jschoubben
4a43e21794
novox/hq ADR 0029, and work breakdown 1.3. A module of several containers had no way to let them reach each other by name: a container declaration could join a network and nothing could create one. An action was the obvious alternative and is refused on removal — "an action has no footprint the host can undo", so a network made that way outlives every module that is ever unassigned, and the mesh cannot tell. A resource the mesh can create and never clean up is one it should not create. A name and nothing else. Not a driver, a subnet or a gateway: each is something a module would have to know about the machine it lands on, and a module naming a subnet collides with whatever else chose the same one. It needs no new ordering rule. Resources apply in declaration order and orphans are removed in reverse, so a network written before the containers that join it is created first and removed last — after they are gone. A runtime refusing to remove one still in use is reported rather than swallowed, because that means something undeclared is holding it. The vocabulary guard fired on the change, as designed, and now names the record instead of a number: nine shapes, with the argument beside the count. Creation reads back rather than trusting an exit status (ADR 0018): a runtime that reports success and made nothing leaves every container that joins it failing to start, one step from the cause.
mesh-host
Tier 0 of the Novox Mesh. The one thing ever installed by hand, and the only thing that changes a machine.
scp mesh-host root@machine:/usr/local/bin/
mesh-host profile
That is the whole installation. One statically linked binary, nothing else present, no runtime
to install first (novox/hq ADR 0005).
What it is for
Apply declared state on this machine. Overlay membership, packet filtering, packages, services, containers and filesystems are not six concerns it carries; they are six instances of the one.
It does not decide. Anything needing knowledge of another node is the control plane's, and the host never queries the mesh database. It receives declarations and applies them.
Joining a mesh
mesh-host enrol --token <token> --name <what this machine is called>
The node generates its own identity — an Ed25519 keypair whose private half never leaves the machine. The mesh records the public half. Nothing is issued to this node; it arrives holding its identity, and what it receives is being known.
The broker's certificate is checked before this machine sends anything. The token pins a fingerprint; the connection is refused if what answers presents anything else. That refusal has its own error and says plainly that retrying will not help, because it does not mean the network is down — it means the mesh was substituted, and since this host applies whatever the link delivers, that would be the whole machine.
There is no certificate authority involved and no hostname check. At bootstrap the broker is self-signed and reached at an address rather than a name, so there is nothing to trace and nothing to match. One exact certificate, or nothing, which is stricter than either.
An already-enrolled machine refuses to enrol again. The mesh believes its first identity, so replacing it is deliberate: remove the identity file first.
What is not built is the link itself. Enrolment verifies the broker and generates the identity, and then stops, having saved nothing — so it can be run again unchanged.
What exists today
Stages 1 and 2. It reports what a machine is, and it applies a declaration to one. It connects to nothing and listens on nothing — what it applies comes from a file.
mesh-host profile what this machine can be asked to do
mesh-host inventory what this machine is, and what it holds
mesh-host apply FILE make this machine match a declaration from a file
mesh-host reconcile make this machine match the declaration this host carries
mesh-host bundle show what this host carries
mesh-host owned what this host has applied and still owns
--json machine-readable
--state where this node keeps what it knows
--dry-run read and check the declaration, change nothing
$ mesh-host profile
linux/amd64
yes container-runtime 29.7.2
no firewall nft exited 1: Operation not permitted (you must be root)
yes graphical-session x11: :1
yes overlay wg0
yes package-manager pacman 7.1.0
no privileged effective uid 1000, not 0
yes service-manager degraded
cannot be asked to: [firewall privileged]
Applying
A declaration is JSON, versioned, and an ordered list of resources — the order is stated
rather than derived, because deriving it would be the host deciding
(novox/hq ADR 0005). The vocabulary is directory, file
and service, and anything outside it refuses the whole declaration: a host that skipped
what it did not understand would apply most of a declaration and report success.
{"declaration":1,"resources":[
{"id":"mesh-etc","type":"directory","path":"/etc/mesh","mode":"0755"},
{"id":"node-conf","type":"file","path":"/etc/mesh/node.conf","content":"role = anchor\n","mode":"0640"},
{"id":"journal","type":"service","unit":"systemd-journald.service","state":"running"}
]}
It converges rather than executes. Applying twice changes nothing the second time; applying to a drifted machine returns it. A mode is maintained, not merely set — a permission applied at creation is not a permission held.
It owns a footprint, and only that. What it applied and is no longer declared is removed; what it did not create is never touched. It knows which is which because it recorded what it did, after each thing worked.
A failed step fails the apply. No step runs after a failure, and the error carries what had already been done — the machine is in whatever state that left it, and pretending otherwise is the fault this exists to prevent.
The bundle a host carries
A host built for a machine carries its declaration inside the binary:
make host BUNDLE=path/to/substrate.lock
mesh-host reconcile then applies it. That is the first node's path — no mesh present, nothing
fetched, nothing else copied onto the machine. copy it and run it stops being true the moment
a second file has to arrive with it, which is why the bundle is embedded rather than beside it.
A default build carries nothing and refuses to reconcile, saying so. A host that applied nothing and reported success would look exactly like one that raised a first node, and the difference would surface later as a mesh that never came up with nothing to point at.
Stages 3 and 4 — the link, and enrolment — are designed and not built.
What stage 2 does not yet prove
The design defines stage 2 as the host applies substrate.lock with no mesh present, and
calls out the claim underneath it: that one host can raise the substrate alone.
The mechanism is proved — a sealed machine, one binary, and it configures itself from what it carries. The claim is not. The substrate is four container services, and:
- the vocabulary has no container type, because a container needs an image and where images
come from is open (
novox/hqresearch 012); - what belongs in a substrate is not known — the closure for a one-node mesh is what research 011 and 012 exist to answer;
- and the machine used to test this has no container runtime, because a sealed network cannot install one.
So substrate.lock here is a real bundle with a placeholder's content. Saying that plainly
beats shipping a host that claims a substrate it has never raised.
A capability is detected, never assumed
The reason this is the first thing built rather than a detail of it.
An installed package is not a capability. A container client on disk with its daemon down looks exactly like a working runtime, and a node assigned work on that basis fails at the moment the work arrives. So every detector runs something that only succeeds if the thing is functioning — 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.
Every verdict says how it knows. A capability reported absent with no reason is a fault nobody can act on. The reason is what a person reads when a node will not take work they expected it to take.
A unit that does not exist is not a unit that is stopped. systemctl is-active says
inactive for both, so declaring a unit stopped reported success for a unit the host cannot
manage at all. LoadState separates them. Found by applying inside a raised machine, not by
reasoning — and its sibling: removing an orphaned service whose unit has since been uninstalled
used to fail the whole apply, which left a node able to apply nothing, ever.
Exit codes are not the whole answer. Found by running against a real machine rather than by
reasoning: systemctl is-system-running exits non-zero for every state except running —
including degraded, which means some 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 the same
fault in the mirror — installed-but-broken reported present, working-but-imperfect reported
absent — and both place work wrongly.
Building
go test ./... structure and logic, and the same checks against this machine
CGO_ENABLED=0 go build -ldflags="-s -w" -o mesh-host ./cmd/mesh-host
Roughly 3 MB, static, no dynamic dependencies. Cross-compiles with GOOS/GOARCH; a host is
built once per architecture and copied, never built on the machine it runs on.
Mocking the boundary is forbidden (novox/hq ADR 0017).
Every detector is exercised against a fake runner for its logic and against this machine for
its behaviour. The tests do not assert which capabilities a machine has — that varies, and is
the point of detecting — they assert that detection tells the truth about whatever is there.
Where the reasoning lives
Design and decisions are in novox/hq, not here. This
repository carries implementation and does not carry decisions.
03-DESIGN/01-to-be/05-the-node-host.md— what this is and the order it is built in02-DECISIONS/0037-the-host-applies-it-does-not-decide.md— the one concern02-DECISIONS/0038-a-node-joins-by-linking-first.md— one behaviour, two sources02-DECISIONS/0039-the-link-is-the-security-boundary.md— a node owns no password02-DECISIONS/0041-the-host-depends-on-nothing.md— why this is a static binary, and Go04-ISSUES/007-an-installed-package-is-not-a-capability— why detection works this way
Checks that cross into the control plane's repository
Two things are agreed between this repository and novox/mesh-control, and each is a separate
struct on each side. A field renamed on one of them fails silently — the crossing succeeds and
something is simply absent — so both are checked by handing one side's real output to the other's
real parser. Neither runs by default; each skips with a reason, because a repository that fails
without its neighbour checked out is a repository nobody can build.
What the mesh sends, read by this host:
mesh-control: ./build/mesh-control plan <node> --json > /tmp/d.json
mesh-host: MESH_EMITTED=/tmp/d.json go test ./internal/declaration/ -v
What this node says when it joins, read by the mesh:
mesh-host: MESH_ENROL_OUT=/tmp/enrol.json go test ./internal/link/
mesh-control: MESH_ENROL=/tmp/enrol.json make check
The second writes the private half of the sealing key beside the request, so the mesh's suite can prove that what it sealed is openable rather than merely present. A key that is correctly named and simply wrong passes every check that only looks at the message.