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 mesh knew a machine's architecture and kernel family and nothing it is made of, and heard even
that only when it sent the machine something. The profile now carries the machine's memory, each local
filesystem's size and free space, processor model, cores and threads, distribution and version, kernel
release, virtual or physical, boot time and timezone; a fact it cannot read is named unknown with why,
never zeroed. The reconcile says the profile unasked once the mesh last heard it 23 hours ago, so on a
machine nobody pushed to nothing the mesh holds of it is older than a day.
96 comments across the two repos named records that no longer exist. Each now
points at the consolidated record that holds its reasoning -- ADR 0034 (a test
defends a decision) is 0017, the eight host records are 0005, the four lab
records are 0016.
Worth noting for next time: these are references from outside HQ, so renumbering
there is not free. It cost 38 files here.
Tier 0's first slice, per novox/hq 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/05-the-node-host.md. It
applies nothing, connects to nothing, listens on nothing. 2.9 MB, static, no
dynamic dependencies: copy it onto a machine and run it is the whole install,
which is the property ADR 0041 rests on.
A capability is detected, never assumed. Every detector runs something that only
succeeds if the thing FUNCTIONS — the daemon is asked for its version, the
package database is queried, the firewall is asked to list a ruleset, which
needs the privilege as well as the tool. 04-ISSUES/007 is the fault this
prevents: a client on disk with its daemon down looks exactly like a working
runtime, and a node assigned work on that basis fails when the work arrives.
Every verdict carries the reason and the method. A capability reported absent
with no reason is the same fault in a new place: something nobody can act on.
Two bugs found by running rather than reasoning, both silent:
systemctl is-system-running exits non-zero for every state except `running` —
including `degraded`, which means units failed and the init is emphatically
there. Reading the exit code reported NO service manager on a machine whose init
it was. That is 007 in the mirror, and both directions place work wrongly. A
verdict now reads what a tool says about itself, not only how it exited.
And `mesh-host inventory --json` printed text: the standard library stops
parsing at the first non-flag argument, so the flag sat unread and the command
exited 0 having ignored what was asked. The parser now takes the subcommand off
the front, and a stray or mistyped argument is refused rather than dropped.
Detection deliberately does NOT follow ADR 0008. That rule governs applying
state, where a failed step means the machine is not what was asked for. A failed
probe is a finding — "absent, because the probe failed" — and aborting would
replace one legible absence with total ignorance of the rest.
25 tests: structure and logic with a fake runner, and the same detectors against
this machine, because a test that fakes the system under detection asserts only
that the fake behaves as expected.
jochen
jschoubben