The system-data fallback resolved a scratch fine and removeProofScratch then refused to
delete it: its accepted-roots list is built from REGISTERED drives, and a driveless box has
none. Observed on demo-felhom: 'refusing to remove ... it is not inside a proof root', with
the copy still on disk. Every nightly proof would have left one behind, growing forever, on
exactly the boxes the fallback exists for.
My defect, introduced with the fallback in the same session. The unit tests missed it
because every one of them registers a drive; the new pair deliberately does not, and the
second asserts the guard still REFUSES a path outside every proof root, so the fix is not a
widening into uselessness.
THE WALK FOUND THREE MORE ENTRY POINTS THAN THE REPORT DID. R-411 named one missing
acquireRunning. Fixing it and then pinning the invariant with an AST walk surfaced FOUR in
total, all of which issued restic commands with no flag:
RestoreOffboxScratch - the reported one
OffboxRestorePrepareFull - the SECOND request in the customer's own two-step full-restore
flow, and the one that actually shells `restic stats`. The UI
reaches it FIRST, so flagging only the restore would have left
the collision reachable by the ordinary path.
RestoreSharesScratch - R-411's exact shape on the shares tier: unlockStale + resticStep,
a live web caller, and its sibling PlaceSharesRestore has always
taken the flag.
RestoreOffbox - no production caller today, but the same dangerous pattern.
Flagged rather than left for a future caller to inherit.
OffsiteInventoryList is REGISTERED EXEMPT with its reason: it issues only `restic snapshots
--json`, measured on demo-hp 2026-08-31 not to take a lock, and flagging it would make
browsing a page refuse during a backup for no safety gain.
THE REAL DELIVERABLE IS THE WALK, not the acquire. offbox_integrity.go:28 asserted "Every
off-site operation takes acquireRunning" since v0.227.0, nothing checked it, and it was false
for months - the ninth instance of this project's most-repeated class. The walk is an AST
pass, not strings.Contains, because a commented-out call still contains the string.
Red-proofed twice: removing the acquire fails it naming RestoreOffboxScratch; an
unregistered fake entry point fails it naming the fake.
R-407: "It NEVER writes to the repository" corrected in place, not deleted (R-360's rule).
`check` takes a lock - and so does `restic stats`, which is the fact nobody had and the one
that made R-411 possible. Both recorded where the next reader will meet them.
R-414: the proof could not run at all on a box with no registered drive. Part 2.1's
determination came out as neither "missed" nor "deliberate": R-356's own test comments say
the scratch resolver "still resolves ... only the DESTINATION moves", so it was OUT OF SCOPE,
and it was never ruled out on state-only grounds - the one comment about a systemDataPath
fallback belonged to PlaceOffsiteRestore, concerned bulk USERDATA, and R-356 overruled even
that. So 07 section 6.3's rule applies and now has a fourth consumer.
The fallback is SCOPED, because the two callers ask different questions and one predicate
answering both is the R-356 defect itself: a UNIT-ONLY restore may fall back to the system
data path (07 section 7 records as FACT that a driveless app's unit already lives there
indefinitely, and that the same-device placement is intended); a FULL restore keeps today's
refusal, because it pulls bulk userdata onto a state-only tier.
And the silence ends either way: a proof that cannot start now records ProofResultCannotRun
rather than an Err, so last_proof_result is never ABSENT - absent already means "controller
too old", and a second meaning on the same field is the StatsKnown trap one level up. It is
recorded WITHOUT advancing per-snapshot due-ness, so the app stays retryable once a drive is
registered.
R-412 leg 1: a per-app push whose unit carried no dump and no tar now says so, at WARN.
Wording only - no guard, and the capture is untouched (08 section 8.2). Leg 2 stays OPEN.
16 new tests, 1689 -> 1705. Full suite 28 packages rc=0, all 13 controller gates OK.
Red-proofs run and reverted byte-identical for A3/B1 (twice), C1 and D1.
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