Every one of these declared `own-secrets` pointing at a path called
`.env` and then mounted it as `env-file`. The file's whole content is
the password. Docker reads that as a malformed line and the container
starts with no password set — which is not a failure to start, it is a
service running with the wrong credential.
They parsed, they resolved, and none of them could ever have worked.
That is what a manifest checked only by the parser buys.
Each now keeps the sealed file as what it is — a password, alone — and
declares a file beside it whose content says ${secret:name}. The host
fills the hole on the machine, which is the only place both halves
exist. The provisioners mount the bare file, because they read a
password file and always did.
Two tests, both driven from the manifests on disk rather than from
fixtures: every ${secret:x} must name something the module declared, and
nothing may read a bare password file as an env file. Injecting the
shipped bug reproduces it word for word.
Keycloak, Gitea and Mailu still cannot connect to their databases, for
the reason in 04-ISSUES/023 — the user name is the provisioner's
invention and the bound values cannot reach a config file. Their own
credentials are right now; that half was independent and is done.
novox/hq 04-ISSUES/022. A credential was keyed by provision, consumer
node and provider node, so "who is asking" was answered by naming a
host. The node this mesh exists to take over runs eight modules against
one database server.
The symptom had two halves and only one was loud. The provider refused,
naming the modules and explaining they would share one credential, which
reads as a decision rather than a limit. The consumer did not refuse: it
resolved cleanly, wrote one module's credential file and left the others
absent — a service that starts and cannot authenticate, with nothing
saying why. That is 021 again on a different axis.
Three modules wanting one database produced one need, carrying whichever
module mentioned it first, because the resolution walk is a work-list
over names. The fan-out now happens in one place, after the walk. The
record path already did this correctly and said why: a consumer here is
a module on a machine. It is the same rule.
Downstream: the secret's key gains the consuming module, the grant file
is named after both halves, needs are matched by provision and module
rather than provision alone, and the provisioners name the role and the
access key after the module. The refusal in ContributionsTo is gone
because there is nothing left to refuse.
Worth stating plainly: without that refusal, gitea's login would have
opened keycloak's database. From the provisioner's side it created
exactly what it was asked to create.
Existing secrets are discarded rather than backfilled. They cannot say
which module they were for, and a secret is remade and delivered to both
ends on the next push — so this costs one rotation and invents nothing.
Also guards the role name against PostgreSQL's 63-byte truncation, which
is a notice rather than an error and would reintroduce exactly this
collision at a length nobody tests.
Three faults injected — the fan-out removed, needs matched by name
alone, the grant file named after the machine — each caught.
The gap that stopped keycloak and gitea from starting. A granted
credential arrives as a file whose entire content is the password, which
is what a program reading a password file wants — and most programs do
not read one. They read KEY=value, or a JSON document with the token at
an attribute inside it. A module in that position could be handed the
bare value or nothing, and both are useless.
The host has been able to do this all along: content with ${secret:name}
in it, sealed values beside it, substitution on the machine, which is
the only place both halves exist. Nothing filled the values in, so the
hole could be written and never closed and the host refused the file.
That refusal was correct and the feature was unreachable.
A module reaches its own secrets and the credentials it was granted —
both things it wrote in its own manifest — and nothing else. Naming
another module's is refused: two modules on one machine are as separate
as two on different machines, and letting one read the other's
credential by guessing a name would end that to save writing a file.
Filling runs after settings, which is the whole reason it sits where it
does. A setting is how a placeholder gets into a JSON document in the
first place — the desktop client that reads its token from an attribute,
not an environment variable. Before the merge that file's content is
"{}" and asks for nothing.
Tested through Declaration rather than through the helper. Three times
in this repository a test asserted on a helper while the code calling it
was wrong, and each time the injected fault stayed silent. Three faults
injected here — the call removed, the call moved before settings, and
the module boundary widened — each caught by the test meant for it.
novox/hq 04-ISSUES/021. Two modules where one provided what the other
required, on one node, resolved cleanly with zero needs: no credential
was made, the consumer's secret file was never written, and whatever
read it would fail somewhere else entirely. Nothing was refused and
nothing was reported.
The world a node resolves against is every OTHER node, so a provider on
the same machine never became a Needed, and the credential loop walks
Needs. Every step reasonable, the sum a silent gap.
It survived because everything proven until now was cross-machine —
the interesting case for a mesh and the rare one in practice. The first
module to want a database on its own machine was the first real one.
The assumption underneath was that a local consumer needs no credential,
which holds for a process reaching a unix socket where the system can
vouch for the caller. It does not hold for containers, which is how
nearly everything here runs: the consumer reaches the provider over TCP
from its own container and the database asks for a password exactly as
it would from another machine. **The machine stops being a trust
boundary once both ends are containers.**
A brokered provision answered here is now a need naming this node, and
carries what the provider serves — which a local provider never
contributes through the world. A name nothing grants is unchanged: a
shell answered here is answered, and nothing more is owed. Both
directions tested, both injections bite.
novox/hq ADR 0035: one implementation, several surfaces, and a surface
holds no decisions. The act of assigning — including that an assignment
which does not resolve is kept and still refused — moved into acts.go,
and the command line now calls it too. Two surfaces, one refusal, in the
same words.
It will not run without --issuer, and refuses at start rather than per
request so it is found by whoever ran it rather than by whoever finds
it. There is no flag that removes the check.
The authenticator is honest about what it is: no token can be verified
until an identity provider exists, because that is a module and none is
running, so every request is refused and told that the command line
still works. A surface that functioned without authentication would be
one somebody left running — and the board this stands behind is
published on a public name.
Four refusals, four tests. The last one first asserted "not 200", which
passed because a request with no database fails at the store anyway — it
proved nothing about whether the input was checked. It now asserts the
specific refusal, and bites when the check is removed.
The command refused every real invocation. Go's flag package stops
parsing at the first non-flag argument, so with the positionals first —
the order that reads correctly — `--from -` stayed among them and the
count check rejected it.
The host's own parser carries a note about this exact fault, and the
version it describes is worse: there a flag somebody passed was silently
ignored and the command succeeded anyway. This one at least refused.
The tests did not catch it because every case in them was a rejection.
The command was broken in the only way that matters — it refused what it
is for — and the suite was green. The lab found it at the first call.
Two tests now: the helper, and the command itself with a --from naming a
file that is not there, so the complaint must be about the file rather
than about usage. The second exists because injecting against the first
stayed silent: testing the helper alone left the command free to ignore
it entirely.
The entry point for adopting something already running, and the half
that was missing. The store has carried the distinction since the
beginning — a module secret records whether it was `made` or `accepted`,
and refuses to invent a replacement for the second — and
AcceptSecretForModule existed, with exactly one caller: the broker
account issued to a build machine. Nothing else could write one.
Without it every module secret is generated, which against a database
that already exists puts 32 random bytes where a working credential was.
The machine applies it, reports success, and whatever reads it fails to
authenticate somewhere else entirely, with the mesh insisting the secret
was delivered — which it was.
The value is read from a file or from standard input, never from an
argument: a value on the command line is in the shell's history and in
the process list. Same path a model-access key already takes, and no new
dependency — the first version reached for x/term and the existing one
needed nothing.
Sealed on the way in, plaintext discarded, and not printed back. The
only difference from a generated secret is where the value came from.
Two rules with a test each, and the second is the one that would have
been got wrong: only the line ending is removed, never surrounding
space. Trimming both ends is the obvious thing and would deliver a
password chosen with a leading space as a different password, silently.
Both were briefly untested for different reasons — the trimming lived
where no test could reach it, and then a -run filter matched neither
test. Extracted, and injected against the whole suite.
Work breakdown 1.4. The mesh's own authority certifies internal names
and always did; a name reachable from outside needs one the world
already trusts, and there was no ACME anywhere in this repository.
Uses acme/autocert from x/crypto, which was already a dependency — one
indirect addition (x/net, for idna) and no new direct one.
Three things worth more than the feature:
**Staging is the default** (novox/hq 04-ISSUES/004). Production issuance
is rate-limited per domain and per account and does not replenish
quickly. Defaulting to production would leave the safe path depending on
remembering to opt out, on exactly the work most likely to iterate. A
staging certificate is trusted by no browser, so the mistake announces
itself on the first request rather than a fortnight later.
**A certificate is only asked for on a name the mesh routes here.**
Without that policy, anything that can reach the port and send a name
triggers an order for it — a scan becomes a stream of failed orders
against the account's rate limit, and the proxy looks healthy
throughout. What it may certify is what it was told to serve.
**A private issuer is trusted by naming a file, never by skipping
verification.** Skip would still apply on the day this points at a
public issuer, and nothing would say so.
TLS is opt-in: without TLS_LISTEN the proxy serves plain HTTP exactly as
before, which is what an internal-only mesh wants. With it and no cache,
it refuses rather than defaulting — every restart would otherwise order
new certificates, silently, until the rate limit says it does not.
Work breakdown 1.2. Two sessions run on the control-plane node — the
node's own and the mesh's (novox/hq ADR 0026) — so a machine stopped
being a usable answer to "whose licence is this".
14-model-access.md called per-module-per-machine "a step toward it and
not it", and that is true of a worker: many run on one machine from one
module, so the pair cannot name them apart. It is not true of a session.
The two sessions are two modules — the same mechanism started in
different context roots, and a context root is what a module delivers —
so (node, module) tells them apart and nothing needed adding.
Checked rather than argued: different licences on one machine, each with
its own key, and a session on no licence is not handed the other's.
The third test exists because a fault injection stayed silent. The first
two put the sessions on different licences, so the licence alone
disambiguates and the module argument is never load-bearing — removing
it from the query changed nothing and everything still passed. Two
sessions on the SAME licence is the case that needs the pair to be the
identity: releasing one must leave the other, and a machine-shaped
answer takes both.
Manifests for a provider and a consumer, so the contract can be read
rather than only exercised through a lab fixture that stages the grants
by hand.
Checked as a pair rather than separately, because two manifests that
only ever parse alone are two manifests nobody has held against each
other. The test asserts the names match, that each side says where it
wants to be told, and that the consumer contributes the key the
provisioner actually reads.
That last one is the trap worth having a test for: a consumer
contributing "name" — which is exactly what a database consumer
contributes — resolves cleanly, deploys, and then fails on the machine
with "asked for a bucket and did not name it". Nothing in that message
points back at the manifest that caused it. Both mistakes were made
while writing these two files.
Phase 1.1 of the work breakdown. The finding that shaped it came before
any code: **the control plane special-cases nothing.** provides,
requires, contributes and grants are entirely name-agnostic, so asking
for a bucket needed no change to the mesh at all — only a provider that
answers. What was missing was the last step, where something on the
machine turns a delivered secret into a key that works.
Named `s3-bucket` by ADR 0027's test: a consumer's code is written
against the S3 API, and swapping one store for another does not break
it, so the coupling is to the protocol rather than the product — which
is what the substrate design already said about AMQP, S3 and OCI.
Proven on a real store, 7 assertions: a generated secret becomes a
working key; rotation makes the new one work and the old one stop; a
consumer that goes away loses its key; a key nobody here made is left
alone; a manifest naming a credential that was never written is refused;
an unusable bucket name is refused naming the consumer that asked.
**And the one a database does not need.** One PostgreSQL server holds
separate databases and the product enforces the boundary; one object
store holds every bucket behind one endpoint, so a consumer being unable
to reach another's is a policy somebody wrote. A policy granting
arn:aws:s3:::* would pass every other test in the file, so the unit
tests assert what the policy does NOT say.
It drives the vendor's command line rather than an SDK: the admin API
encrypts its request bodies, which is why a separate admin library
exists, and pulling that in would add a system-metrics dependency tree
to a repository with none in order to create a user.
A migration refused when the record and the files disagree is the
property that makes a schema trustworthy months later. The test asserted
it without naming the decision, so an audit of which decisions are
defended could not see it. novox/hq ADR 0017.
Provisions were named after roles: provides "database", requires
"database". Nothing distinguished engines, so a module written against
PostgreSQL could be matched to a provider of SQL Server, resolve as
satisfied, deploy, and fail on its first query — with nothing
connecting that error back to a match made elsewhere by something that
believed it had done its job.
The failure is in the direction that hides. Refusing on ambiguity
exists precisely so this does not happen, and the generic name walked
around it: with one provider of each name nothing is ambiguous, so
nothing is asked.
How it got in: every resolver test had exactly one provider per name,
so no mismatch was expressible and none was caught. The fixtures agreed
with the design — the same fault as the imagined test output in
04-ISSUES/005, at the level of a name.
Refused rather than documented, because the old naming *was* the
documented convention. Providing database/db/sql/sql-database is now a
parse error naming what to write instead.
The rule is about coupling, not specificity everywhere: route and
resolver stay role-named, because a consumer genuinely cannot tell
which proxy answered. novox/hq ADR 0027.
dnsmasq read /etc/resolv.conf to find where to forward. Whatever points a
machine at the mesh writes its own address into that file — so dnsmasq's
upstream was dnsmasq, and every query it could not answer locally looped. Its
receive queue filled with 15KB of them and every lookup on the machine hung,
which is why this arrived as a thirty-second timeout rather than a wrong
answer.
It needs no upstream at all: the asking module routes only the mesh's suffix
here and leaves everything else where the machine already sent it. And it names
none, because choosing one would send every query this machine makes somewhere
nobody agreed to.
Also corrected: the comment claiming it takes only 127.0.0.55. Listening on a
loopback address makes dnsmasq take the rest of loopback with it, 127.0.0.1
included — which is what claiming `the-dns-port` already says, and which the
comment was quietly denying. That is the same comfortable claim as ".54 is
free", in the same file, made twice.
It sat beside `secrets` — where a *provision's* credential lands on a consumer.
Both were name-to-path, both held something secret, and the names
distinguished them not at all. Reaching for the wrong one parsed cleanly and
failed somewhere else entirely, which is the shape of fault this whole design
exists to prevent, sitting in the manifest format.
The axis that separates them is not how secret they are — both are — but
whose. `secrets` is keyed by the provision it is for and belongs to a
relationship with another machine. `own-secrets` is keyed by a name the module
chose and belongs to nobody else.
A manifest using the old name is told the new one rather than refused with
"unknown field": whoever wrote it knew what they meant, and the mesh knows what
it is called now. An invented key is still refused as one rather than guessed
at.
Found by auditing the 19 manifest fields for whether any could be mistaken for
another. This was the only pair that could — and while checking it, a second
instance of the same collision turned up one layer down: `Manifest.Needs` and
`Resolution.Needs` were different concepts sharing a name in Go. The rename
separates those too.
`127.0.0.54` is systemd-resolved's DNS *proxy* stub. The module asserted it was
free, in a comment that read as reasoned — "not .53, that is
systemd-resolved's" — and it was simply wrong: resolved holds both. dnsmasq
could not create the socket and never started.
Nothing in a unit test could have caught it. They checked the module names an
address and that the asking modules point at the same one, and all of that
passed while the daemon could not start. Only a machine knows which addresses
are spare, which is the argument for proving a module that asserts facts about
machines on a machine, before believing the assertions.
So it moves to .55, and says what that is: a convention, not a reservation. If
a future systemd takes it, this line changes and nothing else does.
The tests now derive the address from the serving module and check the two
asking modules agree with it, rather than naming it a fourth time — that fourth
place is the one nobody would think to change.
And the lab assigns `resolved-split-dns` rather than `resolv-conf`: those
machines run systemd-resolved, which owns the file. The two claim the same
thing precisely so the wrong choice is a refusal rather than a fight, and
picking the wrong one was testing the fight.
Working out what a machine should be reaches the identity context for its
certificate and the licence context for its model access. Both were opened —
and waited on — inside functions called for every node in a push. Two machines
hid it. Fifty would be fifty connect-and-wait cycles for data that does not
change while the push runs.
So a command holds what it has open, and passes it. Each context is opened on
first use rather than up front, because most commands need one and paying to
reach three would be the same waste from the other side.
The contexts stay separate, which is the point: this is one struct holding
three connections to three databases, not one connection to a shared one. No
context reaches another's store, and each still holds only its own credential
(novox/hq ADR 0008).
A pure move again — the gate is green before and after, and no test changed.
2,769 lines and 59 functions, holding command parsing, store opening,
resolution, the board, rotation, licences, builds and status rendering.
Nothing in it was wrong. It grew because appending was always the cheapest next
step, and no single edit was the one that should have been a new file.
That is exactly how novox/hq ADR 0001 records `hal/sdk` reaching 155 files and
34,636 lines — "containing code from every context", with each addition
avoiding a cycle and none of them the mistake. This is the same shape at 8% of
the size, which is why it is worth doing now rather than noting.
Eight files, along boundaries that already existed: what a machine is; the
private network; the catalogue; working out what one machine should be; sending
it; builds; the three questions; and reaching each context's store. main.go
keeps what a main is for — parsing arguments and dispatching.
A pure move. No behaviour changed, no test changed, and the gate is green
before and after — which is the only thing that makes a refactor this size
safe to do in one commit.
The host does not sort, so the order written here is the order a machine
applies. Selection walks outward from what was assigned, which puts a consumer
before the thing it pulled in — and a service that reads a file another module
writes then starts before the file exists.
It fails, and the next reconcile fixes it. That is the worst shape a fault can
take: what gets remembered is that it works, and nobody looks again. It is
04-ISSUES/013 one level up from where that was found — there, the mesh's own
computed files came after a module's resources; here, a whole module comes
after the one that needed it.
Nothing had hit it because no module until now both required something with
resources of its own and had a resource depending on it. Writing the resolver
module was what made it reachable, and it would have shown up as dnsmasq
failing once on every fresh machine and working ever after.
Unrelated modules keep the order selection gave them — assigned first, then
what they pulled in. That order is meaningful, and reshuffling it would make
every declaration's diff unreadable for no gain.
Two modules requiring each other are both applied rather than refused: a cycle
is not a machine that cannot work, and refusing would make a cooperating pair
impossible to assign.
Three manifests and the rule that keeps them apart. Serving and asking are
genuinely different roles, and systemd-resolved can only do the second — it
cannot answer a wildcard, it routes the mesh's suffix to something that can. A
module that treated them as one role could not work, which is the mistake worth
naming rather than discovering.
So `the-dns-port` and `the-resolver-configuration` are two claims. A machine
gets one of each, and two of either is refused by the mesh rather than fought
over on the machine — which is what ADR 0009's table meant by listing resolvers
beside the seat and pid 1. That table names the resource `/etc/resolv.conf`,
which is what it is; a claim is a name in the catalogue's own form, and the
catalogue refuses the path as one.
Neither module knows anything about the machine it is on, which is what lets
them be static manifests: they name `mesh0` and `127.0.0.54`, both chosen by
the mesh, rather than an address only that machine has. Not 127.0.0.1 and not
127.0.0.53 — taking either would be a module claiming something it did not say
it claims.
A service can now reflect a file another module put on the machine, written
`<module>.<id>`. The resolver has to restart when the mesh rewrites the names;
without it, it would serve the names it started with for ever, with every
machine that joined afterwards unreachable and every check passing.
Services are named under the machine they run on — postgres.novox.internal,
plex.ace.internal. The first label is the service and the rest is the node, so
what has to resolve is anything under a node's name. What routes it once it
arrives is a proxy's concern and stays separate.
A hosts file cannot do that. It answers exact names, and a wildcard there would
mean writing down every service in advance — which is the enumeration the
arrangement exists to avoid. novox/hq 08-connectivity named this exact case as
the trigger for needing a resolver rather than a file, and it is the first
thing to meet it.
The mesh writes the data and runs no daemon. A resolver is third-party
software, and third-party software runs on the mesh rather than being of it
(ADR 0001): the mesh has no business shipping one, choosing which one, or
knowing its configuration language. What only the mesh can know is which
machines exist and where they are. A module that runs a resolver requires what
this provides and reads one file, so swapping the daemon changes that module
and nothing here.
Separate from names rather than part of them: a machine with no container
runtime can still have a hosts file, and folding them together would take exact
names away from a machine that cannot run a daemon in order to give it a
wildcard it cannot use either.
A machine with no address is left out. A wildcard pointing at nothing is worse
than no wildcard — every name under it resolves and then hangs, where an
unresolvable name fails at once and says which name it was.
Internal names are written to the machine's hosts file, which serves the
machine and not what the machine runs: a container gets its own hosts file
holding only its own hostname. So every name the mesh wrote was invisible to
the majority of things that need one — and on the machine it always worked,
which is exactly what made it easy to miss.
It was hit for real in the lab, and worked around by resolving the address on
the machine and passing it in. That workaround is now removed, and its absence
is the assertion.
A file rather than a resolver, which is the decision the mesh already made
about names and this extends rather than overturns: it works on every runtime,
needs no package and has no failure mode of its own. The stated trigger for a
resolver — names that are not one-per-node, service names, wildcards — is
still not met.
Given by the mesh, not chosen by a module: a module that listed the machines
would go stale the day one joins, and one that did not would be a module whose
containers cannot reach anything by name. A container that named its own keeps
them and gets the mesh's beside them.
Only containers, and not the ones on the machine's own network: a runtime
refuses to write a hosts file for those, and a file or a service given the
field is a declaration the host refuses outright — so getting it wrong breaks
the whole machine for something that was never about names.
The machine that most needed a firewall was the one that could not have one. A
hub is dialled by every node at other sites and needs its port open; a machine
that is not a hub dials out and needs nothing open. They are the same module,
and `listens` in a manifest is one answer for every machine that runs it — so
the machine a static answer gets wrong is the one facing the public internet.
A generator can now say what it opens, in a second interface rather than a
method on every generator: most have nothing to say here, and requiring an
empty method of each would be a cost paid everywhere for one caller.
The port is the one in the endpoint, which is where the interface takes its
ListenPort from. One source, so a rule set cannot open a port the interface is
not on. Open to everywhere and deliberately: a node at another site is not on
the private network until this port lets it on, so restricting it to the mesh
would be a rule that can never be satisfied by the thing it exists for.
And a generator that cannot say is refused rather than read as silence. Closing
a port on the evidence of a failure to look is how a machine is severed by a
fault somewhere else — and the machine it would sever is the hub, whose only
route to being fixed is the network it just closed.
Adding "not running what the mesh would send it" to `status` and not to the
board would have left two answers to one question with a person in front of
each — which is the single thing this page's design forbids, introduced by the
change that was supposed to make the question answerable.
The published JSON carries it as well, so the page, the command and anything
built against either say the same thing from the same read. Additive, because
that shape is hard to change once anything is built against it.
Never told stays separate from out of date on the page as it is everywhere
else: same remedy, and nobody has ever asked that machine to be anything.
It meant "failed or refused". So a machine that applied cleanly and whose
declaration has since changed was not behind — and novox/hq ADR 0010's
question, did my change go out?, was answerable exactly for the machines that
broke. For every machine that worked, the answer was silence whether the change
had gone out or not, which is the thing replacing a pipeline was supposed not
to cost.
The mesh now records a digest of what it last sent each machine. A digest
rather than the declaration: it can compute what a machine should be at any
moment, and keeping a copy would be a second account of it able to disagree
with the first. What cannot be recomputed is what was actually sent.
Recorded after the send, not before — a digest kept for something that failed
to send would make the machine look current for a declaration it never
received.
Never told stays separate from out of date. The remedy is the same push and the
situations are not alike: nobody has ever asked that machine to be anything.
And a machine the mesh could not work out is not reported as waiting, because
saying so would invent a comparison — that is `plan`'s answer to give.
`status` says it and `push --behind` sends it, or the flag would know something
the person reading the status does not.
novox/hq ADR 0009: a capability's presence gates an assignment and its detail
carries a value — seat: card1-DP-1, an architecture, an amount of memory. So
'can this run here' and 'what should it be configured as' are one fact read two
ways, and the mesh was keeping the first read and discarding the second.
The reason an absent capability is absent went the same way, which is the case
a person most needs: 'this machine has no container runtime' is the answer and
'docker is not installed' is why, and only the machine knows why.
`node show` says it back. Never reported and reported nothing stay different
things there — one machine has not run the host, the other ran it and can do
nothing, and those send a person to different places.
novox/hq 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/11-a-board.md, built. The board being replaced is
one service reading every context's database directly — ADR 0008 violated by
the one component with a reason to violate it. The cost is not hypothetical: a
boundary nothing may cross can move, and one thing crossing it is enough to
freeze it. A board that reads the provisioning tables breaks when provisioning
changes them, and the change then gets weighed against the board.
So the three questions are read once, by one function, for all three ways of
saying them — a person's status, its JSON, and this page. Three
implementations of "which machine is not doing what it was told" would be three
chances to disagree.
Refused and failed stay distinct all the way to the page: refused means the
machine is exactly as it was and what is wrong is in what was sent; failed
means it is in a state nobody declared. Different places to fix, so one word
for both would send half the readers to the wrong one.
It stores nothing, changes nothing, and every action it might offer already
exists as a command. A board that cannot reach the mesh says so rather than
rendering an empty page — an empty page says "nothing is wrong" in the one
situation where nobody can know that.
One test earns its place twice: a machine's own words are the whole reason the
page is useful and the one thing on it nobody in this repository wrote, so they
are shown and are not markup.
A status that names what is wrong and not what to do about it makes somebody go
and find the command — and the command is the whole point of having noticed.
The hint existed on one of the two paths that print this.
The pass that answers *what does this node offer* takes a failed resolution to
mean it learned nothing about that node. So refusing an unanswerable
requirement there made the machine disappear — and every other machine was then
told, wrongly, that the two of them shared no private network.
A wrong answer about a machine nobody asked about, caused by a fault on a
third. The lab found it: one module needing a licence that had not been added
yet made two unrelated machines look disconnected.
The second pass still refuses it, where the question is actually being asked.
Its own store, its own test database, the same shape every other context has.
Five properties: a key with nobody to seal it to is refused rather than kept
readably; a key is sealed once per holder and the blobs differ because they are
sealed to different machines; a holder recorded afterwards has none and the
existing ones keep theirs; releasing a consumer takes its key; and a licence
nobody recorded is refused by name.
The last was the only one whose message mattered and whose message was not
checked — the database's own foreign-key error is true and mentions a
constraint, which sends somebody to read a schema instead of typing the name
they meant.
Partial sealing now says how far it got. The person holding the key is the only
one who can finish, and running it again knowing what it will do is different
from running it hoping.
novox/hq ADR 0010 replaced a pipeline with a comparison, and named the risk:
losing the question "did my change go out?". The mesh could already answer
which modules are behind their source — and then a person read that list and
retyped each repository, which is a person being the loop, and the loop is the
thing the pipeline was doing before it was taken away.
The mirror of `push --behind`, with the same argument and the same refusal to
combine the two forms: naming a repository and asking which need building are
different requests.
One failing does not stop the others, for the same reason one broken module no
longer blocks a machine's whole declaration: a mesh where one bad repository
holds back nine good ones is a mesh where nobody dares add the tenth.
Each is built from its own recorded ref rather than the commit the mesh
happened to notice — pinning to that would quietly turn a tracked branch into
a pin.
novox/hq ADR 0024, gaps 1 and 2. The user's stated requirement, and the first
thing here that no machine can answer: a hosted model is on nobody's node and
is reached over the public internet, so the rule that refuses two ends sharing
no private network must not apply to it.
A licence is a named thing and the name is the operator's — *the personal
account*, *the organisation's* — because the whole point is saying which one a
given consumer uses, and an anonymous credential hanging off a provider cannot
be said. Many to many, so deliberately not a claim: two machines sharing an
account is ordinary rather than a collision.
Gap 2 is the missing verb, *accept*: take a value somebody supplied, seal it to
each holder, discard the plaintext. With the consequence stated rather than
hidden — a holder recorded after the key was supplied has no key and the mesh
cannot make one, so it is refused by name with the remedy, not silently handed
an empty file.
Refusal is felt, as the record warns: a mesh holding three ways to reach a
model refuses every consumer that has not chosen. So the refusal names the
candidates and the exact command. Being right is not the same as being usable.
Gaps 3 and 4 — a consumer that is not a machine, and switching as a reaction
rather than a declaration — remain gaps. Half-building them would put a
conditional in the declaration language, which is what ADR 0024 says plainly to
avoid.
Its own context, with its own store and its own credential: a licence is a
different aggregate from anything inventory owns, and it refers to nodes by
name because that is what crossing a context boundary may carry.
novox/hq 08-connectivity §3, built. The mirror of a database grant: there the
consumer supplies a name and receives credentials; here it supplies a target
and receives a name. Nothing new in the vocabulary — a route is a provision
like any other.
One field was missing and it is the one that matters for anything reaching
back: a contribution now carries where the mesh says that machine is. A reverse
proxy is told to send traffic to a consumer and has to open a connection, so
without it every provider implementing a provision would have to know how the
mesh names machines — a convention leaking into every module.
The proxy itself is an example, not part of the control plane: the contract is
the file, not this program. It replaces its table whole rather than merging,
because the file is the whole truth about who has a route and merging would
keep serving a name whose module was unassigned — the stale-route fault
08-connectivity lists as open, reintroduced one level down. A name it does not
serve is refused by saying which it does: a route withdrawn and a name that
never existed are different things.
The invariant novox/hq ADR 0001 records as unowned, and it was measurably
false in HAL: a provision documented as never rotating minted a new password on
every adoption and updated only the provider's row. Consumers on three nodes
held dead credentials for two days while the mesh reported success. Nothing
enumerated who held the old one.
Three things make that impossible here. The holders are a set the mesh can name
— each pair has its own credential, so rotating one consumer touches one role
and the affected list is a query rather than an assumption. Both ends are
pushed by this command rather than a later one, because leaving the sending to
whoever remembered is the fault exactly. And it is all-or-nothing: if any
affected machine cannot be resolved, nothing is sent and the old credential
keeps working, which is a mesh that has not rotated rather than one that has
half-rotated.
The window is stated rather than hidden: a role's password changes on the
provider and the file changes on the consumer, and they cannot be simultaneous.
The provisioner now takes its superuser password from the file the mesh wrote,
which is how the mesh delivers one. Passing it through the environment needed a
person in the middle of the one path that exists so there is not one — and put
a superuser password where `docker inspect` prints it.
The builder hashed the certificate and compared a bare digest against a
fingerprint written as `sha256:` followed by 64 hex characters. It could never
match — and it failed as "this is not the broker this builder was told about",
which is the one thing this check exists to report truthfully. A check that
cries wolf on every correct broker is worse than no check, because the first
thing anybody does is remove it.
The error now prints what was expected beside what arrived, the way the host's
has always done: without both, the message describes a mismatch nobody can
confirm.
And the pin check has its own test, driven against a real TLS handshake — it
accepts the certificate whose fingerprint the mesh wrote and refuses another.
A pin only ever exercised through a live broker is a pin nothing tests.
A binding was skipped when the provider turned out to be on the same node,
reasoning that a file saying "it is on this node" is a fact nobody needs. That
is right about the location and wrong about everything beside it: a binding
also carries what the provider said a consumer must know, which is the port,
and a consumer cannot invent that.
A build machine sharing a node with the registry it pushes to sat in a loop
saying it could not read its own binding. Nothing was wrong with the machine,
the module, the credential or the provision — the file was never written, and
the absence looked exactly like a mistake in the module.
The original intent is kept where it was right: a provision whose provider said
nothing a consumer must know is still not written. A shell is answered here and
there is nothing to say about it. A registry is answered here and the port is
still unguessable.
The address is this machine's name on the private network, or loopback when it
has none — a machine off the network still reaches itself, and a name nothing
resolves is worse than an address that always works.
The credential was a URL and nothing else, so the builder verified the broker
the ordinary way — against public roots. A mesh's broker presents a certificate
of the mesh's own, which is in no trust store anywhere, so the connection could
only ever succeed against a broker somebody else vouches for. It failed at TLS
with an error about an unknown authority rather than about a missing pin, and
the container sat there running: up, credential on disk, connected to nothing.
So the sealed credential now carries the URL and the broker's fingerprint —
the same two facts a node's token carries, for the same reason, delivered out
of band relative to the thing being trusted. The builder pins it: the standard
chain check is replaced rather than removed, and what replaces it is stricter,
accepting one certificate instead of every certificate a public authority
would sign.
A file holding only a URL still works, for a builder somebody runs by hand
against a broker with an ordinary certificate.
The host does not sort — order is stated (novox/hq ADR 0005) — so the order the
mesh writes down is the order a machine applies. Certificates, credentials,
bound files and the rule set were appended after a module's own resources, so a
service or container that depends on one was applied before it existed.
It failed and the next reconcile fixed it, which is why nothing caught it. A
fault that repairs itself on the second attempt is worse than one that does
not: what gets remembered is that it works.
Nothing the mesh computes depends on a module's resources, so putting all of it
first is unconditionally right. Merged after the computed-resources branch,
which replaces a module's resources wholesale and would otherwise discard them.
nftables matches ip and ip6 separately and one set holding both is a syntax
error, so the file would not load: the service reports a configuration fault
and the machine filters nothing. Also a make target for the builder image,
which the lab now stocks.
Two kinds live in module_secret and they behaved identically, which is right
for one of them. A made secret is the mesh's: when a node regenerates its
sealing key the mesh makes another and nothing is lost, because nothing else
ever knew the old one.
An accepted secret is not. A broker account's password exists because the
broker was told about it. Regenerating one puts 32 random bytes where a working
credential was — and the machine applies it, reports success, and the program
reading it fails to authenticate somewhere else entirely, with the mesh
insisting the secret was delivered, which it was.
The row now records where the value came from, and a rejoined machine asking
for an accepted one is refused with the remedy named: issue it again. No amount
of pushing produces a password the broker has never heard of.
Found while making the builder a module, which is the first thing to hold one.
A rule nobody derives is a rule somebody keeps in step by hand, and five HAL
manifests carry a `scope:` key that reads as a restriction and restricts
nothing. Both halves are closed here.
Manifests are parsed strictly. An unknown key is refused, which is the
discipline the host's declaration parser has always had; `scope:` survived
because nothing rejected it.
A module says what it listens on and who may reach it, and saying from where is
required — a rule with no source is open, and must say so rather than appear to
restrict something. The mesh gathers every assigned module's ports, widens
where two overlap, names every module that wanted each one, and renders one
nftables file per node. What no module declared is closed.
Three things it deliberately does not do: it writes no forward policy, because
what a machine routes is the container runtime's business and dropping there
stops every container on the node; it never flushes the whole ruleset, only
its own table; and it carries no command to load itself, because the link may
not carry an action. A service declares `restart-on` the file instead, which is
the shape that rule leaves.
Also fixes a fault the lab found: certificateFor asked where every node is
without the catalogue, so nothing resolved, every machine looked like it was on
no private network, and every certificate the mesh was asked for was refused
with a reason that was not true. Asking that question without the catalogue is
now refused rather than answered wrongly.
08-connectivity keeps two authorities apart on purpose: a public one for
names the outside world reaches, and the mesh's own for names only the
mesh knows. Nothing implemented the second, so anything between machines
was plaintext or trust-on-first-use — which the design refuses everywhere
else.
A node now generates a fourth key at enrolment and reports the public
half. A fourth, because a key used for two purposes is one rotation away
from breaking the other: the identity key signs messages to the mesh and
would do for TLS, and reusing it would mean rotating a node's identity
every time its certificate is replaced.
**Nothing secret travels and nothing is sealed.** A certificate authority
says "this name belongs to the holder of this key", so the mesh signs a
public half it cannot use, and the certificate it issues is public. A
module asks for one and is given the certificate and, if it wants,
the mesh's own — the private key is a path to a file the machine already
has, the same arrangement the private network's key uses.
Asserted by verifying rather than inspecting, because a certificate that
parses and does not chain fails at the moment something connects:
- what the mesh issues verifies against the mesh, for the name asked for
- the name is in the subject alternative names, since a certificate
carrying it only in the common name is refused by every modern client
- it certifies the key the node generated and no other
- another mesh's certificate does not verify, which is the whole point of
two authorities being separate
- the authority cannot sign another authority — one that could is one
that can be delegated without anybody deciding to
- two control planes starting together agree on one authority, or a mesh
has certificates half its machines refuse
Certificates last ten years, which is a choice: a short life needs
something to renew it, and a renewal that fails silently is a mesh that
stops trusting itself on a date nobody wrote down. What makes one
replaceable is that the mesh reissues on demand, not that it expires.
A board reads through interfaces and holds nothing. Everything it needs
is already answered — as text, for people, which is not something a page
can read.
`--json` rather than a serving API, because nothing needs one yet:
whatever serves a board runs the command, and the constraint holds either
way — the board never touches a context's store. An API is the larger
thing and should wait until something asks for it.
Both forms are gathered from the same reads before either says anything,
so they answer the same questions rather than being two implementations
that can drift. That was not true of the first version: the JSON printed
after the text, because the branch was too late.
Four properties, each asserted and each confirmed to fail when removed:
- refused and failed stay distinct all the way out. They are fixed in
different places, so one word for both sends half a page's readers to
the wrong one — and how much DID apply is carried, since "three of
eight" and "none of eight" are different machines
- a machine that never spoke carries no time at all, rather than a zero
one that any page would format as a date in 1970
- nothing is null. A page distinguishing "no machines are wrong" from
"this field is missing" has to handle both, and null is the one that
gets forgotten
- no field is named like a secret. Everything here comes from records
that hold no readable one, but a shape a page is built against is
exactly where one would eventually be added for convenience
`status` says which machines are not doing what they were told, and
nothing acted on it: a machine that refused or failed stayed wrong until
somebody ran push again naming it.
`push --behind` sends only to machines whose last report was not a clean
apply. A command rather than a timer, deliberately: a scheduler is then a
scheduler over this, where building the scheduler first would have meant
two paths to one act with nothing to compare them against.
Naming a machine and asking which machines need one are different
requests, so `push <node> --behind` is refused rather than guessed. With
nothing behind it says so, because "nothing needed one" and "this did not
run" must never look the same. A machine failing the same way for six
hours is pushed to anyway and said about — refusing would leave no way to
retry after fixing the cause, and this is a command somebody ran.
Proven in the lab: a machine is broken with a package that does not
exist, `push --behind` names it and not the machine that is fine, the
module is corrected, and the machine recovers without anybody naming it.
And the builder can be told where to publish rather than configured. A
builder that is a module requires an artifact store, and the mesh writes
it the same binding any consumer of any provision gets. A binding with no
address is refused rather than falling back to anything — that would
publish to a store on the wrong machine and be found out much later. The
variable remains for a builder run by a person, which is how it is still
run while being developed.
Found by testing removal, which is the half nobody tests.
A grant was emitted for every secret the mesh held, whether or not the
machine still asked for it. So a consumer that was unassigned kept
appearing in its provider's manifest — and the provisioner's rule about
removing what nobody asks for can only fire if the mesh stops asking. The
login would have stayed live for ever, and nothing would have said so.
Skipped where the declaration is built rather than where grants are
gathered, so the rule holds whoever gathers them. No credential file is
written for a withdrawn consumer either, or the provisioner would find a
file its manifest does not mention and have to guess what that means.
The secret itself is deliberately kept. It is sealed and unusable to the
mesh, and a machine that comes back gets what it had — what withdraws the
login is the manifest, which is the thing that reconciles.
A module usually runs software somebody else built: a database module
ships configuration and a provisioner and does not build a database. It
could name the upstream reference directly, and then every machine needs
a route to a public registry and the reference is a tag somebody else can
move — which is what pinning exists to prevent.
So an artifact may be `upstream`: pulled by the reference the module
names, pushed into the mesh's own registry, and pinned by the digest that
registry assigns. This is what the bootstrap already does by hand; it is
now something a module can say.
Refused: an upstream reference with no tag or digest, because what gets
mirrored would be whatever `latest` means today and a module pinned to
that is not pinned. And the rule that a build reads only its own
repository does not apply to it — applying it anyway refused every
reference with a registry host in it, which the test caught.
Written by trying to write a real postgres module and finding it could
not be said. It can now: two directories, two containers pinned by
digest, a superuser password sealed to the machine, and the grants
manifest — six resources from one assignment, all accepted by the host's
own parser.
That exercise also found my manifest wrong rather than the host: a
container declared `restart-on`, which is a service field, and the host
refused it by name. It is right to. A container whose own definition
changes is recreated, and a file it mounts is read by the process inside,
which is that image's business.
Two things, both found by trying to write a real postgres module and
discovering it could not be said.
A database has a superuser password, a broker an administrator, a
registry an account. None of them is *for* anybody — they are not the
credential a consumer is given, and the mechanism that hands those out
has a consumer in the middle of it. So a module may declare what it needs
and where to put it, and the mesh generates one per node, seals it, and
reads it no more than it reads any other.
Per node, deliberately: a module running on three machines has three
passwords. One in the manifest instead would put the same secret on every
machine that ever runs it, in a file anybody can read, for ever. Made
once and kept, or a running database would be handed a password it was
not started with; remade when the machine's sealing key changes, like
everything else sealed here.
A need declared and not made is refused rather than skipped, because a
module whose own credential is silently absent starts, fails to
authenticate, and the reason is three layers from the machine reporting
it.
And the provisioner can watch. That is what lets it be a module rather
than a binary somebody places: run once, it needs invoking after every
declaration by a timer or a unit wired to a file; watching, it is an
ordinary long-running service the host already supervises. It polls
rather than watching the filesystem, because the host writes atomically —
the file is replaced, so a watch on the path stops seeing anything after
the first replacement, and a watcher that silently stops working is worse
than a poll. Credentials are compared by digest and never held: this runs
for as long as the machine is up.
A node reports back after applying a declaration: it worked, some of it
failed, or the whole thing was refused. A refusal or a failure moved
last_seen and the reason went to a log line — so "which machine is not
doing what it was told" had no answer the next morning, which is the
question a mesh exists to answer.
Refused and failed are kept as different things, because they are
different situations with different remedies: refused means the machine
is exactly as it was and what is wrong is in what was sent; failed means
it is in a state nobody declared and what is wrong is on the machine. One
word for both would make the record say less than the node did.
One row per node, replaced. The question is the machine's current state —
"this failed an hour ago and then succeeded" is not a machine anybody
needs to look at, and a table of every report would bury the ones that
matter under the ones that do not.
`status` now answers three questions in the order somebody asks them: is
anything broken, is anything not answering, is anything out of date. The
first has consequences now, the third is a plan for later, and a status
leading with the third would bury the first. A machine that has never
spoken is reported as quiet rather than as broken — new, switched off and
unreachable are not the same as tried and could not.
The mapping from a report to an outcome had no test at all, which the
injection caught: it is the code deciding which of those situations a
machine is in. It has four now, including that a partial report never
becomes the account of what the machine holds — the fault that destroyed
a substrate once.
The builder was documented as holding its own broker credential and
nothing else, and nothing issued one — so in practice it used whatever it
was handed, which was the broker's administrative account. A program
documented as holding its own credential and given somebody else's is
worse than one with no story at all.
`builder issue <name>` creates an account that may read the build queue
and write to the mesh exchange. Not a node account: a build machine is
not a node, and a node's queue carries its declarations.
Two faults found by running it, both about the answer path:
- the reply queue was left for the broker to name, and the account was
scoped to `amq.gen-*` — one broker's convention. The builder built,
could not answer, and the connection closed. Reply queues are named
here now, deterministically.
- the answer then went via the DEFAULT exchange, where permission is
granted per exchange rather than per queue. A builder allowed to use it
could publish into any node's queue, which is the privilege a build
machine most obviously should not have. Answers go through the mesh
exchange, which it already may use, and an asker binds its reply queue
to the same key and filters by correlation.
Verified against a real broker: a builder cannot consume a node's queue
and cannot publish to the default exchange. That check nearly reported
the opposite — an unconfirmed publish is asynchronous, so the refusal
arrives as a channel close afterwards and a naive test sees success. With
publisher confirms it is immediate. A negative security assertion made
against an asynchronous call is not an assertion.
Redelivery was observed working while fixing this: builders that died
before answering left their work on the queue, and the next builder did
all of it.
Also: the queue and exchange names exist in both `broker` and `link`,
because `link` imports `broker`. A test in an external package keeps them
agreeing — a builder scoped to a queue nothing publishes to takes no work
and says nothing about why.
jschoubben