The controller moves from a container to a process on the one machine
that runs it (novox/hq issue 213). Every orphan is removed before anything
is applied, so the container would go first and nothing would answer the
mesh's verbs while the process was fetched, unpacked and started — and
never again, if it did not start.
- a process may say what it `replaces`: resources the declaration no
longer declares. Such an orphan is kept through the up-front sweep and
removed right after the process applied and is up: active and running
at two looks ten seconds apart, the same main process, no restart in
between (stricter than ADR 0184's second look, which reads a unit
waiting to restart as running). If the process failed, was skipped
behind its module's step, or is not running, the orphan stays running
and recorded, reported kept, and the next apply hands it over.
Refused: naming something still declared, itself, an empty id, one
thing named by two processes, and `replaces` on a step or a schedule.
- beyond #85's oneshot unit for a step: a step written ./name runs its
own bundle's binary (tested), and is started, never enabled.
- a run-once process that fails gates its module, as a run-once
container already did, so a version whose preparation failed is not
started.
- an unchanged run-once process is not run again, and an unchanged
scheduled one is kept up by its timer: both were "a daemon that had
stopped" and were started on every apply.
A step was run directly: in the host's own working directory, without its env, env files or
user. A module step moved out of its container (node bootstrap/index.js) could find neither its
code nor its words. A oneshot unit carries all four as a daemon's does, and starting it waits.
Unpacked over the previous tree, a file the new archive no longer has stayed: a bundle rebuilt as
one file per entrypoint kept the old package directory. Unpack into a fresh directory and swap it
in, so a refused archive also leaves the old tree whole.
The controller announces the mesh-controller seat on $SRV.PING/$SRV.INFO from genesis; the
carried account is the composed one, which the controller's test compares.
A bundle compiled to a binary runs itself, but only the host knows where it unpacked it, and the
service manager takes no path relative to the working directory. A command written ./name is that
file in the process's own unpacked bundle, made absolute in the unit.
The process applier's unchanged path returned an outcome that said nothing about what was
written; the loop recorded it like any other, erasing the digest. The next cycle found no
record and re-created the daemon, the one after found a record again, and so on: the
node's runtime restarted every ten minutes on every machine since it arrived. The outcome
now carries the digest forward, as a file's does. The test applies one process three
times and asserts the record survives an unchanged apply and no restart is asked.
pacman writes its errors to stderr, which the runner folds into the error rather than the output;
the stale-index classifier read the output alone and never saw a single 'failed retrieving file',
so a ten-week-old database on the control node reported as a wall of 404s from the mirrors. The
classifier now reads everything pacman said, knows a failed signature as the same staleness, tells a
mirror outage with a fresh database apart from it, and names the database's date and age beside the
remedy: a full upgrade by the operator, never a one-package sync, which on this distribution is a
partial upgrade. Whose job keeping the database current is stays issue 205's question.
Until the retired mesh-build-machine row is dropped the controller asks and hears both roles, so
the genesis list grants both; the controller's own test of this list says so.
The controller composes the build seat's subjects as node-build-agent's now; the installer's
genesis list must say the same, or the controller's own test of that list disagrees with it.
The legacy reader required every path into a chain of refusals to come from a built-in whose policy
accepts. The home server's ban chain hangs off the container runtime's user chain, whose forward
policy the runtime set to DROP, so the machine reported the mesh's own intrusion prevention as a
rule set the mesh did not write. A chain is a ban when every refusal names its sources and the
chain accepts nothing — the rule the nftables side already used. A chain that accepts anything is
still not a ban. Fixture captured from the machine. The citations for the uninstalled front end move
to ADR 0180, which another session's renumber had left pointing at an unrelated record.
The read-back raced the failure: a service manager returns when it has started the process, and a
daemon that refuses its configuration exits a fraction of a second later, so one look saw it alive.
fail2ban took 221ms on the control node and the apply reported "restarted" onto a dead daemon while
both public machines kept no bans at all. The host looks again, after that moment. A unit still
starting is accepted at both looks; a service asked to stop is not waited on.
A jail reads a log; a container's output went to a file of the runtime's own under a path that
changes on recreate, so no jail could read a container's service. logging: journald runs the
container with the journal as its driver, named in the spec so moving it recreates it; any other
place is refused.
absent: true on a package has the host remove it through the machine's own
package manager when it is installed and leave alone a machine that never had
it; read back either way. Undeclaring a package still removes nothing. A
found firewall whose command is gone is recorded as removed, said once, and
asked nothing of.
The lab module needs the virtualisation daemon (novox/hq ADR 0172); the
capability is detected by asking the daemon about itself, not by finding
a client on disk.
Exactly the names declared reach the runtime, named in the spec so a change
recreates the container; a name that is not a capability's is refused and a
privileged container stays undeclarable. For a seat holder whose runtime
changes the machine's packet filter.
Every table and chain that refuses traffic is reported with whose it is:
the mesh's, the found firewall's, the container runtime's own, a ban, or
other — the runtime's user chain is other, which is where both predecessors
kept their rules, in the legacy filter on one machine and invisible to the
mesh. Adoption's threshold does not move; a converged machine's report
grows by its filters and its found firewall's state.
Convergence is a state the host keeps: a found firewall enabled again is
retired again and said; a reconcile that finds it inactive records that it
was found so, never that the mesh did it; a step skipped after a failed
apply is said. A retirement the mesh began and did not finish is finished.
Fixtures are rulesets captured from three machines of the first mesh.
The filter accepts what does not arrive on a link the machine names as
outward, and the host named only links carrying a default route. An
unplugged wired port was left unfiltered for whenever it was plugged in
(novox/hq issue 197). A link backed by a physical device is now named
whether or not it is up.
The host delivers its own successor as an archive whose target is a new
directory each version, and since mesh-host 63 the record keeps a resource's
former target for the next apply to remove. An archive has no removal (issue
162), so the first host that replaced itself under that rule refused its own
former version at the first step of every apply, and all four machines applied
nothing from then on. A former target nobody dropped is forgotten and said;
an archive the declaration dropped still refuses.
A container may name networks it also joins once created, for the per-machine
setting that keeps a found network while a neighbour still resolves it there:
joined after the run, part of the spec, refused when it cannot be joined.
A declaration may say which modules the mesh left out because a stored setting
cannot compose with its definition. Absence used to read as removal; a left-out
module's records are kept and said, and its holds are not released.
Genesis raises the bootstrap forge under the gitea module's container name, with
its image digest and its data directory mounted at /data, so the module holds it
by the found rule instead of raising a second forge beside it (issue 090). The
network is the one difference left for a take to say. Before this the forge had
no volume: its repositories were the container's, lost with it.
Every held thing carries what a take compares: for a found container its image and the image's date,
the networks it is on and the other containers on each, its mounts and published ports, beside the
declared image (and its date once pulled), ports and volumes, with the downgrade decided when both
dates are known; for a found file whether the declared content differs and how, as lines lost and
lines new. A resource whose target moved keeps the former target on record as an orphan, so the next
apply removes the container or file the host wrote under the old name (issue 097). Every apply reports
the strays: containers the mesh neither wrote nor holds.
The controller's own composition (mesh-controller internal/broker, 2026-10-01)
publishes memberships into the assignments stream after each push and
subscribes to its seat's tool subjects; the list the installer carries did
not say so, and a controller on it is refused on the first thing it tries:
"Permissions Violation for Publish to mesh.assignment.novox.builder" (hq #251),
which is why every build asked through the console was lost. The controller's
test that compares the two (TestTheInstallersFirstUserListIsWhatTheControllerWouldCompose,
run with this checkout beside it) named exactly these two subjects, and passes.
One capability per manager — uplink-networkmanager, uplink-systemd-networkd, uplink-dhcpcd — from
systemctl is-active, so the uplink seat's holder for a manager this machine does not run is refused
the way any missing capability is, naming it (issue 138). The apply that reports detects the profile
again and sends it, the same shape enrolment sends, so a machine that switched managers reaches the
mesh at its next push.
jochen
mesh-admin
jschoubben