The catalogue's mesh-control manifest landed while this was being written, and it
does what the ordinary case does: it keeps its secrets under /var/lib/mesh and
mounts them into the container at /run/secrets, so MESH_STORE_INVENTORY_FILE names
a path that no own-secret writes. Matching on the path alone found nothing and
would have refused a correct manifest.
So the lookup follows the volumes. It also reads the other shape the manifest uses
— `VAR=${secret:name}` inside the environment file a container reads — which is
how a value that is not a path gets in at all, and which is where the broker's two
credentials live.
That generalises what is delivered: every variable the module fills from a secret
is looked up in the substrate's control plane. What the substrate names is accepted
through `secret accept`; what it does not is left for the mesh to generate, and
said so. A store connection the substrate does not name stays an error — a control
plane that cannot open a context is not one.
Checked against the real manifest (mesh-catalog feat/control-plane-module): five
variables resolve, the placeholder pins in one place, and the container it waits
for is `mesh-control`.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
Steps 6 to 10, which turn a substrate into a mesh that can maintain itself
(novox/hq ADR 0067).
6 enrol a node record, a token, `mesh-host enrol`, and the host agent
running. Proved by the mesh having HEARD from the node, not by a
process existing: a host that cannot reach the broker looks exactly
like a successful install until the first push applies nothing.
7 registry the module that gives this mesh an image store, registered from a
--catalog checkout, assigned and pushed. Its image is upstream and
never built (04-ISSUES/029) — a placeholder digest there is refused.
Verified by asking `/v2/`, because a container that is up is not a
registry that serves.
8 publish the carried image pushed into that registry, which assigns it the
first manifest digest it has ever had. This is the hinge: without
it the mesh works and can never upgrade itself.
9 control the control plane registered as an ordinary module pinned to that
digest, with the substrate's own store connections delivered
through `secret accept` — read out of the bundle that made them,
because the mesh cannot invent a credential that predates it.
10 retire the temporary control plane dropped from the bundle and removed by
the host's ordinary removal pass.
Every step asks before it acts and reports "already done". No step leaves the
machine without a control plane: steps 9 and 10 overlap deliberately, and two
stateless control planes are untidy rather than broken.
mesh-control's `internal/builder`.PublishImage is mirrored rather than imported —
tier 0 depends on nothing that must be installed first — with one correction: the
digest is chosen from RepoDigests by repository instead of taken as element zero,
so an image pushed to two registries cannot silently pin this mesh to the wrong
one.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
The substrate raises a control plane and a module will later declare one. If both
are called `mesh-control` then for one moment two owners hold one container, and
the host — which tracks what it owns — has no way to stop owning something without
destroying it. That looked like a missing mechanism.
It is a naming problem. The substrate's container becomes `temp-mesh-control` and
the module's keeps the plain name: two containers, two owners, nothing to hand
over. Dropping the temporary one from the bundle at the end is then destruction by
omission, which is what the host already does to anything that leaves a
declaration — and the right end for something named "temp" (novox/hq ADR 0067).
The rename is textual and matches the QUOTED name, so the `mesh-control` inside
the image reference is not caught by it. Read back afterwards: the produced bundle
must call it the temporary name, and no other container may have been renamed.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
The only complete written-down copy of how a mesh is stood up was an integration
test in the lab. That is why every bootstrap gap kept being found late: an install
procedure that lives as a test fixture is exercised by whoever writes tests, never
by whoever installs. This is that procedure.
A separate binary, not a mesh-host subcommand. mesh-host says of itself that it
connects to nothing and listens on nothing and that what it applies comes from a
file, and that sentence is what makes an always-running root daemon auditable. An
installer loads images and interrogates a control plane. Same tier, different
program.
The control plane's image is carried, not built and not fetched. The forge that
holds its source runs on the mesh, so a bootstrap that had to fetch it would need
a mesh in order to raise one. Embedding breaks that cycle the way the carried
bundle breaks "copy it onto a machine and run it". The image id is read out of the
saved tar before the runtime is asked anything, which is what makes the load
idempotent: the installer can ask whether the machine already holds exactly this.
Five steps, each idempotent and each saying whether it found or changed something,
because this is run over and over by somebody getting a machine working. It stops
at a running substrate with a control plane that replies — enrolment, the module
catalogue and assignment are the next stage and are deliberately absent.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF
jschoubben