Commit Graph
100 Commits
Author SHA1 Message Date
jschoubben a18d09db75 Say an unhealthy resource's restart count as the engine's own since it began watching
mesh/delivery delivered
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/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
mesh/delivery-group group fix/458-restarts-say-what-they-count delivered: every member is delivered
Beside the state it read as restarts since then (novox/hq issue 458).
2026-10-12 10:47:07 +02:00
jschoubben 20d5af9b2d Refuse a declaration composed from an older assignment generation than the machine applied (hq issue 234)
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/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
mesh/delivery delivered
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.
2026-10-11 11:22:30 +02:00
jochen 3abb07f1e2 State a tool check that waits for the operator as waiting (issue 386, ADR 0283)
mesh/delivery superseded: a newer head of the same pull request
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/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
A module whose only fault was a secret the operator had not given yet was
stated unhealthy, failed its first-node gate and was put back. The engine
now reads the tool's answer through mesh-sdk go/health and states such a
resource waiting, with what it waits for, on one look; a malformed wait
stays unhealthy.
2026-10-10 21:11:02 +02:00
jochen 8e79403c21 Show how far the setuid search got, and start a fresh one when the terminal asks (hq issue 361)
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/repo-check fail: its merge-check.sh failed: --- FAIL: TestNatsAnEnrolmentWithNoReplyAddressIsNotAnswered (0.00s)
mesh/delivery superseded: a newer head of the same pull request
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.
2026-10-10 01:55:58 +02:00
jochen 2dbbda51c6 Walk for setuid programs in the engine and carry an interrupted walk on (hq issue 361)
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/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
mesh/delivery-group group fix/361-the-setuid-search-runs-to-completion ready: every member ready, and composed together they pass
mesh/delivery superseded: a newer head of the same pull request
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.
2026-10-10 01:00:47 +02:00
jochen 2410796869 Let the setuid search run to completion and judge from the last complete one (hq issue 361)
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.
2026-10-10 00:53:05 +02:00
jochen fc6c5a92e6 Believe a hand-over only signed by the mesh, and give it through no link (hq issue 356, review)
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/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
mesh/delivery superseded: a newer head of the same pull request
Two holes the review proved. The ask's subject proved nothing — a responder can reach it through a reply — so the engine now verifies the mesh's signature over a fixed context with the key it verifies declarations with, before reading anything, and refuses an ask for another node, expired, good too long, without a nonce, or replayed. And the apply followed a link the hand-over had refused: a component swapped for a link after the record carried root's chmod and chown to its target. A handed-over directory must now still resolve to itself, and is changed only through one descriptor opened from / with no link followed (fchmod, fchown). Tests for the reply guard, the run loop's hook, the fallback renewal on proof and a non-regular fallback; 27 checks each removed in turn, each failing a test.
2026-10-09 19:45:00 +02:00
jochen e74ee82a76 Renew the engine placed by hand to the proved build, and take a hand-over from the controller's terminal (hq issue 356)
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/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
mesh/delivery superseded: a newer head of the same pull request
The file on PATH was the engine a person copied at installation, and every delivered engine ran from the versions directory: the operator typed hand-over and a build from before it answered "unexpected argument". A proved engine now copies itself over that file when the bytes differ (never a link). And the hand-over of a directory used as found (issue 339) gets its channel: the controller's terminal asks this node's engine on mesh.node.<node>.ask.hand-over; the engine judges every value — the ask's size and shape, who asked, the path as it states it, a directory and no link, through no link — and records it or refuses and records nothing. Every text the engine addresses to the operator names the nox line (ADR 0272); the engine's own subcommands are install-time and rescue, and its usage says so.
2026-10-09 18:34:10 +02:00
jochen 655f515aa7 Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/main' into feat/272-the-engine-vouches-for-mesh-cli 2026-10-09 13:09:16 +02:00
jochen 564948c2f2 mesh-cli: follow a line to its answer, bound each account, refuse other namespaces (review of hq ADR 0272)
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/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
mesh/delivery superseded: a newer head of the same pull request
- A request that timed out was said as "the controller was not reached,
  nothing ran", though the line may have run. The engine now follows a line
  the controller answers as running, by its call, until it ends; when no
  answer comes in time it says the line may have run and names the call.
  "Nothing ran" is said only of a request no controller took.
- One account could hold the socket: accepting waited for a free slot, and
  a connection could stall before its deadline was set. The deadline is set
  at accept, before any lookup; each user id has two lines at once and the
  machine eight, and one over is answered busy at once.
- A container running with the operator's user id shares the number, not
  the machine: a peer whose mount or user namespace is not the engine's is
  refused, and nothing is asked.

SDK pinned at the go/cli branch's newest commit until go/v0.1.9 is tagged.
2026-10-09 12:48:20 +02:00
jochen 021d860ca4 Vouch for the account that runs mesh-cli, and ask the controller its line (hq ADR 0272)
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/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
mesh/delivery superseded: a newer head of the same pull request
The records send the operator to "the controller's terminal", and nothing
reaches it (hq issue 343). mesh-cli holds no credential: it asks the engine
on its own machine over a socket. The engine reads the asking account from
the kernel (SO_PEERCRED), never from the program, and asks the controller on
mesh.control.<node>.cli, its own node's subject, so the bus server says which
node asked. The controller decides what the line may do; nothing received
on the socket is run or applied here, and the socket has no network address
(ADR 0004 stands).

The local protocol is the SDK's go/cli package, at a pseudo-version of its
branch until that merges and is tagged go/v0.1.8.
2026-10-09 12:05:53 +02:00
jochen b89b143fe7 Follow no link below a home as root, and judge more ways to root
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).
2026-10-09 10:07:52 +02:00
jochen 3a727011ad Judge whether an account declared never to become root can, so a machine's agents are known confined
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.
2026-10-09 10:07:35 +02:00
jochen ff2553f4db Ask the running runtimes where they keep their data, and read every form a unit says it in
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/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
mesh/delivery superseded: a newer head of the same pull request
The third review of #64 (hq issue 339): an ExecStart continued over lines, a
quoted path, a variable from Environment= or EnvironmentFile= across the unit
and its drop-ins, dockerd's --config-file and podman's TOML literal strings
each hid a data root from the guard. The running runtimes are now asked first
(docker info, podman info) on a runner of the guard's own, and the files are
read beside them in all those forms.
2026-10-09 01:22:11 +02:00
jochen ae1293e73e Read every runtime's data root, keep when a directory was found, and key a hand-over to its resource
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/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
mesh/delivery covered: a later merge that contains it was delivered: novox/mesh-host@7c046a8a1d84 (merged as d28ca959 into main, walk plan-17915049347305…
The review of #64 asked for containerd's tree, dockerd's --data-root from its
unit and drop-ins, and podman's graphroot to be refused like docker's own
(hq issue 339); and the controller now tells a directory a send found from
one found before it, which needs the time it was first found kept across
applies instead of the time of the last apply. A hand-over now names the
resource it was for, so it lapses if another declaration points at the path.
2026-10-09 00:55:21 +02:00
jochen 07164e40f3 Say every directory used as found, let a person hand it over, and refuse the runtime's data and any .ssh
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/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
mesh/delivery superseded: a newer head of the same pull request
A directory the engine used as found kept its owner and mode in silence, so
a module that cannot write it would just fail (hq issue 339 review). Each
one is now a WARNING in every apply's log and its module's resource of kind
directory, stated unhealthy on every look with its owner and what was
declared, which the controller raises as the module's condition; `mesh-host
hand-over <dir>` at the machine hands it to the mesh, and the next apply
gives it the declared owner and mode. The guard also refuses the spool, /opt,
the container runtimes' data (its configured data-root too), and an account's
.ssh as an access, a mount, or a directory anywhere but its own home.
2026-10-09 00:28:01 +02:00
jochen 9d8398206e Name the account whose own manager runs a unit, so a wait for a new login is not read as a fault (hq ADR 0254, issue 318)
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/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
mesh/delivery delivered
mesh/delivery-group group fix/318-a-wait-for-a-person-is-not-a-failure delivered: every member is delivered
2026-10-08 13:41:46 +02:00
jochen ab4ca44f98 Give back only the groups the mesh added, and say when a new login is needed (hq ADR 0252, issue 247)
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/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
mesh/delivery delivered
mesh/delivery-group group feat/module-groups delivered: every member is delivered
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.
2026-10-08 12:04:08 +02:00
jochen 14e5d91c9a Say every failed unit, the module's and the machine's (hq issue 315)
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/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
mesh/delivery delivered
mesh/delivery-group group fix/315-a-failed-unit-is-a-condition delivered: every member is delivered
Liveness judged only what a module runs long-lived, so a module whose
daemon is a package's unit started by D-Bus activation failed at every
start while its machine read healthy, and a degraded service manager was
said by nothing but the profile.

The engine now reads the failed units of the machine's manager and of
every account manager the declaration names, on the two-look rule, and
says whose each is: a declared service or process, a unit file the mesh
writes, or a package the mesh installs makes it that module's, said as
an unhealthy resource of kind unit; anything else is the machine's own,
said in the statement's new units field. It reads; it never acts.
2026-10-08 11:28:51 +02:00
jschoubben e30d838395 A joining machine dials the bus once the hub has answered its tunnel
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).
2026-10-08 01:33:30 +02:00
jschoubben c38f21bb39 A machine makes its tunnel key first and joins through the tunnel
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.
2026-10-08 01:33:30 +02:00
jschoubben 429ea42357 Judge the machine's own networking beside what its modules run (hq ADR 0241)
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.
2026-10-07 18:43:39 +02:00
jochen bdd44154cc Judge how a module says it is ready, beside whether it stays up (hq ADR 0240, to-be 48 Phase B)
Liveness alone could not see a web application whose port was open and whose
program ran while every request hung for eleven hours (issue 145). A resource
now carries the `health` its module declared: the engine makes http and tcp
looks itself from the machine to the endpoint's published port, reads a unit's
readiness from the show it already makes, hands an exec command or the image's
own check to the runtime as the container's check with the declared timing and
reads its state from the inspect it already makes, and asks a module's tool on
its own node tools. Starting until the check passed, unhealthy once its looks
after the grace fail the declared number of times; never more looks than the
measured budget; nothing restarted. The statement says contract 2, which tells
the controller this engine may be sent the field.
2026-10-07 14:08:32 +02:00
jochen 1fc1e74cc3 Judge whether what a module runs stays up, and say it (hq ADR 0240, to-be 48 Phase A)
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/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
mesh/delivery delivered
mesh/delivery-group group feat/a-module-says-how-it-is-healthy delivered: every member is delivered
A container that crash-looped after its compose applied passed every check the
gate had: nothing looked at what a module runs. The node-engine now judges every
long-running resource on every look — one read of the runtime, one per service
manager — keeps the restarts it counts across recreates and its own restarts,
and says the state in every report and as an event on change, again every minute
while not healthy. It reads only; nothing is restarted for being unhealthy.
2026-10-07 02:28:15 +02:00
jochen 0c405b70cc Roll a core build back by a witness that is not the new build (hq to-be 45 Phase 4)
The launcher trusted a counter only a by-hand reconcile ever cleared and a
known-good nothing in the daemon wrote, so no machine could roll its host back;
the controller and the node tools were replaced in place with nothing kept.

- The launcher runs a delivered host that is not known-good on trial: one that
  crashes, stops for nothing, or does not report within ten minutes goes back
  to known-good, once per version, recorded in rolled-back. The host proves
  itself when the mesh takes a report under its own build, says every standing
  verdict on its reports, never stands aside for a rolled-back version, and
  restarts its service once when its launcher was replaced on disk.
- The engine keeps the controller's and the node tools' previous build beside
  the new one and judges the new one: the lease taken by the controller it
  started (read-only direct get of mesh-controller_lease/holder), or this
  machine's runtime answering $SRV.PING.node-tools.<node>, within sixty seconds
  of time it could ask. Not healthy: the previous restored, once, said. Proved:
  the previous deleted. A build declared not-reversible is never rolled back.
- Retire never removes a version newer than the running one.
2026-10-06 18:23:56 +02:00
jochen 31804bd8c2 Apply through one queue, and order what is applied and reported (hq to-be 45 Phase 2)
A delivery and the five-minute reconcile were two paths that applied, ordered only by a lock, and
each order it allowed was met live (issues 257, 261, 267). Now both only enqueue: one worker takes
the newest declaration held when it starts, applies it once and makes one report, and reports leave
in the order they are made.

A declaration may carry the controller's lease epoch beside its sequence; one older than what this
node applied is refused before anything is touched, counted, logged and reported. A report carries
the declaration's epoch and sequence and the host's own report sequence, kept on disk so it goes on
increasing across restarts and self-updates. Without an epoch, today's behaviour stands.
2026-10-06 11:54:10 +02:00
jochen f62ee0bc75 Say an apply's report even when the apply ends the link
A host that delivered its own successor stood aside before the report of
that apply was published, so it failed with 'context canceled' and the
release plan waited for a report that never came (novox/hq issue 264).
Reports are now published on a context the stand-aside does not cancel,
and the last apply's report is kept until the broker takes it and said
again on the next link, so a crash between apply and report is covered too.
2026-10-06 00:30:15 +02:00
jochen ea6fe09e01 A reconcile applies what was kept when its turn comes, not when its timer fired (hq issues 257, 261)
The five-minute reconcile read the kept declaration and then waited for the link's apply; the
link keeps a declaration only once its apply ends, so the reconcile applied the older one over
it. A module assigned a moment earlier was given back, and the report named a declaration the
mesh no longer recorded as sent, which held a plan at its first machine.
2026-10-05 21:43:47 +02:00
jochen f08681f225 An apply leaves a container a maintenance window holds still (hq issue 224)
A while-stopped step stops its module's containers, and an apply arriving
mid-window read the stopped server as broken and recreated it running under
the step - for the store's collector, a registry taking an upload the sweep
then deletes. The scheduler now records each window under the node's state
directory before its first stop and erases it after its last start, so every
apply on the machine (daemon, reconcile by hand, installer) reports a held
container held-still and leaves it for the first apply after the window.
A window whose host died, or past six hours, holds nothing; the report says
which windows are open.
2026-10-05 18:27:04 +02:00
jochen d5c365cb2b A user unit waits for its account's manager, and lingering is the account's (hq ADR 0177)
An account's manager runs only while it is logged in or lingers. A user-scoped unit
whose manager is not running is now "waiting" rather than failed, its record kept as
it was; its removal is never fatal (kept recorded, retried) and an account that is
gone is forgotten. Whether the manager runs is asked of user@<uid>.service in the
machine's manager: asking the account's own, through --machine, logs it in.

The user shape gains `linger`, set with loginctl, read back from logind's record,
and given back on removal like the shell. Unit files the mesh writes under
~/.config/systemd/user or /etc/systemd/user make that unit the mesh's, and made,
holds and found units are keyed by manager and name, so an account's unit and the
machine's of one name are two units. A service moved between managers gives the old
one back through the manager it was in. OpenRC refuses both.
2026-10-04 12:41:32 +02:00
jschoubben 627ac97d4f The host says what filters the machine, with owners, and keeps the found firewall retired on every converged apply (hq ADR 0168)
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.
2026-10-02 11:58:16 +02:00
jschoubben cbdbf6b7d3 Every physical link faces outside, up or down
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.
2026-10-02 11:53:53 +02:00
jschoubben 83b3d20e68 A take is a comparison: the host's facts, former targets, and strays (hq ADR 0163)
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.
2026-10-01 21:24:37 +02:00
jschoubben b1e9ccff6d The profile names the network manager that is running, and travels in every report (hq ADR 0161)
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.
2026-10-01 15:58:31 +02:00
mesh-admin cbcf0bcc93 Merge pull request 'A node can join the bus the mesh runs on' (#51) from fix/a-node-can-join-the-bus-the-mesh-runs-on into main
mesh/delivery held for a person: merged without a passing check: only a person decides that it goes on
2026-10-01 11:18:02 +00:00
jschoubben 8431ecfb48 A declaration carries its order, and a host refuses an older one
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.
2026-09-30 14:03:03 +02:00
jschoubben 1028193c8a A delivered host knows it is the delivered one
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.
2026-09-30 13:46:51 +02:00
jschoubben 6c6495f6d9 A delivered host reads its version from where it sits
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.
2026-09-30 12:40:00 +02:00
jschoubben 197258c88c A node can join the bus the mesh runs on
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.
2026-09-29 17:36:59 +02:00
jschoubben 971a6d6d03 A first node gets as far as its own bus: three faults on the way
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.
2026-09-29 15:42:43 +02:00
jschoubben 6e90c2692d A host running as a service says what its apply did
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.
2026-09-29 09:15:53 +02:00
jschoubben 94a35a39eb A converged machine can speak unasked
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.
2026-09-29 01:13:09 +02:00
jschoubben bb85af1821 A machine says which links face outside without being asked
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.
2026-09-29 01:00:26 +02:00
jschoubben fbf0fb7d63 The host delivers its own successor, and versions live side by side
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.
2026-09-29 00:29:36 +02:00
jschoubben b0d11c2439 A machine says which of its links face outside
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.
2026-09-28 23:37:06 +02:00
jschoubben 2478b5f127 One bus: the AMQP transport is gone from the host
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.
2026-09-28 03:54:22 +02:00
jschoubben 68a193d6f0 A host adopts a delivered membership at start, not only after a declaration
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.
2026-09-28 02:21:56 +02:00
jschoubben 9fd3762e93 A machine moves to the bus its declaration tells it to
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.
2026-09-28 00:08:44 +02:00
jschoubben 48e2ff2de5 Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/main' into feat/nats-genesis 2026-09-27 18:38:45 +02:00
jschoubben 9072f60a30 Enrolment behind a seam, with both transports
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.
2026-09-27 01:31:46 +02:00