/etc/hosts is the machine's: the distribution's localhost lines, the
operator's own entries, and marked blocks other tools maintain there.
Writing node-names whole replaced all of it the moment the private
network was taken, and every later write by those tools was lost at
the next machine joining. The node-names fact is now emitted with
into: "block", so the host owns only its marked region and keeps the
rest byte for byte. The region holds only the mesh's names: no header
claiming the file, no localhost, no 127.0.1.1 line — the floor was
never the mesh's to write. How a fact is written is a property of the
fact in the closed table; node-zones stays a whole file the mesh owns.
Sequencing: a host older than the block mode refuses the whole
declaration on an unknown into, so every host must be upgraded before
this controller is rolled out.
The map the control plane hands a resolution holds both: the machines, and every name
the mesh was told to route to whichever machine serves it. A container's hosts wants all
of it, so a routed name resolves to the proxy. A resolver's zones want only the machines:
told the mesh's suffix is its own it answers authoritatively for everything under it and
forwards none of it, so a routed name with the suffix appended — drive.example.test.internal
— is a name nobody will ever ask for, standing beside the machines and looking as real.
Found composing the resolver's first assignment on a live machine, before pushing it.
hq issue 111.
hal dnsmasq-app conversion, hq 08-connectivity. Converting the resolver from the module it
replaces made it forward what it cannot answer, which is what the predecessor's does, and
that found two things the controller did not say.
A resolver that forwards must not send a mesh name it does not know upstream: the
`node-zones` fact now carries `local=/<suffix>/` beside the wildcards, written here rather
than in the daemon's configuration because the suffix is the mesh's choice and this file is
the one place the mesh writes what it chose. The default lives in one helper now instead of
being spelled in two functions.
The predecessor points the container runtime's `dns` at the machine's own tunnel address —
a container cannot reach the machine's loopback. A module writing that key needs the
address, and `${machine:at}` is the machine's name; a runtime's resolver list cannot be a
name it would need that resolver to look up. So a module may say `${machine:address}`: what
`at` resolves to, read from the same names the hosts file and the wildcards are written
from, absent — and refused — off the network like `at` is.
The `mesh-resolver` and `resolver-data` constants go: nothing provided or consumed either,
the fact and `mesh-addressing` are the mechanism, and a requirement nothing provides is
refused at resolution.
Tests: the catalogue's dnsmasq, resolv-conf and resolved-split-dns manifests are parsed
and composed as a machine would receive them — fixed upstreams, no-resolv, 127.0.0.1, the
machines file, the runtime's key, the pair that decides what a machine asks refused on one
node; and on a real mesh the resolver's machines file is composed with a wildcard per
machine on the network and composed again without one that left, mirroring the hosts fact.
mesh-names, mesh-resolver and the names half of the overlay generators are gone.
They ran no software and could not be swapped for anything, which is the test of
whether something is a module at all — they existed because computed output
needed somewhere to live, and the control plane's only shape for output was a
module.
Now a module says where it wants what the mesh knows:
facts: { node-zones: /etc/mesh-resolver/nodes.conf }
and is given a file, under its own name, applied and removed like anything else
it declares. Two facts exist: node-names (a hosts file — exact names) and
node-zones (every machine as a wildcard, *.homer.internal is homer). Asking for
a fact the mesh does not compute is refused naming what would have worked,
because a daemon that starts and reads a file nobody wrote is a worse way to
find out.
The names ride with the network now: wireguard's manifest asks for node-names
into /etc/hosts, because being on the private network is what gives a machine a
name. networking no longer requires name-resolution — names are not a provision,
and the module that answered it ran nothing.
One behaviour inverted, deliberately: choosing another VPN used to drag
WireGuard in anyway, because only WireGuard provided the addressing the names
module required — the node-scope claim existed to at least make that loud. With
names as a fact there is nothing to drag in: tailscale assigned means tailscale,
alone. The claim still catches two VPNs assigned explicitly.
And a machine the mesh cannot place is left out of both files rather than named
at nothing: a name resolving to nothing hangs a connection, where an unknown
name fails at once and says so. In practice that is only ever a token issued and
not yet used — a machine that has announced itself has an address.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01D6qtiYU3P9jk3pnAXyAFyx
jochen
jschoubben