the split, which is what decides whether a field can be sent.

A report that confidently says the opposite of the truth is worse than one
that says less — which is the subject of 04-ISSUES/145, arriving by my own
door within an hour of my closing it.
2026-09-30 09:28:56 +02:00
jschoubben 1da96e8803 The all-well sentence says what it is not a claim about
novox/hq 04-ISSUES/145. "N machine(s), all doing what they were told, all
heard from, running what the mesh would send them, and every module
current with its source" was true for eleven hours of a mesh in which no
module could reach another. An operator read it, and every routine check
they made afterwards — ports from outside, routed services, egress —
passed, because the broken path was module-to-module over the machine's
own name and nothing exercises that.

Every question the sentence answers is about the mesh and a machine
agreeing: applied what it was sent, matches what would be sent, built from
what the source has. None dials a provision, and the mesh composes every
one of those grants itself. So the sentence now says so, in the reader's
way, immediately below it.

This is not the check ADR 0146 describes and does not pretend to be. It
closes the distance between "the machines are as the mesh described them"
and "it works" by naming it, which is where the eleven hours went.

Also: printStatus is separated from the asking, so its exact words can be
read by a test with no store, bus or machine. Those words have been acted
on and been misleading twice — here, and a held module reading as a
machine doing what it was told (04-ISSUES/125) — which makes them the
thing worth holding still.
2026-09-30 08:58:59 +02:00
jschoubben 7683ba8b5b The mesh knows which host runs a machine, and says who is behind another
novox/hq 04-ISSUES/087. A host refuses a declaration carrying a field it
does not know, and refuses it WHOLE — deliberately, because that keeps a
half-understood declaration off a machine. It makes every new declaration
field a flag day: hosts first, then the controller. The mesh had no record
of which host any machine ran, so that order was kept by somebody
remembering it, and a machine that refused for this reason reported a
failure with nothing saying why.

The machine has reported its host version since ADR 0141. The
controller's own copy of the report did not have the field, so it was
unmarshalled into nothing and thrown away on arrival. It has it now,
records it, and shows it in `node show` — "not reported" rather than
blank, because a machine that has not said is not a machine running
nothing.

Status says which machines run an older host than another machine does,
and which is newest. Deliberately disagreement rather than staleness:
nothing delivers a host version yet (ADR 0141, accepted and not built), so
the mesh holds no canonical current version and cannot honestly say a
machine is behind THE host. What it can say is that the oldest host in the
mesh is what the mesh may send.

A machine that has reported nothing is left out rather than called
behind. Versions compare as strings, which suits the timestamps and
commits this mesh uses and is wrong for a scheme where "10" sorts before
"9" — said in the code, at the place that would have to learn.
2026-09-30 08:53:59 +02:00
jschoubben bfd983e3f8 A held module is in status, and it stops the mesh reading as well
novox/hq 04-ISSUES/125. A module assigned to a machine and never taken
runs none of what it declares. Status had no vocabulary for it: the
machine was heard from, current, and doing what it was told, so the mesh
printed "all doing what they were told" — which was true, and was acted
on, and every public name on the machine went dark.

Status now names each module a machine is holding rather than running,
per machine and with a count, read from what the MACHINE reported rather
than from the mesh's take-time listing — the machine is the only thing
that knows what it found. The JSON form carries the same rows, absent
rather than empty when nothing is held.

And a hold suppresses the all-well sentence, where being adopted does
not: adopted is a mode somebody chose, a module assigned and never taken
is a half-finished action with nothing left to finish it. The condition
is now a named function so the rule lives in one place and a test binds
to the real thing rather than a copy of it.

untakenModules raises a read it cannot make rather than answering "holding
nothing" from a failed query, which is the shape this whole issue is.
2026-09-30 08:46:20 +02:00
jschoubben e6ddc59cde A consumer a machine is bound to keeps the subject that works
novox/hq 04-ISSUES/156. Issue 146 put the stream into a push consumer's
delivery subject. The server will not move that subject while a
subscriber is bound, and answers `consumer name already in use` — a
message about the name, for a conflict about the subject. A node is bound
to its declaration consumer the whole time it is up: that IS a node
listening. So every node consumer in a running mesh became one the
assertion could not bring to match, and the control plane crash-looped on
the assertion it makes before it serves. A fresh mesh showed nothing,
because nothing was bound.

Kept rather than deleted and re-made. Re-making moves the subject, and a
holder may not be allowed to subscribe to the new one yet: the wider
grant travels in the bus's user list, which this same control plane
composes and a machine applies minutes later. On the live mesh the nodes
are granted `_DELIVER.<node>` and not `_DELIVER.<node>.>`, so re-making
would have silenced every machine — worse than the collision it fixes,
and harder to undo.

Kept rather than fatal, which is what 146's change intended and did not
do. The bare subject still delivers, and collides only where one holder
has two consumers of one name. That is the controller's own pair, and the
controller is not bound to them while it asserts, so those do move.

Also: an existing consumer's deliver policy is carried across rather than
reasserted, because the server refuses to change it and where a consumer
starts is its history.

Two tests against a real server: a consumer with a subscriber bound keeps
its subject, is reported, and still delivers; one with nothing bound
moves, so 146's fix still applies where it matters.
2026-09-29 23:55:56 +02:00
jschoubben 775df79893 A machine the mesh could not read is not a machine that runs nothing
Three gatherers walk every node and pass over one whose plan will not
compose, so that one broken set does not cost the rest. They read a
plain error to mean that, and so read a store that was briefly
unreachable as a machine running nothing.

On the roster of routed names that is not a degraded answer but a false
one: it states to every machine at once that another machine's names do
not exist. Because the roster is part of every container's identity, a
control node replaced every container it ran — its own store, the
registry, the edge, mail, the bus — on a six-minute cycle for hours. The
loop closed through the store this is read from: each pass restarted it,
the read failed, one name left the roster, and the roster changing is
every container changing.

planFor now marks the two failures that really are the node's own — its
set not composing, and a setting that reaches nothing — and the three
gatherers pass over those and only those. Every other failure is raised,
naming the machine and the read, because a mesh-wide refusal with
nothing named in it is the other way to lose an evening.

novox/hq 04-ISSUES/152, and 151 for why a changed roster is a changed
container.
2026-09-29 23:26:00 +02:00
jschoubben e5c2eb20f2 A token is an account on the bus, and genesis can place the list
novox/hq 04-ISSUES/146. The composed user list names an enrolment user for
every machine with a live token and nothing minted a credential for it, so the
composer left it out as a user with no password — and every enrolment since the
mesh moved to this bus was refused before the mesh heard of it. The comment
above the issuing code already said the account is created before the token is
handed over; now it is. Recorded rather than minted, because the token's secret
is the password.

And 'broker accounts', which composes the same list the declaration carries and
writes it to standard output. For genesis, where no declaration can reach the
machine running the bus because that machine is not yet a node. It says what it
composed; whoever is raising the machine places it. A control plane that wrote
the file itself would have to learn where the bus keeps its configuration and
how to make it reload, which is the module's knowledge.
2026-09-29 17:36:50 +02:00
jschoubben 2c1733de8d The mesh makes the bus's certificate itself
novox/hq 04-ISSUES/146. The foundation made it by running openssl inside the
broker's image, which worked while the broker was one that carried it and
stopped the day the bus changed: the new one has a shell and no openssl, so
the step exited 127 and no mesh could be raised. No other image the bundle
names has it either, so there was nothing to substitute.

broker certificate --into <dir> writes the pair, --check is the step's verify.
Self-signed on purpose — a host pins this server's exact certificate (ADR
0004) and at genesis there is no authority to ask — and made once, because a
second certificate is one every host that pinned the first no longer believes.
The key is written before the certificate, so an interruption never leaves
something that looks finished.
2026-09-29 15:42:51 +02:00
jschoubben fe5988c536 The filter constrains what arrives from outside, and names no network
The forward chain blocked everything passing through the machine and then allowed
the machine's own containers back by naming their address ranges: 172.16.0.0/12 and
192.168.128.0/17 fixed here, the rest recorded per machine by 0043. Every way of
keeping that list correct fails — a constant describes one machine, a recorded range
goes stale in silence and cannot tell a network the mesh made from one a predecessor
left behind, and generating it from the modules would put half the rule set on the
machine.

The mesh has no position on a container reaching outward: that is not a port opened
to anybody. So both chains are written around the links traffic arrives on. What did
not arrive from outside is accepted in one line; what did meets the declared rules.
The tunnel is named beside the outward links rather than treated as inside, or a port
nothing declares would be reachable from every machine in the mesh.

A machine that has not reported an outward link is sent no filter and keeps the one
it has, refused where a person reads it rather than as a rule set that will not load.

Removes the two constants, `node networks`, and the column behind it. novox/hq ADR
0140, superseding 0137 and 0139.
2026-09-29 01:01:29 +02:00
jschoubben 54812306be A machine says which networks it routes, and its filter forwards them
The derived filter denies forwarding by default and then allows the container
runtime's two default pools, named in this code with a comment saying a machine
configured otherwise needs to say so -- and no way to say it. So the filter was
right on a machine using the defaults and silently wrong on any other.

Measured today: flipping a workstation to the derived filter cut egress for five
of its container networks and for every network its test beds create, because
those come from ranges the defaults do not cover. Nothing reported a fault; the
guests just could not reach anything, while the machine reported it had applied
what it was told.

A node-level fact beside the public domain, because the machine routes them and
the module that loads the filter may be replaced. Added to the defaults, never
replacing them. Their guests also keep address and name service, without which a
network does not work at all, and the converge preview now says what a machine
routes instead of leaving it to a sentence about what it cannot preview.
2026-09-28 21:29:10 +02:00