A container was still created over an unmounted mount point, so its writes landed on
the filesystem below; a folder moved to another disk was kept on the old warrant; and
entries left by a drop or a move that could not run lived only in a log line. Every
container mounting an access whose disk is away now waits, the warrant holds only for
the filesystem it was carried out on (the wait names the new one, path-free), entries
left on a filesystem are recorded per mount and taken out when it is back, and every
leftover is said as unhealthy until it is. A hung stat is shared per path, and a
widened mask takes from other entries only the bits it adds.
A walk run while a dataset was unmounted wrote onto root's empty mount point, or
"dropped" entries from it and forgot the ones on the data; a folder kept while empty
below an unnamed mount was then swept whole once the disk mounted, with no warrant.
Every walk is now judged as an apply is, a changed mount judges the folder afresh, and
systemd .mount units and mounts seen are read for the first-sight rule. Widening a
mask caps the entries it limited, so the owning group gains nothing. The watch lets
go of removed folders, re-arms on lost notice, reads users under its lock and ends
with its context. A drop that cannot read an ACL is counted, a broken folder's words
carry no path, a grant's group that could not be left is tried again, and a folder's
stat is bounded.
A module's containers ran as whatever their image chose and shared folders were
made writable by putting accounts in the folder's group (ADR 0312), which ADR 0325
supersedes. The engine now makes each declared module identity as a system account
with the controller's numbers, runs a container declaring `identity` as it, and keeps
each placed shared folder usable through one POSIX ACL entry per user, set through
the kernel's xattrs on descriptors it opened itself. A folder holding data is kept
only after the operator's warrant (the take act); a missing folder is made where its
data lives and waits where its disk is not; root's data is never kept. A watch and a
bounded sweep put back what an app narrows. The group grant is removed, and what it
put an account in is taken back.
Reuses the descriptor walks, the create act, the missing-path wait and the warrant-
backed act message from the paused issue 567 branch.
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 mesh directory outside every home was chmodded and chowned by path, so a
parent turned into a link between two applies carried root's chmod and chown
to the link's target. It is now made and changed through the descriptor of
the walk from / that follows a link only root alone could have made.
A directory that walk refuses is a refusal like the placement guard's
(review 47): judged before anything is applied, and again when the
directory is applied, used as found or not; refused at either point it gates
its module and refuses what is below it, so no file is written into the
link's target and the report does not say everything was attempted.
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)
Once a mesh directory's mode and owner go only through a walk that follows no
link another account could make, a directory behind such a link is refused
and its module gated: on the control-node that could stop the controller.
The operator is to be told which directories that walk would refuse on every
node before it lands. So the engine judges the declaration it keeps with the
same walk, making and changing nothing: on a signed ask from the controller
(mesh.node.<node>.ask.judge-directories, held to the hand-over's checks) and
as `nox-mesh-host judge-directories` at the machine.
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 engine is built without cgo, so a check by name missed a root group a name
service holds or one number carrying another name: the root groups are resolved
to numbers (now with kmem and shadow) and a number named nothing is refused for
containers too. A group without write is granted nothing (§2). The look reads
each path off the lock within five seconds, so a dead network mount cannot stop
every health statement. A grant's account may not start with a dash. A group a
record leaves for another asker is handed to it, so it is still taken back when
the last asker goes (§5). The scheduler skips paths issue 339's guard refuses.
The engine reads the group owning the accessed path at apply and gives it to the
containers and the tools' account an access's new `grant` names: --group-add for a
container (recreated with it), an account group for the account (recorded, taken
back as ADR 0252 takes back). The path is never changed; an access whose group
cannot write is stated unhealthy for the operator to decide; group 0 and the
root-granting groups are refused by name. The tool runner restarts through the
restart-on the controller gives it, because the access reports updated exactly
when the account's groups moved. Health says GrantContract (4), which tells the
controller it may send `grant`.
The controller is to ask mesh-delivery whether a merge's delivery
group still has a member to merge, so that a merge in no waiting group
is cut at once (ADR 0304, ADR 0306); its bus grant names the verb, and
the installer's first user list must too, as for times (212a3cc).
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)
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-less action that stopped the apply after a module was gated was reported as
everything else attempted. The failure now names the gated modules and the stop, counts
skipped resources apart from applied ones, and the tests cover an archive below a refused
path, a gated module tried again by the next apply, and a refused file among the failures.
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)
On ace the engine refused Docker's data root as not placed, said nothing was touched, then
wrote a file into it and ran the module's step. A refused directory now gates the rest of
its module as a failed step does, a file is refused in a forbidden tree or below a refused
path, and the failure names the modules whose rest was not attempted.
Both fail on main: the shape seen on ace, a refused directory, a file below it and a
step after it, writes the file, runs the step and reports that everything was attempted.
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 newer sequence carrying an older view of the assignments undeclared four
assigned modules on 2026-10-04; the sequence cannot tell it, the generation
can. The engine keeps the highest generation it applied, refuses an older one
before reading the machine unless the declaration is a gate's put-back, and
says the refusal in its report so the controller can name the sender. A
declaration without a generation is applied as before, and every report says
it reads one, so the controller sends it only to engines that do.
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)
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 failure recorded nothing, so the record of the step's last success stayed and
the next apply skipped it, opening ADR 0136's gate on what it had just refused.
The record is kept, for removal, with what it was run as cleared.
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 refusal waiting for its request parsed it into a 64 KiB reader for up to 5 s,
on a socket every account may open. It now drains at most 4 KiB through a small
buffer for at most 1 s and never past the accept-time deadline, only 32 wait at
once, and an unknown account is refused before it takes a slot. The busy tests
wait for the first line with a timeout and say what came of it (novox/hq issue 434).
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 engine answered busy and closed before the client's request had landed;
the client's write then broke and it never read the refusal waiting for it.
Under the whole suite's load this failed the busy test (novox/hq issue 434).
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 file's own details (lstat) may be read from the disk as a directory is,
so a directory of tens of thousands of files was read without a look and
the header's promise that no burst is longer than PaceLook did not hold.
The walk now asks the pacer before each file as well; the 250 ms gate
makes that a clock read per file. A test with one directory of twenty
files fails without it. The clock is read once after a run of pauses,
and the constants test says that it guards the constants only.
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 of #79 found that pacing alone brought back issue 361's
fault. The control-node's own I/O pressure sits near the 10 % bound with
no walk running, so a walk that paused 30 s for every 250 ms it read
would read 0.8 % of the time: a 16-minute walk would take some 32 hours,
outlive the age a search judges for, and be begun again at an engine
restart, leaving the machine unjudged.
A run of pauses is now at most nine times as long as the walk read since
the one before, so the walk keeps at least a tenth of the time whatever
the pressure, and takes at most ten times as long as unpaced: about
2.7 hours for the 16-minute walk, inside the 12 hours the controller
waits quietly. A test ties the bound to rootsearch.Quiet.
The pressure is the share of the time since the last look in which some
task waited on I/O, from PSI's cumulative counter, not its ten-second
average, which the kernel moves only every two seconds. A pause is
500 ms, then the pressure is looked at again.
The engine's walker is built in one place, engineWalker, and a test
fails if it is not paced by /proc/pressure/io. What the walk cannot read
is said through the search's own channel (the cache's Say), as the rest
of the search is, with what it means for the disk.
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 for setuid programs is put in the idle I/O class so it yields
to everything else, but only a scheduler that schedules by class (BFQ)
honours that. The control-node's disks run mq-deadline, which does not,
so the walk read at full priority. On 2026-10-11 the walk started at
01:27, right after the engine applied a new controller, and ran sixteen
minutes; it kept two spinning disks saturated, the bus whose store
shares them stalled for half a minute twice, and the controller lost
its lease and restarted each time.
The walk now also paces itself by PSI, which reads the same whatever
the scheduler: before it reads a directory, while some task has waited
on I/O for more than 10 % of the last ten seconds, it pauses two
seconds at a time. It looks at most every 250 ms, pauses at most 30 s
in a row and then reads one more directory, so a machine that is never
quiet is walked slowly but still judged. Its own reads count in the
pressure, so on an otherwise idle machine it holds the disk below the
bound. Pressure it cannot read pauses nothing, and is said once.
A paced walk finds what an unpaced one finds; a walk ended while it
pauses is an incomplete walk, never one that found nothing.
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 secret given at the controller's terminal through mesh-cli (secret accept … --from -) never reached the
line: the engine forwarded the words only. It now forwards what mesh-cli's standard input held (at most
64 KiB, the SDK's bound) on the same core request to the controller, says it nowhere, and sends none
with a follow of the same call. mesh-sdk moves to f047d0a.
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)
mesh-controller #156 (give) grants the controller mesh.seat.node-launcher.tool.secret.*; the
controller's test holds the installer's list equal to what it composes, and failed without it.
Issuing the token sends the hub its new peer, and the hub applies it on
its own time; a bus dialled before then timed out naming the bus. The
first tunnel now waits for a handshake with the hub, and says so in the
tunnel's words when there is none (novox/hq ADR 0169).
At genesis the bus's users reach it in no declaration, because the
machine running it has not enrolled. The installer, which raised the
bus from its bundle, places the control plane's composed list beside it
and makes it re-read it: before the machine enrols, for the token's
account, and after, for the node's own (novox/hq issue 146).
nox-mesh-host key makes the tunnel key, or reads the one made, and
prints its public half for the token to be issued for. enrol with a
token that carries a tunnel takes that key, refuses another, writes
mesh0 with the hub as its one peer and starts it, then reaches the bus
over it (novox/hq ADR 0169). Tokens without a tunnel enrol as before.
A VPN client rewrote the laptop's resolver file and every mesh name failed
while each module read healthy: nothing asked the machine. The engine now
looks every 30 s at the resolver file the uplink holder declared (naming
the program that rewrote it), the names through each listed resolver
(NXDOMAIN for a mesh name's IPv6 address is a finding, issue 262), the
tunnel's handshake with the hub, the bus and the default route; a part is
unhealthy on its second failing look, and the statement carries it.
containerSpec says a changed cadence moves the marker so the install is
reported updated and re-established. Which containers are held still is the
same kind of statement, and a declaration that changed it while the machine
reported no change would be a machine quietly holding yesterday's containers.
while-stopped names resource ids of the same module's containers; the host
stops them before the run and starts them again after it, in reverse order,
whatever the step did. The restart is deferred before the first stop and runs
on its own context, because the one real risk of this field is a window that
never closes.
Scheduled steps only: at apply the declaration is applied in order and a
run-once step already gates what follows.
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.
novox/hq 04-ISSUES/107. A declaration's only identity was the digest of
its bytes: a host could say "not the last" and could not say "older". On
the link, nothing refused an older one at all, and the drain picked the
last to arrive — wrong exactly when it mattered, a backlog drained out of
order or a broker that split a burst.
A declaration may now carry a sequence, one higher per send. A host
refuses one lower than what it kept, whole, and says why. The drain keeps
the highest sequence in a batch rather than the last to arrive.
Only when both sides claim an order. Absent reads as zero — "no ordering
claimed", not "first" — so a controller that sends none is still
understood and a host that kept one before it understood them compares
nothing. That is what lets hosts go first and the controller follow, which
is the order 087 says a new field needs.
novox/hq 04-ISSUES/163. The host asks after every apply whether a newer
host is delivered than the one running, and asked with the link-time
version stamp — which every delivered host carries as "development
build", because the version comes from where the binary sits now (0142).
So a delivered host never matched the newest delivered version, stood
aside on every push for ever, and because standing aside cancels the
report, the mesh never heard from it again.
Measured on two machines: each push produced "host <v> is delivered;
standing aside" for the version already running, then "applied, and could
not tell the mesh: reporting: context canceled". A machine restarting its
host on every push and reporting nothing, reading as healthy.
Asked with the running version now. Half of 0142 was applied to the
report and the known-good record and not here; this is the other half.
novox/hq ADR 0142, which decided this and was not implemented: "It is
unpacked into a directory named for its version, so it can read its own
version from its path. The stamp goes, and with it the need for a build to
know what it will be called."
The mesh's toolchain stamps no version, on purpose, so a delivered host
called itself "development build" and the mesh could not tell which host
any machine ran — which is the whole of what 087 added. A delivered host
lives at <libexec>/versions/<version>/<binary>, and that directory is the
answer.
A host placed by hand keeps its stamp, which is the honest answer for one
the mesh did not deliver, and is every machine until a delivery reaches
it. A binary sitting anywhere else is not read as a version at all.
The decision is split from the reading so a test can ask about a path
without being that binary.
novox/hq ADR 0141 and 04-ISSUES/142. A version was being delivered to a
machine and nothing started it: the launcher on these machines predates
the versions mechanism and runs the fixed binary path, so the delivery was
correct and inert.
Delivered as a FILE resource, not as part of an archive, and the
difference is the whole reason this is safe. A file is written atomically —
temp file in the same directory, then rename — so the running launcher
keeps the inode it was started from and the next start picks up the new
one. An archive writes in place with truncate, which would cut the file a
running shell is reading halfway through.
The manifest therefore carries a second copy of the script, and a test
refuses any difference between it and packaging/nox-mesh-host-launch.
Proven by drifting one and watching it fail. Two copies of a script is a
bad thing to accept, and the alternative was writing over a running
supervisor.
Together the two resources complete the loop: the version lands, the
running host stands aside because it sees one delivered, and the launcher
that starts next is the one that looks in versions/ and picks the newest
by arrival.
nox-mesh-host, not mesh-host. The command directory is cmd/mesh-host and
the launcher looks inside a delivered version for nox-mesh-host — the name
this is installed at and the name in its unit. The first delivery landed
the package's name, reported success, and would have been invisible.
novox/hq ADR 0141 and 04-ISSUES/142. The host half of the delivery has
been built and tested since 0141 and has never had a version to work on:
versions side by side, the newest runs, the running one stands aside
between reconciles, rollback picks a directory. This is the declaration
that gives it one.
One archive, unpacked to /usr/lib/nox-mesh-host/versions/${version}. The
version resolves to the artifact's digest, so an unchanged build lands at
the path it already had and re-composing a declaration moves nothing.
Not circular: the host applying this is a different version from the one
being written, and neither writes over the other — the kernel refuses to
truncate a running executable, which is the reason the path carries the
version rather than a link pointing at "current".
**The launcher is deliberately not delivered here.** The one on these
machines predates the versions mechanism and runs the fixed binary path,
so a delivered version is inert until it is replaced — and replacing it
from the mesh means writing over a running shell script, which sh reads
incrementally. That wants a designed swap rather than a file resource, and
it is the last piece rather than this one.
novox/hq 04-ISSUES/142 and ADR 0142. Nothing delivered the host because
nothing could compile it, and nothing could compile it partly because the
host was not a thing the mesh builds at all — it had no manifest.
One bundle in Go, for arch, built from cmd/mesh-host. A system is
required for a compiled artifact because a binary is pinned at link time
so a host refuses to touch a machine it was not built for (ADR 0005), and
`arch` is what all four of this mesh's machines report themselves to be.
Another system is another artifact and another build, which is what ADR
0142 means by one per target.
No resources yet. What places a version into a directory named for it
needs an archive resource whose path carries the version, and nothing
interpolates one — the second half of 0141's insight, and the next piece.
novox/hq 04-ISSUES/125. An adopted node keeps what it found until its
module is taken, which is correct and was recorded only in the node's own
state file. On the edge cut-over the mesh sent 346 resources, the journal
said it applied 330, and nothing anywhere said which sixteen or why —
reading it meant opening state.json by hand, and not reading it took every
public name on the machine down.
The line that reports the apply now carries it, grouped by module and
ordered by name, because the sentence an operator needs is "route-proxy is
assigned and not taken" and the module is the thing `take` acts on. An
apply that held nothing says nothing extra: a line that reports "0 held"
on every converged apply is a line that stops being read.
novox/hq 04-ISSUES/146, the layers behind the three already fixed.
A new membership says which bus it is for. Empty meant 'whatever the mesh runs
today' while two buses existed, and became a refusal the moment one did: an
enrolled node came up and reconnected for ever against its own record.
The enrolling client takes its inboxes in the space its user may listen in. A
JetStream publish waits for the stream's acknowledgement on an inbox the client
picks, and its default is one this user may not subscribe to — so the enrolment
failed with a permissions violation on a subject nobody had chosen.
And the enrolment publish carries a message id, so the client's own retry is
discarded by the stream rather than enrolling the machine twice. That one is
not finished: the duplicate survives it, and the issue says where the trail
stops.
novox/hq 04-ISSUES/146. Each was right while the mesh ran on the previous
broker, and nothing has raised a foundation since it changed.
The bus's certificate is made by the program that needs it rather than by
openssl inside the broker's image — the bus's image is Alpine with a shell and
no openssl, so the step exited 127 and no mesh could be raised. Self-signed as
before and on purpose; --user 0:0 because the volume is root's and the control
plane's image runs as nobody.
Enrolment no longer opens a raw TLS connection to check the pin: NATS speaks
its own protocol and upgrades afterwards, so the handshake met a plaintext
greeting. The client that presents the token carries the same pinned config
and verifies inside its own handshake, so the secret still leaves only after
the certificate is checked. The raw dial stays as what its tests prove, and is
no longer a path anything takes.
And the token says which bus it is for. Empty meant 'whatever the mesh runs
today' while two buses existed and became a refusal the moment one did.
It now stops at the bus's user list, which is the genesis half of 146.
The serving path passed nil where the apply writes its detail. Nil is silence, so
everything the apply says — a file held, a container replaced, the found firewall
retired — was visible when a person ran the one-shot command and discarded in the
way the host actually runs, which is always.
Measured: after a machine was converged and its found firewall was not retired,
what the host decided was unrecoverable, because it had said it to nobody. That is
why issue 143 has candidates instead of a cause.
say already reaches stdout and the unit sends that to the journal, so this needed
no new mechanism — only for the argument to be passed. Both paths now reach the
apply through one named helper, so a reader asking where the apply's output goes
finds one answer.
The test asserts the log is never nil and cannot catch the fault it was written
for, which is wiring; that is proved by a deployed host whose journal carries the
detail.
A reconcile is otherwise silent, and the condition deciding when it speaks asked
only what an adopted node reports: what it holds, and the firewall it found. A
converged node has neither, so it could speak only in reply to a declaration —
and the mesh composes no declaration for a node that has not said which links
face outside (ADR 0140). A machine waiting for a push that was waiting for the
machine.
Measured, not predicted: after the control plane learnt to read the links, the
control node recorded its own and the three converged machines sat silent while
their filters were refused.
The condition is now a named predicate, because as an inline expression nothing
could test it — which is why the gap shipped.
The mesh composes no filter for a machine that has not said (ADR 0140), and a
converged machine only speaks unasked when its adoption fingerprint changes. The
links were not in that fingerprint, so a machine that had just learnt to say
could only speak when a declaration arrived — and a declaration cannot be
composed until it has spoken. A machine waiting for a push that is waiting for
the machine.
Found before it bit: every machine in this mesh is in exactly that state right
now, having just been given a host that reports the links to a control plane that
does not yet read them.
The supervision was already right: a clean exit means the host stood aside, and
the launcher's next turn runs what is on disk. Two things made it dead code —
nothing told the running host a successor was waiting, and the rollback resolved
its known-good version through pacman, which no machine here uses and which two
of three operating systems do not have.
Keeping a version rather than a path was the clue. Versions now live in
directories named for them:
- the launcher picks the newest delivered one every time round the loop, or the
one a rollback pinned, or the host placed by hand when nothing is delivered;
- the running host stands aside between reconciles, never inside one, by exiting
cleanly — and returns nil so the launcher does not count it as a crash;
- a completed reconcile retires what is older than the predecessor, keeping the
predecessor because that is what a rollback starts, and never the running one;
- rollback pins the predecessor instead of reinstalling a package: no package
manager, no cache anyone may clean, same script on every operating system;
- the report says which host version produced it, so 'behind' is answerable.
Newest is when it arrived, never how the name sorts: '1.10' orders before '1.9',
and ordering by name would start an older host and call it an upgrade.
novox/hq ADR 0141. The delivery half — a module carrying the next host — follows;
until then nothing delivers a version and every machine takes the fallback, which
is what it does today.
The filter blocks everything passing through the machine and then allows the
machine's own containers back by naming the address ranges they sit on — two
ranges fixed in the control plane and the rest typed after a flip had already
cut a workstation off. A range describes one machine and goes stale in silence.
Read the links carrying a default route instead, from /proc rather than by
asking a program, and report them on every apply. A machine with no route off
itself reports nothing, and the mesh composes no filter for it rather than
writing a rule around a link with no name.
novox/hq ADR 0140. The control plane does not read this yet.
A container resolves every machine and public name through the entries it is given when it is created,
and nothing re-reads them. The host compared everything about a container except those, so one whose
image and files never changed was left alone holding an overlay address five days out of date — it
restarted 2286 times against a database it could no longer find, and the mesh reported the machine as
doing what it was told (novox/hq 04-ISSUES/135, the same fault as 045 in the field left out).
Sorted, so the digest does not move for a reordering nobody made. The first apply after this recreates
every container that carries mesh names, once.
A mesh raised from nothing must be able to say what it applied and what a machine refused (novox/hq
ADR 0134), and the first user list is what permits it. Kept in step with the controller's own
composition by the test that reads this file.
novox.be is a module on this mesh. Reading a resource's owner to the first dot made its resources
belong to something called "novox", and a step's gate would then skip whatever else happened to start
that way — silently. A resource's own id never contains a dot, which is what makes the last one the
boundary; the mesh's derived step was changed to add a hyphen rather than a dot for the same reason
(mesh-controller #128).
A run-once container that does not complete stops the rest of that module's resources; everything
else on the machine is attempted, as every other shape already is (novox/hq ADR 0136). An action
still gates the machine — genesis is a row of them and they belong to no module. What was not
attempted is reported as skipped, because that and 'nothing to do' are different answers.
Without this, ADR 0135's derived preparation would let one module's unreachable database hold a
machine hostage — the fault 04-ISSUES/011 removed for everything else, and the reason the catalogue
migrates itself at start.
The controller is the way in for tool calls (novox/hq ADR 0095); the first user list must say so,
or a mesh raised from nothing refuses its own first ask. Kept in step with the controller's
composition by the test that reads this file.
The mesh runs on the seat's bus alone (novox/hq ADR 0131, design 28 task 5.5). The host's old
dialling and enrolment paths are deleted with the switch that chose between them; a membership or
a token naming another bus is refused before anything is sent, rather than dialled on a transport
that no longer exists.
The rescue path: an operator writes the membership file by hand on a machine no
bus can reach — rotated while it still held the old password — and restarts the
host. Same file, same check as the declaration path.
Two things the controller's own composition now derives and the installer's
carried list did not: the delivery subjects of the controller's consumers, and
JetStream enabled on the account — without which the first bound consumer is
refused. Found live on a mesh moved rather than raised; a fresh genesis would
have met both at first start.
The mesh names a machine's bus user node.<name>; the host dialled with the bare
name and every machine was refused the first time it reached the server:
"authentication error - User". Same string as the composed user list, or nothing
connects.
Until now a membership — bus address, fingerprint, password — was written once,
at enrolment, and nothing ever rewrote it, so a machine already enrolled could not
be moved to another bus at all (novox/hq design 28, task 5.2). The mesh now
delivers a membership for the new bus as a sealed file in the declaration, like
any secret; the host reads it after the declaration has applied, saves it as its
identity, and exits cleanly so the service manager restarts it dialling the bus it
names. The same path a machine takes after a reboot — so nothing new has to be
right for it to work. A membership carries its transport; empty means the bus the
mesh ran on before, so nothing written earlier reads as unset.
The same twelve steps, with the difference that matters: the mesh composes its own user
list and at genesis there is none, so this carries the first one — the controller's
account at a bootstrap password, rotated with the store's and replaced by the
controller's own composition from its first start.
The server's settings and the user list are separate files in one directory. Separate
because the settings belong to whoever raises the server and the users belong to the
mesh; in one directory of necessity, because an include path resolves relative to the
including file's own directory, so an absolute one sends the server looking underneath
that directory and it refuses to start.
No `verify` in the TLS block. That makes the server demand a client certificate and
nothing in the mesh presents one — a host pins this server's exact certificate and
authenticates with a password.
The controller's permissions here are checked against what the controller derives, by a
test in its own repository reading this file. They are two statements of one fact, and a
template that granted less than the controller needs would produce a mesh that comes up
and is refused on its first act.
The last of the host's link that still named a transport. `Asking` is one
enrolment conversation — a connection made with the token, a question asked, and
an answer waited for — and it is its own seam rather than part of `Link` because
almost nothing about it is the same: the credential is a one-time secret, there
is no declaration to hear, and a node that fails here is not in the mesh at all,
where a node that fails in `Link` has merely lost touch with one it belongs to.
`Enrol`'s thirteen arguments became an `Approach` — where, which certificate,
which bus — and the request it already had. The token says nothing about which
bus, and does not need to: every token names the one the mesh runs on today until
the rollout.
**The reply address is the whole of what changes on the new bus**, and it is
forced rather than preferred. Verified against a running server, both halves: the
answer reaches the node at the address its request carried in the payload, and
the transport's own reply field held something else entirely by the time the
consumer saw it — the consumer's ack address, exactly as design 25 §2 says. The
test asserts the field is *not* the node's inbox, so a future server that stopped
claiming it would fail this rather than let the reason quietly become folklore.
The inbox is under `_INBOX.enrol.<node>.`, which is exactly what the enrolling
user may subscribe and no wider, with a random tail per attempt: a reply left
over from an attempt that timed out is not the answer to this question, which is
what the correlation id does on the other transport. Subscribed before anything
is published, because a node that published first could miss an answer to a
question nobody was listening for.
The outbound half went behind `Bus` and a node's two statements stopped naming a
transport. This is the other half, and where the transport reached furthest: the
run loop selected on a channel of the client library's own delivery type, so
every part of holding a node in its mesh knew which bus it was on.
`Link` is dialling, hearing and saying in one interface, because dialling is
where the transport is chosen and choosing it twice is how one half of a node
ends up on a different bus from the other. `Declaration` has one way of being
done rather than two: a declaration set aside for a newer one is settled exactly
as an applied one is, on both buses, and the difference is a fact the report
carries.
Four things this settled.
**The host declares nothing on the new bus.** On the bus the mesh has it declares
its own queue, because a queue that is not there means a node that hears
nothing. Here it binds to a consumer the mesh made when the node enrolled, and a
missing one is said as the mesh's to answer rather than quietly created with
whatever this client happens to default to.
**The pin is easier here than in the tool runtime, not harder.** The Go client
takes a *tls.Config, so the same PinnedConfig with the same VerifyPeerCertificate
does the work — the subject-alternative-name constraint recorded against the
runtime's client is that client's, because it takes PEM strings with no verify
hook. A host checks the fingerprint and nothing else.
**Binding needs the subject as well as the consumer.** An empty subject is
refused rather than taken to mean "whatever that consumer delivers", which the
server said plainly and only when asked.
**Reconnection stays the caller's.** Hold already decides when to try again and
how long to wait; a client reconnecting underneath it would make that reasoning
a duplicate of the library's.
The drain keeps its live half and loses its catch-up half, as it said it would:
verified that three declarations pushed to an absent node leave one on the
stream, and it is the newest.
One test-harness lesson worth the comment it got: delete-then-add is not a reset.
A test that did that inherited the previous test's messages, and the symptom was
a declaration counted as delivered twice — which reads as a redelivery bug in the
code under test rather than as a dirty stream.
Step 3.5's first half, mirroring the controller's. A host says exactly two
things unprompted, and the difference between them is the whole interface:
a report must arrive, and a heartbeat must not be insisted on. So a report
goes through JetStream — it is the message the store-window guarantee is
about — and a heartbeat stays on core, because a heartbeat in a stream is
the mesh's least valuable message competing for retention with its most
valuable.
The host still imports nothing of the mesh's own (ADR 0005): this is its
own interface over its own libraries. It agrees with the controller because
a fixture holds both to one envelope, which is the only agreement that
survives two repositories.
Also recorded, where the next person reads it rather than in a plan: the
"newest wins" window narrows at the rollout and does not disappear. Last-
per-subject makes the catch-up half the stream's, and sequence orders them
definitively — but three pushes to a connected node are still three
deliveries. Saying which half goes is worth more than "can probably be
removed", which is how a load-bearing window gets deleted in a hurry.
The empty-resources guard refused every empty body as a likely mistake,
with no way to say emptiness was meant — so the control plane could
never tell a node to drop its last resource. The envelope gains
owns_nothing: with it, an empty declaration is applied (the node drops
what the mesh owned); without it, empty is still refused, so a
truncated or mis-composed body cannot silently strip a machine. One
test, both directions.
The host parses MTU from the found [Interface] and reports it, so the
mesh's interface can come up with the same MTU when it takes the tunnel
over. A path tuned to 1380 regresses to the 1420 default otherwise —
invisible to ping, fatal to TLS handshakes and transfers over that path
(novox/hq: the mesh had no MTU concept). Zero when the config named
none, and the mesh writes no MTU line then.
dns and ip were declared, validated, handed to the runtime — and part of
no comparison, so their first deployment compared every container equal
and changed nothing, silently. The same shape as 04-ISSUES/045: a field
that is not in the spec is a field that can never reach a container that
already runs.
jschoubben