0e2b288bb6f5d5ebba487850c2256c0e8b48f62e
13
Commits
| Author | SHA1 | Message | Date | |
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 jschoubben
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0e2b288bb6 |
A container can be told where to resolve names
A container does not inherit the machine's names. It gets its own /etc/hosts holding its own hostname, and a runtime rewrites resolv.conf — so every internal name the mesh wrote for that machine is invisible to what the machine is running. That was hit for real, in the lab: a database client on one node could not resolve another node, on a mesh where both names were correct and present on both machines. It was worked around by resolving on the host and passing an address, which is the kind of workaround that should not be needed twice. A field on an existing shape, not a ninth shape — the vocabulary is still the eight the count asserts. Per container rather than by editing the machine's resolver configuration: that file belongs to something else on most machines, and a host that edited it would be fighting whatever owns it on every boot — the fault this host exists to avoid, in the place it would be hardest to see. A container told nothing is run exactly as before. Most containers should resolve whatever the machine resolves, and passing an empty flag would be a change of behaviour dressed up as a default. |
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jschoubben
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08e91065b4 |
A failed action stops what follows; nothing else does
The previous commit continued past every failure, and the lab found the cost immediately: the bootstrap's store-readiness gate failed, the apply carried on and started the broker and control plane against a machine that was not ready, and the database still initialising was shut down. An action is the only shape whose purpose is to make something true before the next thing needs it — which is why it is the only one with a verify. The bootstrap is a row of them. Everything else is independent state, and stopping there is what made one broken module hold a whole machine hostage. The report says which happened: "these things failed" and "these things failed and the rest was never tried" are different machines. |
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jschoubben
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aec37bf89e |
Attempt every resource, and report every failure
Found in the lab while proving something else. A machine assigned a module declaring a package that does not exist applied NOTHING on every later push, for ever — the broker's queues were empty, so the declaration had been delivered and read; the machine stopped at the first failing resource and never reached the rest. A machine with one bad module and nine good ones ran none of the nine, and the mesh reported "failed" without saying the rest were never attempted. Nothing that re-pushes to machines that are behind could recover it either: it would retry a permanent failure for ever and make no progress on anything else. And which nine a broken module blocks is an accident of resolution order. The behaviour had a test asserting it, citing ADR 0010. That record does not decide this — it argues about pipelines against reconcilers, and says nothing about whether one resource failing should stop the next being attempted. The citation was doing more work than the record supports. So: everything is attempted, every failure is reported, and the first line says how many. The case for stopping was that a later resource may depend on an earlier one. It still may — and it then fails its own check and is reported, which is more information than skipping it. This host reads back after every write precisely so that is caught rather than assumed. Unchanged: a declaration that cannot be PARSED is still refused whole. That is a different thing — "this machine could not do it" against "this was never a declaration" — and they are fixed in different places. Recorded as novox/hq 04-ISSUES/011 with the evidence. |
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jschoubben
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a752fc514b |
A file the mesh can deliver and cannot read
Everything else in a declaration is visible to whatever carried it. The message is signed so it cannot be forged, and signing does not make it unreadable — a password in `content` is a password the broker sees, which is the transitive trust this design refuses everywhere else. So a node generates a third key at enrolment and reports the public half, exactly as it does for its identity and its overlay key. A file may arrive `sealed` instead of `content`; the host opens it with that key and writes the result. The control plane can then store a credential it cannot use, and the broker relays a blob it cannot read. A third key rather than reusing one of the two. The identity key signs and is Ed25519; the overlay key is WireGuard's and is tied to being on the private network, which a machine may not be. A key used for two purposes is one rotation away from breaking the other. Details that are not incidental: - sealed and content together is refused, so "was this the secret or the placeholder" is answerable by looking - a sealed file defaults to 0600 rather than 0644, because the consequence differs; an explicit mode still wins - a node with no sealing key refuses the file rather than skipping it. A machine that quietly omits the one resource carrying a credential looks configured and cannot connect - what is recorded is a digest of what was written, so drift on a credential is still detected without the node keeping the value, and the report that goes back over the broker carries neither The key is made at enrolment rather than on first use. One made later is one the mesh was never told about, so nothing could ever be sealed to it, and the node would look fine and receive nothing. This is why sealing was borrowed from another mesh's mistakes rather than its design: there, credentials sit encrypted in the control plane's database — which guards the database file and nothing else, since the same value is also in each node's environment file in plain text and inside every connection string composed from it. Its own tooling has to search by value rather than by name to find the copies, and says the ones inside composed URLs are usually the only copies in use. |
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jschoubben
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827ce481f2 |
Somebody editing a managed file is now visible instead of mysterious
Asked how the mesh would know if somebody edited their hosts file. It would not. The file was rewritten within five minutes and the outcome said "updated" -- which is exactly what the mesh changing its own mind looks like. So the change vanished, nothing anywhere said why, and the obvious thing to do is edit it again. The host now records a digest of what it wrote, which is enough to tell the two apart on the next pass: the file matches the declaration unchanged it matches what was last written updated -- the mesh changed its mind it matches neither corrected -- somebody changed it here The machine is put back either way, because holding it to what it was told is the point. What changes is that it says so. A digest rather than the content: the store is read on every reconcile and sits beside the state on disk, and keeping every managed file twice would make it grow with the size of the machine rather than with the number of resources. |
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jschoubben
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1bc97ed50d |
A service can be declared to reflect a file
Because a running service does not re-read its configuration. Replace the file, find the service running, do nothing -- and the machine keeps behaving as it did while every check passes, because the file is right and the service is up. That is not hypothetical. It is how a third node joining a mesh left the first two carrying a private network that no longer existed, with every part of it reporting success. Declared state rather than a command: the declaration says the running service must reflect these files, and the host works out that it does not. A command to restart would be an action, and the link may not carry one -- the host refused precisely that when I tried it, correctly, which is how this shape was arrived at rather than the other. Scoped to one apply. A change from an earlier one has already been reflected, and restarting for it every time would make a steady machine bounce its services for ever. Also: the node generates its overlay key at enrolment and reports the public half, and the store waits three minutes rather than one for the database -- sixty seconds is not enough for a cold machine running initdb, and it failed that way three times, which is the worst kind of flake because a second run always fixed it. |
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jschoubben
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fa48b5825e |
The bundle and the mesh stop removing each other
04-ISSUES/010. The store now records where each resource came from -- carried, or declared -- and each origin removes only its own. A declaration removes what the mesh previously declared and never what the bundle raised. State written before the field existed reads as carried, because everything a host had applied by then came from its bundle: there was no other way to tell it anything. Guessing the other way would have the first upgrade remove the substrate, which is this fault arriving through the change that fixes it. Verified on the scenario that caused it, and on the property that had to survive it: a later declaration dropping a resource still removes that resource, so removal by omission still means what it meant. Also stops swallowing a publish failure. A node that applied a declaration and could not tell the mesh looked exactly like one that had -- the mesh believing it never answered, the node believing it did, and nothing anywhere saying so. Reports are published mandatory now, so anything the broker cannot route comes back and is said out loud rather than dropped in silence. |
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jschoubben
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ee2648188d |
Repoint ADR references after HQ consolidated 65 records to 23
96 comments across the two repos named records that no longer exist. Each now points at the consolidated record that holds its reasoning -- ADR 0034 (a test defends a decision) is 0017, the eight host records are 0005, the four lab records are 0016. Worth noting for next time: these are references from outside HQ, so renumbering there is not free. It cost 38 files here. |
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jschoubben
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02f1fcc865 |
Three hosts: arch, alpine and android
ADR 0060, built. `make hosts` produces mesh-host-arch, mesh-host-alpine and mesh-host-android, each pinned to its system at link time. The claim that "almost all of it is shared" held up. All 36 existing apply tests pass unchanged -- the only edit was naming which system they run against, which was previously implicit. What moved into internal/system is two appliers' worth of code and the probes that go with them. Each system's differences are real and needed re-deriving rather than translating: apk reports absence by EMPTY OUTPUT and exits zero either way, where pacman exits non-zero. Reading apk's exit code the way pacman's is read reports every package as installed. That is the single most dangerous difference between the two and it is invisible until it bites. OpenRC has no LoadState, so "the service does not exist" is read from its prose rather than a field. Same distinction, different evidence -- and this is exactly what an interface spanning both would have had to drop, which is why 0060 rejected one. OpenRC has no is-enabled either. Boot state comes from the runlevel listing: "does it start at boot" becomes "does it appear in rc-update show default". Android is a partial host and that is the point. It implements file, directory and action -- the shapes needing only a filesystem and a way to run something -- and refuses the other three by name, before anything is applied. Its unreachable appliers return ErrUnsupported rather than a zero value, so "unreachable" fails loudly if it stops being true. A host also confirms it is on the machine it was built for, once, at the start. The alpine host on this Arch machine says "this machine is not Alpine" instead of failing later inside a package manager that is not there. And a host built without -X main.builtFor refuses everything, naming the hosts that exist. Two test problems found by injecting faults. One injection did not compile, so the check now reports that separately from a pass. The other passed with the behaviour removed: the missing-service assertion matched "does not exist", which the FALL-THROUGH error also contains because it echoes the raw output. It now asserts the diagnosis, which only the correct branch produces. Verified with the real binaries: android refuses a package naming what it does support; alpine on Arch refuses the machine; arch applies and is idempotent; a system-less build refuses everything. |
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jschoubben
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f04294c3c1 |
A service can be enabled at boot, and a container uses the runtime the machine has
Two gaps found by testing podman rather than reasoning about it.
The service shape could not say "starts at boot". It ran `systemctl start`, so
`service: docker.service, running` started docker now and it would not come
back after a reboot unless something else had enabled it. A declaration that
reports success and stops being true at the next power cut.
`boot: enabled|disabled` is now a separate field, not a fourth value of
`state`, because the two are orthogonal: a unit can be enabled and stopped (it
returns at boot) or disabled and running (started by hand, gone after one).
Absent means the host asserts nothing, so a machine whose operator enabled
something is not silently disabled by a declaration that never mentioned it.
Boot state is made true BEFORE the unit is started. When an apply fails part
way, enabled-and-stopped comes back at the next boot and running-and-disabled
does not, so the more durable half goes first.
`is-enabled` has the same trap as `is-active` had. Its exit code is non-zero
for nearly everything, and `static` is neither enabled nor disabled -- the unit
has no install section and CANNOT be enabled. Reading it as "disabled" would
have the host try, fail, and blame the wrong thing, which is the same shape as
reading a missing unit as "stopped".
The container applier no longer calls `docker` literally. Verified on this
machine against podman 6.1.0:
docker info --format '{{.ServerVersion}}' -> 29.7.2
podman info --format '{{.ServerVersion}}' -> Error: can't evaluate field
ServerVersion
podman info --format '{{.Version.Version}}' -> 6.1.0
So one probe cannot find both, and a host using docker's would report a machine
running podman as having no container runtime at all. Everything else IS
compatible -- run, rm -f, and docker's own Go template syntax for reading state
and labels all work unchanged on podman, confirmed by running them. That is why
this is a two-entry lookup rather than an interface: only the probe differs.
Detected rather than declared, because adoption keeps what the machine already
has (research 012), which hardcoding one runtime contradicts.
A machine with neither now says so, naming both: "docker: command not found" on
a machine deliberately running podman sends the reader after the wrong thing.
Verified end to end against real docker (container created, running, labelled)
and against an empty PATH (refused, naming both runtimes).
Two injections per behaviour, all confirmed to bite. One injection produced a
build failure that my check read as "no bite" for the third time, so the check
now distinguishes them.
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jschoubben
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9a9937b7e6 |
A struct per resource kind, instead of one struct with every field
Jochen asked why we don't simply have dedicated structs. We should, and the
flat struct was me extending an existing pattern rather than questioning it.
Before: one Resource struct carrying path, content, mode, unit, state, package,
image, name, env, ports, volumes, args, command, verify and in. Because a file
and a container shared it, nothing stopped {"type":"file","image":"postgres"},
so a `uses` map listed which fields each kind was allowed to carry -- a second
place to keep current, and the kind nobody updates is the one that silently
accepts a field the host will never read.
Now: Directory, File, Service, Package, Container and Action are separate
structs behind a Resource interface. File has no Image field, so the mistake is
not detected -- it is unrepresentable. Adding a field to a kind is the whole of
adding it; there is nowhere else that has to agree.
Parsing is two passes: read the envelope and each resource's raw bytes, peek at
"type" to choose the struct, then decode into it. Peeking is lenient on purpose
-- reading strictly there would report an unknown field before knowing which
fields are known.
Unknown fields are found by comparing the JSON keys against the struct's own
json tags rather than by catching the decoder's error. The decoder stops at the
first unknown field, and RefusalError promises every problem at once: a caller
fixing one field at a time learns the next only by running again. Caught by
testing the refactor against a real declaration -- a container carrying both
`unit` and `mode` reported only one of them.
apply.go switches on the concrete type instead of a string, so a new kind that
has no applier is a compile error rather than a runtime default branch.
No behaviour change otherwise. All existing tests pass unmodified except two
that reached for fields the interface no longer exposes.
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jschoubben
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337126603e |
Complete the host's vocabulary: package, container, action
The three shapes the substrate bootstrap needs and the host did not have. Until now tier 1 could not be raised at all -- step 0 is a package, step 1 a container, steps 2 and 3 actions -- so every line of the tier 1 and 2 designs was unbuildable. package -- present, never upgraded, never uninstalled. Removal is "forgotten", not "removed": the host cannot know what else needs the package, uninstalling a container runtime because a declaration changed would stop every container on the node, and the machine may have had it before the mesh saw it. Reporting it removed would claim an effect the host declined to have. container -- identified by a label carrying a digest of the declaration that made it. Comparing every field the runtime reports cannot be done reliably: a runtime normalises, defaults and reorders what it is given, and that is indistinguishable from real drift. There is no in-place update; a container's configuration is fixed at creation, so any change is a replacement, and saying so beats a partial update that leaves the running thing half-declared. This is the one shape the host removes, because it is the one the host created. action -- bundle-only, per ADR 0047. Verify is mandatory and does double duty: it is the idempotency check as well as the read-back. The host does not know what a database is, so "is it already there" is a question only the declaration can ask. `in` runs the action inside a named container, which steps 2 and 3 need. Parse now refuses actions; ParseTrusted permits them. The safe path is the default and the permissive one has to be named. The bundle and a local file handed to a root process use ParseTrusted; the link will use Parse. Also replaced the per-type "fields this type ignores" check with a field-set diff stated as what each type USES. The negative form needs every type revisited whenever a field is added, and the one nobody revisits silently accepts a field it will never read. Images must be pinned by digest (ADR 0046). A bundle naming a tag pins nothing. Verified against a real machine, not only fakes: an action ran and was idempotent on the second apply; an action that exits zero and satisfies nothing fails the apply; a real container was created, labelled, replaced when its declaration changed, exec'd into, and removed; a real package query round- tripped. Each new test was also confirmed to fail on an injected fault -- five injections, each breaking exactly its own test. One existing test changed: a vanished unit is now reported "forgotten" rather than "removed", which is what actually happened. |
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jschoubben
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9d8239afe8 |
Stage 2 — the host applies a declaration
A declaration is JSON, versioned, and an ordered list of resources with stable identities (novox/hq ADR 0043). The vocabulary is directory, file and service, and anything outside it — an unknown version, type or field — refuses the WHOLE declaration. A host that skipped what it did not understand would apply most of what it was sent and report success. It converges rather than executes: applying twice changes nothing the second time, and applying to a drifted machine returns it. A mode is maintained rather than set, because a permission applied at creation is not a permission held — this repository has paid for that once already. It owns a footprint and only that. What it applied and is no longer declared is removed; what it did not create is never touched. Removal runs FIRST, because a resource leaving a declaration while another arrives at the same path is an ordinary rename, and removing afterwards would delete the file just written. The store arrives here rather than at stage 3, as ADR 0043 predicted: nothing can be removed without knowing what was applied. It is written atomically, refuses to start empty when it exists and cannot be read — believing it owns nothing would leave everything behind forever — and is saved even when an apply fails, because what was applied before the failure is on the machine either way. Three faults found by running inside a raised machine rather than by reasoning: A unit that DOES NOT EXIST reads as `inactive` from `systemctl is-active`, exactly as a stopped one does. So declaring a unit stopped reported success for a unit the host cannot manage at all — absence read as satisfaction, which is 04-ISSUES/007 wearing a different hat. LoadState separates them. Removing an orphaned service whose unit has since been uninstalled failed the whole apply, and a host holding such a record could then apply NOTHING, ever, with no way out but editing its state by hand. Removal is now idempotent for the same reason os.RemoveAll is. And the flag parser was wrong in the same way twice: fixing `mesh-host inventory --json` by taking the subcommand off the front left `mesh-host apply decl.json --dry-run` broken identically, because the standard library stops at the first non-flag argument wherever that argument is. Parsed in a loop now. 30 new tests, 55 in total. |