mesh/merge-gate pass: builds mesh-host → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 compose)
The two finds on the control-node sit in the operator's home of mode 0700, which the agent account cannot
search. The search keeps every find; each judgement reads the modes on the way again, since an account can
open its own home without root. A find in a home is said by count, its path in the journal alone. Also
from review: a checkpoint racing SearchNow forgets the walk it just kept, and a walk kept by an older engine
says its counts as lower bounds.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds mesh-host → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 compose)
The walk kept its progress every minute and nobody could read it: root-free said only that a search ran.
The account verdict now carries the progress (counts, times, mount points; never a path) as fields and in
its reason, outside what makes a verdict changed. A signed ask from the controller's terminal throws the last
search away and starts a full one, after the operator removed by hand what it found.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds mesh-host → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 compose)
The review found a cursor of a name that is not UTF-8 came back changed
from JSON, so a resumed walk skipped what it stood before; an ask to
search again was lost to a restart, which carried the older walk on; a
fresh search judged a filesystem it never walked; a mount point root
cannot read failed or hung the walk; a found file gone before the package
manager was asked failed every resume; and skipped or kept outcomes
started a search on every reconcile, back to back with a long walk.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds mesh-host → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 compose)
The control-node's walk takes far longer than the engine runs between
updates, so a search that starts over at every restart never completes.
The walk is the engine's own, in lexical order, so its progress is one
cursor per filesystem, kept every minute beside the engine's state and
carried on after a restart while younger than rootsearch.FreshFor. It runs
on a thread of its own at nice 19 and the idle I/O class.
A machine with millions of files never finished the walk within fifteen
minutes, so its agent account was never judged and the router refused to
link. Only root can make a setuid-root file, so a complete search stays
sound until root acts: it now runs at idle priority with no bound, is kept
beside the engine's state, judges for rootsearch.FreshFor from its start,
runs again daily and after an apply that moves accounts, packages, actions
or sudo rules, and an incomplete or stale search is never free.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds mesh-host → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 compose)
SetuidCache compared the caller's now with a time read from the wall clock when the search finished. When the caller's clock ran behind the wall clock, a search was never due again: TestTheSetuidSearchRunsInTheBackgroundAndIsKeptForItsInterval, whose clock is a fixed date, has failed on main and every branch since 2026-10-09 18:00 UTC. A search's time is now the now it was started at; a result reads at most one search older than it is, which errs towards searching again.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds mesh-host → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 compose)
The search kept a two-minute limit of its own inside its 15-minute bound, so
a long walk always ended incomplete; pacman was asked once per path; and find
exiting with an error but some output was read as a complete walk. The bound
and the not-judged reasons move to the public rootsearch package so the
controller reads the same values (the review of 2026-10-09).
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds mesh-host → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 compose)
A search over a large disk ran inside the look, holding the judge's lock and
stalling the health statement; it now runs apart, serving its last result,
backing off after a failure, and saying not judged until it has one. And a
rule naming a user, or a comment, no longer hides another rule's
unconditional yes (hq ADR 0266).
A hard link swapped in for ~/.claude would have had root chown another
account's file; fstat on the descriptor now refuses a second link, a fifo or
an unexpected kind before anything is changed (hq ADR 0266, the re-review).
The judge also finds polkit rules for every account, a runtime's API on TCP,
setgid-to-root programs whoever owns them, setuid programs on every suid
filesystem, and unprotected links; the rest is listed as not judged.
An account could replace ~/.claude with a link to /etc and have the
node-engine chown, chmod or write through it on the next apply. Below a
person's or an agent's home every component is now opened without
following a link, and a link refuses the resource in words.
The root judge also reads doas and polkit rules, the container runtimes'
sockets with their ACLs, ACLs on the secrets, and setuid-root programs no
package owns, in the C locale; Judged and NotJudged write down exactly
what it covers (hq ADR 0266 review).
An account an agent runs as (novox/hq ADR 0266) is read on every look for a
uid of 0, a group that grants root, any sudo rule and a mesh secret it can
read; any way found is unhealthy and said, a read that fails is unknown.
mesh/merge-gate pass: builds mesh-host → ace, g14, novox, shanks; no bus step; every machine composes with the change as it did without (4 of 4 compose)
A module puts the operator's account in a group by declaring the account with that group alone.
The node-engine now records each group it added, takes back only those when nothing declared still
asks for them, refuses a group the machine lacks before usermod runs, and states each such account
as its module's resource of kind account: relogin needed while the running session lacks the group.
jochen