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.
Examples
foundation-first-node.lock
What a machine must be before a mesh exists — the bootstrap in
novox/hq 07-the-foundation.md, whole:
0 a container runtime
1 the store runs
2 a database per context `inventory` and `identity`
3 those contexts' schemas mesh-controller migrate
4 the broker runs with a certificate it generated itself
5 the control plane runs mesh-controller serve
A machine that applies this is a mesh — one node, with nothing joined to it yet, which is exactly what the first node is (novox/hq ADR 0004). From here it hands out tokens and everything else joins the ordinary way.
This file said it stopped at step 4 for longer than that was true, which is its own small lesson: a comment about what something does not do is a comment nobody updates.
Build a host carrying it:
make host SYSTEM=arch BUNDLE=examples/foundation-first-node.lock
The registry address and digests have to be replaced before this is useful. They are written
as 192.0.2.250:5000/…@sha256:… because a digest belongs to whatever registry serves it — here,
one a lab scenario raises, which reports its digests when it comes up. That is not a placeholder
to be tidied away: a bundle is built for a target, and which registry that target pulls from is
part of the target.
What was verified, and how
On a lab machine confirmed sealed — curl https://example.com times out, the lab registry answers
200 — the whole bundle applied from bare: eight resources, inventory created and mesh nowhere,
the node table present with its indexes, the migration recorded, and LavinMQ answering
lavinmqctl status with AMQP listening on 5672.
Three consecutive reconciles after that: already matches — 8 resource(s) checked, each time.
Then the machine was rebooted, and everything came back: docker from boot: enabled, both
containers because the host creates every container --restart unless-stopped
(internal/apply/apply.go), the schema intact in its named volume, and reconcile still finding
nothing to do.
The reboot is worth doing rather than assuming. Nothing in the declaration asks for a container to return, so that it does is a property of the host, and the only way to know it holds is to take the machine away and give it back.