# REPORT — R-97: a failing backup is HEARD, and stops blaming the apps (v0.177.0) (2026-07-27)

**Overwritten** per the standing rule. Controller **v0.176.0 → v0.177.0**; **hub v0.77.0 → v0.78.0**
(required — the controller emits event types the hub must allowlist). **MinAgent unchanged.**

## Part 0 — ops

| Item | Result |
|---|---|
| **0.1 swap on ep0** | **4 GiB live and persistent.** `swapon --show` → `/swapfile file 4G`; `free -h` → `Swap: 4.0Gi`. Persistence verified **without rebooting**: `systemd-fstab-generator` produced `swapfile.swap` (`RequiredBy=swap.target`, `is-enabled: generated`, `ActiveState=active`), and `findmnt --verify --fstab` → **0 parse errors, 0 errors**. `vm.swappiness` **unchanged at the default 60** — no sysctl override added. Done ahead of Sunday's first-ever GC. |
| **0.2 R-95 mitigation** | **Snapshot plan IS set** on `storage-box-pool-1` (611714): `{"max_snapshots":7,"minute":0,"hour":0,"day_of_week":null,"day_of_month":null}` → **daily at 00:00, keep 7**. But **0 snapshots exist and `size_snapshots=0`** — it is ARMED, not yet PROVEN; the first fires tonight. The **root exposure remains open**: subaccounts are still `readonly=False` and `restic forget --prune` still runs from the box. |
| **0.3 R-91 gate** | **NOT satisfied — do not delete.** demo-felhom's newest offsite snapshot is still `2026-07-26T12:21:48Z`, i.e. **before** the volume migration (attached 2026-07-27 06:29:40 UTC). demo-hp has two post-migration (07-27 08:25:47Z, 09:37:29Z). `/srv/pbs-felhom` remains 13 G. |
| **0.4 residue** | Removed `/root/.ssh/known_hosts.pre-storagebox.bak` and stripped the 3 `u629193` lines from `/root/.bash_history` (0 remaining). `CONTEXT.md` corrected: the datastore is `/mnt/pbs-datastore`, not `/srv/pbs-felhom`. |
| **0.4 R-88 watcher** | **The first in-window scheduled backup has NOT landed, and could not have.** The window is 02:30–06:30 UTC and the fix deployed at 14:23 UTC, so the next opportunity is 2026-07-28. Last vzdump of any kind: the incident's `07:13:06Z FAIL`. This is **timing, not health** — reporting it as "quiet therefore fine" would be the absent-log-line fallacy the new rule 3 forbids. |

## The cooldown keying finding

**Per-event-type only, and it would have masked one tier with the other.** `dispatcher.go:233` keyed
the operator cooldown `customerID + ":" + eventType` with a hardcoded 1 h window. Correct for an event
describing ONE thing; wrong for one describing ONE TIER when a box has two — `felhom-pbs` failing at
09:00 would swallow `local` failing at 09:20 for the rest of the hour.

Two clarifications that changed the fix's shape:
- it gates the **email only** — `SaveEvent` runs before dispatch, so both events are always stored;
- widening the key for **everything** would be a flood, not a fix (one hourly `app_start_failed`
  becomes one per app).

So the fix is **narrow**: `cooldownTierSuffix` appends `:<tier>` **only when the event details carry a
`tier`**. No existing event type's behaviour changes. Pinned by `TestCooldownTierSuffix_EmptyForEverythingElse`.

## The grace window (Part 2)

**`quiesceAlarmGrace = 180 s`**, derived rather than picked round:
- the **deploy flow already allows 120 s** for a stack to come up healthy — the project's own existing
  answer to "how long is too long";
- the slowest catalog healthcheck `start_period` is **Mealie's 60 s**, after which a couple of check
  intervals must still elapse before a verdict means anything.

180 s clears both with margin, and is deliberately not longer: the app-state scan runs on its own
cadence, so a genuinely dead app alarms on the first scan after the window closes. The cost is a
**bounded delay** in reporting a real failure, never its loss.

**Why a cycle-keyed window and not a state test:** v0.164.0's filter is
`IsDownState(st.State) && st.State != StateStopped` and suppresses *deliberately stopped* apps.
BookStack alarmed because the third cycle caught it **mid-restart** — `starting`/`unhealthy`, not
`StateStopped`. No state classification can distinguish "restarting because a backup stopped me" from
"restarting because I keep crashing"; the distinguishing fact is that *we* stopped it, and we know it.
Consumed at the **same single derivation point** (`classifyRunStates`) that computes both the banner
dead-list and the notifier Down-set — still one place.

## Tests — controller 27 pkg ok / hub 17 pkg ok, 0 failed; `build`/`vet`/`test` each rc=0, run separately, vet unpiped

Controller +9 (8 quiesce + 1 wiring reachability); hub +8. Red-proofs observed and restored:

| Scenario | Mutation | Observed failure |
|---|---|---|
| **C** | key the breaker on a constant (one global failure record) | `both tiers must be reported; got local=1 felhom-pbs=0 — one broken tier must not mask another` |
| **E** | `SuppressedStacks` returns nil (pre-fix shape) | `R-97b: the apps we stopped for a backup must not be reported down; bookstack still alarmed` |
| **F** | suppression never expires (permanent) | `CONTRACT VIOLATED: suppression must EXPIRE — bookstack is still suppressed 3m1s after the cycle; permanent suppression is a silent real alarm` |

## The end-to-end event evidence

**Induced deliberately, and it travelled.** A real `whole_guest_backup_failed` was POSTed from **inside
guest 9201**, with the controller's own hub URL and API key, over the live `/api/v1/event` route — the
exact path `PushEvent` uses. Message prefixed `[R-97a VERIFICATION - induced by Claude Code, NOT a real
fault]`, details `{"tier":"felhom-pbs",...}`.

```
1. the new type            → HTTP 200 {"ok":true}
2. CONTROL: bogus type     → HTTP 400 "Invalid event_type: whole_guest_backup_bogus"
```

The control matters: without it, a 200 is equally consistent with "my type is allowlisted" and "the
gate is off". At the far end, from a **freshly copied** hub DB (mtime checked — a stale copy already
produced one confident wrong answer today):

```
events:            2026-07-27 15:04:57  error  whole_guest_backup_failed  [R-97a VERIFICATION …]
notification_log:  2026-07-27 15:04:58  whole_guest_backup_failed  channel=operator  status=sent
                   OPERATOR rows: 1   CUSTOMER rows: 0
```

**Operator notified, customer not** — the operator-only property confirmed positively, not assumed.
No storage target was altered and nothing was pointed at a dead endpoint, so nothing needed restoring.

## Deployed

- **hub v0.78.0** — GitOps: manifest bumped, ArgoCD hard-refresh + deliberate sync → `Synced`,
  rollout complete, pod image `felhom-hub:0.78.0`, startup clean. **Deployed FIRST**, so the
  controller never emits a type the hub would 400.
- **controller v0.177.0** — demo-hp first, then demo-felhom; both `Up (healthy)`.

Post-deploy on both boxes: **0 spurious suppression/backoff lines, 0 startup errors**, quiesce loop
started, all app stacks up (10 on demo-felhom, 3 on demo-hp). The positive observable still lands —
both tiers polled every 5 min with `200`s in `pveproxy/access.log`.

## NOT yet live-validated

- **The quiesce → notify link is UNIT-PROVEN ONLY.** The hub half is proven live end-to-end with a
  control (above), and the adapter's reachability is pinned by `TestQuiesceTierNotifierIsWired` — but
  no real quiesce failure has fired the seam on hardware, because inducing one means an app outage on
  a demo box. The join is proven by test + inspection, not observation.
- **No R-88 backoff has ever armed on real hardware.** Both boxes are healthy, so the breaker's
  behaviour under a failing tier still rests on unit tests alone. Unchanged by this task.
- **R-97b's suppression has never fired live** — it needs a real quiesce cycle, i.e. tomorrow's
  in-window backup at the earliest.
- **The 180 s grace has not been measured against a real restart** on these boxes; it is derived from
  the deploy flow's 120 s and Mealie's 60 s, not observed.
- **The snapshot plan (0.2) is armed but has taken 0 snapshots** — first one due tonight at 00:00.
- **demo-felhom's first in-window scheduled backup** under v0.176.0/v0.177.0 lands 2026-07-28 at the
  earliest.

## OPEN-ITEMS rows touched

**Closed:** R-97 (both halves shipped) · R-96 (three standing rules committed to `CLAUDE.md`) ·
R-90 (swap done; the CX33 rescale stays open as the durable fix).
**Re-ranked:** R-95 split — mitigation ARMED (awaiting first snapshot), root exposure still READY.
**Unchanged:** R-91 (gate not satisfied) · R-88b (agent wire change) · R-86 · R-87.