Waiting to be bound is the NORMAL state of a freshly installed box, and it must
not be reported as failure. The PAIRING poll loop used to BE systemd's
Restart=on-failure/RestartSec=30 — one poll per invocation, exiting non-zero
until the bind landed — so every 30s systemd printed "Failed to start Felhom
host bootstrap" on the physical console the CUSTOMER is watching. The
2026-07-18 N100 rehearsal measured 52 FAILED lines in ~11 minutes while nothing
was wrong (VALIDATION-n100-rehearsal-2026-07-18.md F6).
felhom-bootstrap.sh: run_pairing() is now a while-loop that sleeps
POLL_INTERVAL (30s — the hub-side rate is unchanged) between polls, so the unit
sits in `activating`. Registration split into register_appliance(), which
returns non-zero for a transient problem (no network yet, no identity, no
token) and is retried by the loop instead of taking the unit down. Cadence
constants: POLL_INTERVAL=30, BANNER_EVERY=10 (5 min), HEARTBEAT_EVERY=20
(10 min).
Quiet without going dark: a 204 is logged once on entry (worded so nobody reads
it as an error) and then only on the 10-minute heartbeat with elapsed minutes;
404 and unexpected codes degrade the same way. 410 STILL exits non-zero on
purpose — delivery consumed but no local env is a real crash window, and a
clean systemd restart is the right response.
Console banner: every 5 min instead of every cycle, single accented spelling
instead of the parositasra/párosításra double, and the reassurance the
rehearsal showed was missing ("Ez a képernyő magától frissül — nincs teendő a
doboznál").
felhom-bootstrap.service: TimeoutStartSec=infinity. This is load-bearing, not
cosmetic — a Type=oneshot ExecStart is killed at DefaultTimeoutStartSec (90s),
so without it systemd would kill the new in-script wait after 90 seconds and
Restart=on-failure would silently reinstate the exact spam this removes, after
appearing to work for the first three polls. Restart=/RestartSec= are kept
deliberately: they still cover the DIRECT path, a failed host-install, and 410.
Verified behaviourally, not assumed: driven in a throwaway Debian container
against a stub hub answering 204 five times then delivering — logged the wait
once plus one heartbeat, never exited between polls, then consumed the
delivery, wrote the 0600 env, fell through to the direct install in the same
invocation and exited 0. The old design produced five unit invocations and five
"Failed to start" console lines for that same sequence.
Hub endpoints, payloads, polling rate and one-shot delivery semantics are all
unchanged.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Nn3VgQk9iwEGgyx6QJ2NvE
Let a customer bind their own freshly-installed appliance without the
operator: operator "Send self-bind link" mints a 7-day tokenized
capability link, emailed (Hungarian, sibling sender) to the customer, who
opens a public /bind/<token> page and proves two factors — the console
pairing code shown on the box screen + their retrieval passphrase — and
the hub stages the bind via the same BindAppliance (provenance
customer_selfbind). The box's ~30s appliance poll delivers.
Viktor's three rulings verbatim: console pairing code (no appliance list
ever rendered), operator-sent tokenized link, 5-attempt lockout ->
"call support". Wrong code == wrong passphrase (one generic failure, no
oracle, both factors compared unconditionally); expiry falls back to
operator-bind unchanged.
THE TRAP: one public prefix /bind/, exempt from auth+CSRF at both /login
gate sites via a single isPublicBindPath predicate (tight trailing-slash
match; ServeMux ..-cleans; handler rejects '/' in token). 9 tests
(Scenarios A-F + F1/F2); 4 red-proofs verified red-then-green (lockout,
oracle, widened-prefix, single-active). GC verdict: no appliance GC ->
the 7-day TTL stands alone. Controller/agent untouched; R-27b deferred.
Green: full hub build/vet/test (17 ok) + bash -n + hub confirm gate.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_017qDiBqKKQ5vPB5fXBqu7Kp
A generic ISO carries NO customer secret. The box registers itself at the hub
as an unclaimed appliance; the operator binds it to a customer; the hub delivers
the customer-id + retrieval passphrase ONCE; day-0 completes via the slice-A path.
Hub (v0.62.0):
- store/appliance.go: appliance_registrations keyed by (uuid, mac_set) — MAC set
is the tiebreaker (duplicate SMBIOS UUIDs); token stored as sha256 only.
Idempotent register (sticky-discard), atomic one-shot delivery, bind/discard.
- api/appliance.go: POST /appliance/register (the one unauth endpoint, per-IP
rate-limited, 256-bit token); GET /appliance/poll (404 no-oracle / 204 unbound
/ 200 deliver-once / 410 delivered). Passphrase read live, never logged.
- web/appliances.go: Hosts-page "Unclaimed appliances" section + BIND (customer
picker, host count display-only) + DISCARD; SSH host-key fingerprints; events.
- Red-proofs: one-shot delivery + register idempotency (both proven red);
404-no-oracle, sticky-discard, bind staging, render. Green + confirm gate.
Scripts (v1.19.0):
- felhom-bootstrap.sh: ONE unit, TWO modes. Direct (env has customer/passphrase)
= slice-A path, byte-identical, only branched around. Pairing (generic) =
register + poll (RestartSec=30 is the poll timer); on delivery write the env
0600 and fall through to direct. Secrets + token shredded on success.
- build-felhom-iso.sh --pairing: generic secret-free ISO, -generic filename,
manifest mode=pairing. profiles/generic.profile (new).
- test/bootstrap-modes.sh: Scenario D (direct = zero appliance calls) + pairing
register/poll + delivery handoff — all green in a debian container.
Closes N100 F1 (HIGH): cheap AMI (AN3PLUS 0.01-class) UEFI firmware can't
relocate the ISO's stock signed GRUB from USB (relocation 0x0). The run's live
grub-mkimage workaround is now a first-class pipeline mode.
- build-felhom-iso.sh: --loader shim|mkimage (default shim, byte-for-byte
unchanged; profile-settable FELHOM_LOADER; --loader wins). Loud banner +
manifest loader:/grub-mkimage: fields + -mkimage filename suffix.
- mkimage-surgery.sh (new): post-prepare-iso, in the assistant container. Builds
a monolithic grub-mkimage loader from the ISO's own GRUB (module set from its
grub.cfg; embedded search --fs-uuid -> configfile the real menu). Swaps it into
the ISO9660 tree (real lowercase path) + the efi.img ESP; xorriso re-master
preserves BIOS-hybrid + UEFI + GPT-ESP, drops only Apple HFS+/APM. Recipe from
the N100 run evidence, not re-derived.
- Dockerfile.assistant: grub-common + grub-efi-amd64-bin + mtools + dosfstools.
profiles/n100.profile (new, mkimage + SB-off note).
- Validated on nested VM 311 (RUNBOOK-B legs): leg1 shim boots+installs under
OVMF SB-enforcing + SeaBIOS; leg2 mkimage boots+installs under SB-off; leg3
(red-proof) mkimage under SB-enforcing FAILS Access Denied (unsigned -> SB must
be OFF); leg4 surgery byte-identical payload. bash -n + shellcheck clean.
Physical N100 closure folds into the rehearsal (n100-safety match-nothing ISO
built + sha-recorded, unbooted). PXE stays a deferred R-21 note.
scripts/iso/: a DooPlex pipeline (build-felhom-iso.sh + Dockerfile.assistant) that
turns the official PVE ISO into a Felhom auto-install ISO whose first-boot stub
installs a retry-forever felhom-bootstrap unit which unattended-fetches
felhom-host-install.sh from the public felhom.eu/scripts channel and runs it until the
host is enrolled + a guest provisioned. host-install is UNMODIFIED (invoked only).
- build gates the answer on validate-answer OUTPUT text, never $? (spike S1 exit-0 trap)
- stub is from-iso, fully-up, exactly-once; retry unit owns all network work (S8a)
- retry-vs-resume encoded once: plain first, --resume when install state exists (v1.11.3)
- secret-bearing (embeds the retrieval passphrase): supervised/single-use; env shredded on success
Validated on VM 310: build gate + red-proof, disk-filter fail-safe, chain + retry,
resume-decision, exactly-once, no-net retry+recovery. Terminal host-install rc-0 success
operator-gated (drill customer needs the password-gated create-UI). scripts v1.16.0;
ROADMAP R-21 -> in-progress. Detail in REPORT.md.
admin