admin
8c7f882d1c
gates / gates (push) Successful in 19s
Machine: VM 330 destroyed with its disks. Host: ISO and scratch removed, ~8.5 GiB returned on nvme-scratch. Hub: customer drill0242 DELETED via the cascade (journal #17), pages 404; its ep0 WireGuard peer dropped at the next full-list push. Evidence pulled before the destroy. R-501: the documented CI-check recipe reads only the last jobs page, which is not in id order. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_0159rPz1ZhFKsS53msqPYxtS
621 lines
48 KiB
Markdown
621 lines
48 KiB
Markdown
# STATUS — what works, what's broken, what's next
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**Updated 2026-09-14 (afternoon) — the first-hour drill on a fresh box.**
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> **Ready for a volunteer: not yet.** Two things would stop a stranger before their first app: **there
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> are no instructions anywhere telling them where the installer is or what to type**, and **the link
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> in the "your server started" e-mail does not open for a new customer**, because nobody creates its
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> web address automatically. Everything after that point worked.
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**What I exercised.** A brand-new machine on the HP, installed from the public installer, connected
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to a new test customer, claimed, two apps installed and used (a family wiki with a Hungarian page and
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an attachment, and an encrypted note), a manual backup, one app removed with its data, the other
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restored after I deleted its page, a power cut, and a mistyped code. The new golden image was built
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first, as the weekly rule says, and the fresh box landed on today's release by itself.
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**What broke.** Nothing lost data: the restore brought the deleted page back byte for byte, and the
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power cut brought every app back on the same version with no false alarm. What a stranger would trip
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on: no instructions (I wrote a Hungarian draft for you to approve); the dashboard address; the
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installer refusing its own default machine name; the box's screen first telling people, in English, to
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open the admin page they must never use; the five-word passphrase that no e-mail ever delivers; one
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backup page wrongly saying "already covered, nothing to do"; app pages saying "open wiki.DOMAIN"
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literally; and the dashboard showing the backup two hours off from the backup page. I reached the
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dashboard once in a way a volunteer could not — that is the single intervention. I fixed nothing; this
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run only records.
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**Rows.** Opened 9 (eight from the walk, one about how I check the build server), closed 0. Register table rows: 200 before, 209 after.
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**Needs you.** (1) **Decide how a new customer reaches their dashboard**: the hub creates the web
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address automatically, or the box offers a home-network address that works with no setup. **If you do
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nothing:** every volunteer needs you to create their address by hand before they can log in.
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(2) **Read and approve the Hungarian volunteer instructions**, and choose how they are sent. **If you
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do nothing:** there is nothing to send a volunteer. (3) **Hand the five-word passphrase to each
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volunteer yourself** until an e-mail does it. **If you do nothing:** they cannot connect their box.
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---
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**Updated 2026-09-14 (morning note, the second night) — the scratch guest is built, one controller release, the rotation restarted.**
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**Decisions I took.** (1) The scratch guest on the HP was built as you ruled: a second guest under
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the HP's own customer, on the fast internal disk, sized like the main one, kept on purpose and written
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up in all three places. Two properties of it were my call and you may reverse them: it never sees your
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real data drive, and it never starts the public tunnel — a second connector would serve the public
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domain from a throwaway. (2) A finding I had already listed as fixed turned out half-fixed when
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measured live, and the rule is one release per night, so I kept the line open with the exact measurement
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instead of shipping a second release. (3) The removed-app listing was a medium-priority line, but it
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needed no ruling, touched no customer data and was the rotation's own finding, so I took it into
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tonight's release.
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**What I exercised.** The rotation restarted from its first standing app on the scratch guest: front
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door, use, backup, second copy, remove-with-data, full restore from the second copy, the guarded
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update, remove-everything — all clean. Then a throwaway app for the release proof.
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**What broke, and whether I fixed it.** Six lines fixed and shipped in one controller release,
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delivered by the floor in 16 and 17 seconds, proven on the scratch guest: an app you removed while
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keeping its backup now shows on the backup pages with a button that reinstalls it (before, the way
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back existed only as a hidden endpoint, and a backup kept on a data drive could not be found at all);
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a removal now clears the "held after a failed update" mark; the memory card on the monitoring page can
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render; the second copy is dated by its data rather than by a file that only moves when the app's
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definition changes; and a boot rule is now pinned by a test. Half-fixed: the removal's list of
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deleted volumes is right for a freshly installed app and empty for one that came back from a restore,
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because the restore recreates the volume without the label the list looks for. Measured, kept open.
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One security slip to know about: while building the scratch guest, the HP's retrieval passphrase was
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printed once into a tool output here on DooPlex. Nothing left the machine.
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**Rows.** Opened 1 (delete the empty drive-path setting nothing reads any more). Closed 6 (the
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scratch guest, the removed-app listing, the hold left behind, the monitoring card, the second-copy
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date, the boot rule). Re-scoped 1 (deleted-volume list). Register: 210 open / 194 closed before,
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205 open / 200 closed after.
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**Needs you.** (1) Open the backup page once in a browser after removing a throwaway app with its
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backup kept, and press the new button — strict screen coverage is yours. **If you do nothing:** the
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feature stays proven at the endpoint level only. (2) The passphrase slip: re-issue the HP's retrieval
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passphrase from the hub when convenient. **If you do nothing:** the old one stays valid; the exposure
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is one line in this session's local record. (3) The scratch guest stays up and idle. **If you do
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nothing:** it costs the HP about one and a half gigabytes of memory and nothing else.
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---
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**Updated 2026-09-13 (evening, before the night) — your four items.**
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**Decisions I took.** (1) The rules file now sits in the workspace root and all three repos,
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byte-identical; the gate that checks instruction files required three lines at its top saying it
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loads in every session on purpose, so all four copies carry them. (2) The photo fix was applied to
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your own test instance on the HP through the Update button, not by hand, and I added one test
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account with one photo there.
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**What I did.** The rules file: done. The photo problem: the app's backend serves photos itself,
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through a small web server inside its own image; our template sent every request to the front page
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server, which has no photos. Fixed in two cuts — the second one because the first spoke to the wrong
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port and got empty pictures. Proven without a browser: a photo now comes back as a real image
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through the public address, and you confirmed it in your browser at 21:49. The tier-order
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ruling: built as controller 0.241.0 — an app whose data lives in mounted folders now prefers the
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remote copy over its own-drive copy, and the hold message ends with what the chosen copy holds.
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Live on both machines (0.241.0, delivered by the floor in 16 and 18 seconds) and proven on the HP
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with a throwaway Nextcloud.
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**What broke on the way.** Nothing standing. One new finding: after an app is removed, its
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"held after a failed update" mark stays behind, so a reinstall would start blocked. Cleared by hand,
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filed (R-491) for the next release. Register: 206 open / 191 closed.
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**Needs you.** The scratch guest: the ruling as written cannot be built — the hub ties one box to
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one customer, and a second enrolled customer on the HP would replace the HP's own enrolment. Two
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options: a second guest under the HP's own customer (reversible, tonight-ready, but its reports
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would clash with the HP's page unless it stays unenrolled), or a nested appliance VM enrolled as its
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own box (fully enrolled, hours to build). My pick: the first, unenrolled. **If you do nothing:**
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tonight's rotation keeps restoring in place and skips the standing nine.
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**Updated 2026-09-14 (the night of 13→14 — "be a customer for the night", first run). Written in
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the order the rules ask for.**
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**Decisions I took, so you can undo them.** (1) The rules file your brief named
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(`.claude/rules/unprompted-work.md`) exists in no repo, and its text did not reach me, so I could not
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create it; I worked to the fences written in the brief itself. (2) The nine standing apps cannot be
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the night's throwaway on the same guest (same name), so the rotation starts after them (R-481).
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(3) There is no scratch guest, so the restore was done in place: remove the app, keep its backups,
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restore, read the data back. (4) One controller release (0.240.0), two catalog changes, no hub change.
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**What I exercised.** AdventureLog as a family: install, sign-up, a Balaton trip with three places,
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visits, a packing note, an edit and a delete — all through the app's own API; backup now + second
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copy; remove with "delete my data"; restore; the guarded Update; remove with "delete backups".
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**What broke.** The second-drive restore was refused after a removal that kept the backups (the box
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had forgotten the copy existed). The PostGIS database was not treated as a database, so it had no
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proper dump. The backup card said "no backups" over 484 MB. A removed app is invisible on both
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backup pages. "Delete backups" left everything behind. The app served Django debug pages to the
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internet. Photo upload fails from any non-browser client. A glance fresh install crash-looped.
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**What I fixed and proved live.** Controller 0.240.0 (delivered by the floor in 16 s and 18 s):
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the forgotten copy, the PostGIS dump, the backup card, "delete backups" now deletes, the stale
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failure sentence, the slow off-site check, the old-install copy. Catalog: DEBUG off for AdventureLog;
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glance now lands healthy on a fresh install. Docs and gates: the observations gate reads every section; the
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target-selection runbook names real paths; the catalog now refuses an image move that forgets
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its `catalog_since` date.
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**What I filed.** R-481 (scratch guest, your decision), R-483 (photo upload needs a browser check),
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R-487 (removed apps invisible on the backup pages), R-488 (a 5-minute test package), R-489 (the
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removal reports null over volumes it removed), R-490 (the monitoring page's memory card has never
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shown, its data call is answered 404).
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**Register.** Before: 432 156 bytes open / 120 598 closed (212 / 177 rows). After: see the top of
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`OPEN-ITEMS.md` — 206 open / 190 closed (R-465 audited and closed, R-490 opened).
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**Needs you.** (a) The rules file text — paste it and I create it in all three repos. **If you do
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nothing:** nights run on the brief's fences, as tonight. (b) R-481: how to make a scratch guest (a
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second enrolled LXC, or an ISO appliance per night). **If you do nothing:** restores stay in-place and
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the nine standing apps are never walked. (c) R-483: open AdventureLog in a browser and add a photo
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to a place. **If you do nothing:** we do not know whether households can upload photos. (d) R-479
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from the afternoon still waits.
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**Updated 2026-09-13 (fourth pass) — you decided both things. New releases reach the demo machines
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by themselves again, and an app with any backup can now be updated. Both are live and proven on the
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HP. Nothing needs you.**
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**Updated 2026-09-13 (third pass) — the Update button now takes a backup first and tells the truth. It
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is live on both machines and I walked every case on the HP, including putting a broken update back
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from its backup. TWO THINGS NEED YOU: item 15 (the demo machines no longer get new releases by
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themselves between golden images) and item 16 (apps with no second-drive copy cannot be updated).** Both done the same afternoon.
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**Updated 2026-09-13 (second pass) — you decided both open items. The database engine now finishes
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its own conversion on the four MariaDB apps; the upgrade machine proved it and it landed on the HP
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without a ripple. Goldens are now weekly and before any install, not per release, and the gate
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knows: it reads a dated permission slip that runs out after 14 days. Today's golden (0.236.0) is
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baked and live. Nothing needs you.**
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**Updated 2026-09-13 — "delete my data too" now deletes the data, or tells you it could not. Until today the box said it worked and left everything on the drive. Live on both machines (0.236.0), proven on the HP with a throwaway Nextcloud. Nothing needs you. Item 7 is closed: you decided it on 2026-09-02 and the page still listed it open.**
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**Updated 2026-09-06 (third pass) — I chased down the BookStack database problem I found this
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morning. Good news: it does not get worse, and fixing it costs seven seconds and loses us nothing.
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The catch I expected — that fixing it would stop us being able to go back — turned out not to be
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real. TWO THINGS NEED YOU: item 11 (how wide to take the upgrade testing) and item 12 (one small
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yes/no on the database setting).**
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**Earlier 2026-09-06 (second pass) — I built a machine that upgrades a real app with real data in it
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and then asks the app whether the data is still there. Three apps, five real upgrades: the data
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survived every time. It also found a genuine problem in our own BookStack setup.**
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**Earlier 2026-09-06 — a restart no longer changes which version an app runs. Fixes still arrive
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every 15 minutes, and a broken app definition still repairs itself. Only the Update button moves a
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version now. Live on the HP (0.235.0). Two old items closed: the Hetzner e-mails are answered, and
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the Docker Hub login is in place.**
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**Earlier 2026-09-03 — you spotted that OpenGist had no label. You were right, and it was a real gap:
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the label only appeared on apps something had restarted. Fixed and live (0.234.0). Every app on both
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machines now carries one.**
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**Earlier 2026-09-02 — the box now writes down which version of each app it is running, and shows one
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small label saying whether it is up to date: „Naprakész" or „Frissítés elérhető — 52 napja". No version
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numbers, and nothing about updating changed.**
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**Earlier 2026-09-01 (third pass) — the backup work is FINISHED for beta, and I have written down
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where it stops. One alarm that was telling you something untrue is fixed and live (hub 0.111.1).
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ONE THING is waiting on you: two short e-mails to Hetzner, drafted and ready to paste.**
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**Earlier 2026-08-31 — I measured whether the box could test its own remote restore without you,
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then built the narrow version you picked. The measurement is why it is 3 seconds a night and
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not an evening's work.**
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> **A view, not a source.** `documentation/backlog/OPEN-ITEMS.md` is the authority; this page restates
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> part of it in plain words, and **nothing may exist only here**. **Items, not paragraphs. One screen.**
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> If it does not fit, it belongs in the register instead.
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## Waiting on you
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*This section is allowed to be longer than one screen, and each item says what happens if you do
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nothing.*
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1. **Two things are waiting on you: item 11 (how wide to take the upgrade testing) and item 12 (a small yes/no about the database setting — I have measured both costs).** Item 4 (the Hetzner e-mails) is answered and is being handled in a separate session. Item 7 — the safety-copy decision — was ruled on 2026-09-02 and is now marked closed below (it was **not urgent any more**: the thing that made it urgent was that a restart could upgrade an app behind your back, and as of today it cannot. Item 10 is new and needs nothing from you. Item 5's alarm mail can now be ignored for good. Otherwise: Both problems the overnight test found are fixed and proven on
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the real machines:
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- the background job that could delete a live restore's lock now waits its turn — and the check
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that finds the next one like it is a test, not a comment, so it cannot come back quietly;
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- the nightly backup check now runs on `demo-felhom`. It said **pass** there this morning, on a
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machine where it could not start at all yesterday.
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The golden carrying both is baked, vouched, and the floor is raised. `demo-felhom` picked it up
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**by itself in about 20 seconds**.
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2. **Whether to keep the test app `bentopdf` on `demo-hp`.** I deployed it last night because it
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is the ONLY app of our 53 with neither a database nor stored files — which makes it the only
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way to prove the new check does not cry wolf on an app that legitimately has nothing. It
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passed silently, which is what we needed to see. **My pick: keep it**, as a permanent control.
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**If you do nothing:** it stays, using almost no space. Say the word and I remove it.
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3. **Nothing else about this release.** Everything in 0.232.0 ships in the controller image plus
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two register lines in the hub (already live). No customer action, no data migration, no
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credential change.
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4. **~~Please send two short e-mails to Hetzner.~~ DONE — you sent them and Hetzner replied (2026-09-06). The reply is being worked in a separate session; nothing about it belongs to the update work.** The background below is kept because it is why the questions were asked.
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`felhom.eu/documentation/runbooks/provider-questions-2026-09-01.md` — open it, copy, send. No
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password or key is in that file, and none should be added.
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**Why.** Yesterday I told you the snapshots make a wiped backup survivable: lose about a day, copy
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the rest back file by file. **The first half is still true. The second half is not, and I found
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that out by trying it.** I tried **777,600** snapshot names on the storage, over nine days, in
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Hetzner's own naming style. **None of them opened.** Then I found why: your data and the snapshot
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door sit on **two different drives** inside the storage, and the door for your data **does not
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exist at all**. So there is no way in from the machines.
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**What is still true, and it matters:** a machine that wipes its own backup **still cannot touch
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the snapshots of it**. The older copy is there. What we do not have is a way to reach it.
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**The two questions.** One: can the **main** account pull single files out of a snapshot? Two: on
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one of Hetzner's own tools, is a "cannot delete" switch forced by them, or chosen by the machine?
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**The second one could remove the whole problem** — no new hardware, no moving anyone's data.
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**If you do nothing:** we cannot finish this. The backups keep working and keep being checked; we
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simply cannot say what a wiped backup costs, and I would then put this risk back near the top of
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your list. **My pick: send both. It is five minutes and it decides an evening's work.**
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5. **You will have received an alarm email from me today about `demo-hp` losing 65 backups. It is a
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test and nothing is wrong.** I built the new "someone deleted the backups" alarm and had to fire it
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once for real to prove it reaches you. Subject: `[Felhom] 🔴 demo-hp: offsite_snapshots_dropped`.
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**No backups were deleted.** **If you do nothing:** nothing — but please do not act on that one
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mail. **Closed now:** that was the only such mail, it was a test, and the alarm's wording has since
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been corrected (item under *Decided* below). Nothing further is needed from you here.
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6. **Whether to change the hub password** (R-350). I printed it into my own session log on 20 August.
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Not in git, not in any saved file — in the log on this machine. **If you do nothing:** it stays as
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it is, at the risk you accept by leaving it. I can change it without ever showing you the new one.
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7. **CLOSED 2026-09-13 — you decided this on 2026-09-02, and the page kept listing it open.** The ruling is recorded in `documentation/architecture/09-update-architecture.md` §3: the safety copy is a *verified recent backup as a precondition*, not a new copy made for the update; the guest-snapshot idea is to be spiked before anything is built on it. The text below is kept as the record of what was asked.
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*Original question:* **Where should the safety go before an app updates? This is the one decision from today's
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measurement, and it is a design choice, not a bug report.**
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**What I measured.** The box downloads new app versions by itself every 15 minutes and writes them
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into the customer's files, whether the app is running or not. Nothing tells the customer. Then the
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**Restart** button — not just Update — installs that new version. I watched it download a version
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that was not on the machine and swap the app onto it in 18 seconds. **And the box does it on its
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own** when an app fails to come back after a crash: nobody pressed anything.
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**One fear is smaller than we thought, and you should have that too.** A plain power cut does
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**not** upgrade anything. The apps come back on their old version. It only happens when an app
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fails to return.
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**One fear is bigger.** I tested whether we can undo an app update. **We cannot.** Once an app has
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moved its data to the new version, putting the old version back gives an app that will not start at
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all. So **"rollback" is the wrong word** and I have struck it. The only way back is to restore the
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customer's data from a copy taken *before* the update — and today no update takes one.
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**The decision, in one sentence: should the safety copy sit under the Update button only, or under
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everything that can install a new version?**
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- **Under the button only.** Cheap and quick. Covers the case a customer causes. **Leaves the
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unattended path uncovered** — the one where an app that failed to come back is upgraded with
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nobody watching.
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- **Under everything.** Covers all of it. Costs more, and it has a hard limit I measured: for a
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big app a copy is roughly 30 minutes and about twice the app's size, against a standard box that
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ships with 20 GB. **A copy of a large app does not fit.** So this option cannot be built without
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also answering where the copy lives.
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**My pick: under everything — but decide the "where does it live" question first**, because the
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answer decides whether the rest is even buildable.
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**If you do nothing:** nothing breaks today, and no customer is at risk this week — the fleet is
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young and its running versions match the catalog. But the exposure is real and dated: **Peti's box
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has a one-major upgrade of `rallly` queued behind its next boot**, from a catalog change made three
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days after it went quiet. **Who else is blocked:** nobody can spec the safe-update work until this
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is answered, because the two options produce different products.
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Full measurement, with the controls and the quoted output:
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`felhom.eu/documentation/audits/SPIKE-app-update-2026-09-01.md`.
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9. **Nothing here needs you. Two things I got wrong, both now fixed.**
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**You found the first one.** OpenGist showed no label. That was not a misunderstanding — the label
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only appeared on an app that something had restarted, so an app that simply runs showed **nothing,
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possibly for months**. On a quiet machine that is every app, which is exactly the machine we most
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want to be able to look at. **Now the box reads what every app is on when it starts up, and writes
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it down.** It only looks — it starts nothing and changes no app. Live on both machines: all nine
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apps on the HP now carry a label, and so does OpenGist.
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**One thing to expect, so it does not look broken:** the label says **„Naprakész"** when an app is
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on the newest version, with **no number at all**. A number only appears when the app is *behind* —
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and then it is how long the newer version has been waiting, not how old the running one is. That
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was your ruling and I think it is still the right one.
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**The second one was mine and smaller:** a test I wrote pinned a date and an age, so it passed the
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day I wrote it and failed the next morning. Fixed, and I have written down that the same trap may
|
|
sit in six other test files — named, not accused; someone has to read them.
|
|
|
|
The box now writes down which version of each app it is really running, and shows the customer one
|
|
small label: **„Naprakész"** or **„Frissítés elérhető — 52 napja"**. No version numbers — a
|
|
household cannot act on `26.05.2`.
|
|
|
|
**Both halves are proven on the real machine.** I made two apps fail to come back, the box repaired
|
|
them itself and wrote down exactly what it installed — one line per container, with the fingerprint
|
|
that cannot lie. I checked those fingerprints against the machine independently and they match. Then
|
|
I opened the real customer pages and read the labels off them.
|
|
|
|
**Where I went wrong, because you should not have to spot it twice.** I told you the saved password
|
|
no longer worked on either machine. **It worked fine.** I read it out of the file wrongly — the
|
|
value is wrapped in quote marks and I only removed one kind. You caught it in one line. The machine
|
|
told me "wrong password", which was true, and I took it to mean the password was wrong when it meant
|
|
*what I sent* was wrong. I have filed that as a small job for myself: one shared way of reading that
|
|
file, so the next session cannot get it half right.
|
|
|
|
**If you do nothing:** nothing. This one is closed.
|
|
|
|
10. **Nothing here needs you. The version of an app is now frozen, and only the Update button moves
|
|
it.**
|
|
|
|
**What used to happen.** The box downloaded the catalog every 15 minutes and wrote each app's new
|
|
definition straight over yours — including a new version. From then on, **thirteen** different
|
|
things could install that new version: the Update button, the Restart button, or one of eleven
|
|
repairs the box performs on its own. Nobody had to press anything.
|
|
|
|
**What happens now.** The version is pinned to what you have. Only a deliberate Update moves it.
|
|
|
|
**What deliberately did NOT change, because it was worth keeping.** Corrections to an app's
|
|
definition — a fixed health check, a memory limit, a new setting — still arrive on the same
|
|
15-minute cycle, and a broken definition still repairs itself. That was a real benefit of the old
|
|
behaviour and it is intact. In one sentence: **while the catalog offers the same version you are
|
|
running, its fixes reach you; the moment it moves to a newer version, you stay where you are until
|
|
you choose to update.**
|
|
|
|
**Proven on the real machine**, twice over: I pushed a genuine catalog change with no version in
|
|
it and watched it arrive on the normal cycle; then I pushed a version change and watched the app
|
|
refuse it.
|
|
|
|
**Two things this did NOT do, so they are not read as done.** The Update button is exactly as safe
|
|
as it was yesterday — no backup, no undo. That is the next piece of work, and it is item 7. And an
|
|
app the box could not confidently pin would have been left behaving exactly as before, loudly; on
|
|
the HP that was none of the nine.
|
|
|
|
**One rough edge I chose to write down rather than fix:** a frozen app still receives the small
|
|
metadata file that carries its health check, so it can be given a check written for a newer
|
|
version and look unwell when it is fine. **It cannot lose data — the worst case is a false
|
|
alarm.** Freezing that file too would break the „Frissítés elérhető" label, which is a worse trade.
|
|
|
|
11. ~~**How wide should I take the upgrade testing?**~~ **DECIDED 2026-09-13: as wide as possible,
|
|
through the nightly unattended sessions.** Every app gets its turn as the nightly rotation reaches
|
|
it, one hand-written way in per app. The apps that can only be reached through a browser wait for
|
|
the sessions that run on your Windows machine with Chrome, where the machine can click. Written
|
|
into the update architecture as decision 6. **Nothing to do.**
|
|
|
|
12. ~~**Shall I tell the database engine to finish its own conversion?**~~ **DECIDED YES 2026-09-13,
|
|
and shipped the same day.** The four MariaDB apps — BookStack, Kimai, Nextcloud, RomM — now carry
|
|
one setting that lets the engine convert its own files when it moves to a new major version.
|
|
Seven seconds, and it backs itself up first. **Proven before it shipped:** the upgrade machine
|
|
re-ran the BookStack edge and this time the engine says, in its own words, that it is already
|
|
upgraded — the "skipped" line is gone, and the data read back afterwards. **Watched as it landed:**
|
|
the change reached the HP on the normal 15-minute cycle, nothing restarted by itself, and one
|
|
deliberate restart came back clean with the app serving. **The rule until the next piece is built:**
|
|
the Update button still takes no backup, so no app may move a database engine across a major
|
|
version until it does — a gate refuses such a change at push time. **Nothing to do.**
|
|
|
|
13. **"Delete my data too" now deletes the data — or tells you it could not.** Until today, when a customer removed an app and ticked the box, the box said it worked and left everything on the drive (128 MB of a Nextcloud on 2026-09-01). The cause: the removal asked one global setting for the drive, and no machine fills that setting in. Every other part of the box already asks the app itself where its data is. Now the removal does too. If the box cannot work out where the data is, it refuses and keeps the app, so you can try again — it never again reports success over data left behind. Proven on the HP with a throwaway Nextcloud: 63 MB the app wrote itself was gone after removal, and the answer listed it; the refusal was shown with the app still in place; an app with no drive data gets a plain "nothing to delete" note. Live on both machines (0.236.0). No standing app was touched. **If you do nothing:** nothing to do.
|
|
|
|
14. **The Update button now takes a backup first, and tells the truth.** Nothing needs you.
|
|
Before today, pressing Update pulled the new version at once, checked nothing, and said
|
|
"done" while the app could already be crashing. Now:
|
|
- It refuses first if it must: the app is held, a backup is running, or memory or disk is short.
|
|
It also refuses if the app has no backup it could be put back from.
|
|
- If the backup is older than a day, it makes a fresh one first.
|
|
- It waits for the app to actually be healthy before it says it worked. The button shows each step.
|
|
- If the new version does not come up, the app is stopped and held. The page names the backup to
|
|
restore it from. The box never puts the old version back by itself, because we measured that
|
|
this works for some apps and breaks others.
|
|
|
|
**Proven on the HP with a throwaway app:** a real upgrade, a stale backup, a version that does not
|
|
exist, a version that never starts, and the restore from the named backup back to the old version.
|
|
**One problem showed up during the test and is fixed:** while an update was waiting to see if the
|
|
app came up, the regular backup copied the broken version into the app's local backup. It now
|
|
leaves an app alone while it is updating. Live as 0.238.1.
|
|
|
|
15. **New releases reach the demo machines by themselves again.** You decided this, and it is done.
|
|
When I raise the floor for a release, I now also type which agent that release needs. The hub
|
|
then moves the machines past the golden image. If I leave that value out, the hub refuses to save.
|
|
Release 0.239.0 reached both machines this way in 15 seconds. Nothing needs you.
|
|
|
|
16. **Apps with no copy on a second drive can now be updated.** You decided this, and it is done.
|
|
The update now uses any backup: the second drive first, then the app's own copy, then the remote
|
|
copy. If none is younger than a day, it makes a fresh one first. If the new version fails, the page
|
|
names which backup to restore from. Proven on the HP: an app with only its own copy updated, a
|
|
broken update was held, and it came back from its own copy. Nothing needs you.
|
|
Four small things turned up and are written down: the remote check can take 15 seconds (R-477),
|
|
a leftover backup of a removed app counted as a fresh one (R-478), for some apps their own copy
|
|
holds only settings (R-479), and the card keeps the old failure sentence after a good restore (R-480).
|
|
|
|
8. **`demo-hp`'s network setup does not match our own notes** (R-338) — the machine works, the page is
|
|
wrong, or the other way round. **If you do nothing:** the page keeps misleading the next session,
|
|
as it misled one by an hour.
|
|
|
|
## Decided — and what would reopen each
|
|
|
|
- **GOLDENS ARE NOW WEEKLY AND BEFORE ANY INSTALL, NOT PER RELEASE — AND THE GATE KNOWS. DECIDED 2026-09-13.**
|
|
In August I baked 25 goldens in 26 days, almost one per release, because the check trips on every
|
|
release on purpose. From today: one golden a week, and always before a drill or a fresh install.
|
|
**Correction, same day:** I wrote that every release would still reach both demo machines in about
|
|
20 seconds between bakes. **That was wrong at first:** the hub would not move the machines past the
|
|
golden image. **It is true again since the afternoon:** the floor now carries the release when I type
|
|
which agent it needs (item 15). Release 0.239.0 arrived in 15 seconds. The check now reads a dated permission slip that runs out
|
|
after at most 14 days; while it is valid the check warns instead of refusing, and when it runs out
|
|
the check is red again until someone bakes or renews. A dated slip cannot be forgotten — it just
|
|
expires. Today's golden (0.236.0) is baked, checked three ways, and live.
|
|
**Reopens if:** the first outside customer installs (the slip is retired then), or a fresh install
|
|
ever lands on a golden older than the week.
|
|
|
|
- **THE BACKUP AND RESTORE WORK IS FINISHED FOR BETA. DECIDED 2026-09-01.**
|
|
**What is done, and proven on the real machines:** everything **you or a customer** does alone —
|
|
getting deleted files back, getting an app's data back, getting a whole app back, and losing a
|
|
drive. The restore tells you what it put back, refuses if there is no room, will not accept a
|
|
half-copy, and puts your own data back if it fails.
|
|
**What is parked until after beta:** everything **only I do, with you** — rebuilding a machine as
|
|
itself, losing a whole box, recovering from ransomware, restoring the hub, and losing Hetzner.
|
|
**Six of these have never been timed, and the hub has never been restored.** They are written down,
|
|
they are real, and **none of them stops a beta customer.**
|
|
**Reopens if:** something a customer does for themselves turns out to be broken; **or** Hetzner's
|
|
two answers change what the snapshots are worth; **or** a real customer's data is at stake in one
|
|
of the parked items.
|
|
|
|
- **The alarm that promised too much: FIXED and live (hub 0.111.1). DECIDED 2026-09-01.**
|
|
Yesterday's alarm mail said a deleted backup was *"recoverable file-by-file"*. **We now know it is
|
|
not.** I removed the promise rather than writing a new one, so the sentence stays true whatever
|
|
Hetzner answers. It no longer says the data is lost either — that is still usually untrue.
|
|
**Reopens if:** Hetzner's answers give us a real route back; then the alarm can name it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
- **The missing-golden warning is now pointed at the people who can act on it (R-404). DECIDED
|
|
2026-09-01, and built the same day.** The warning was aimed at the wrong repository: the one where
|
|
a release actually happens never checked at all, while the one that only holds documents was
|
|
refused on every push — including the push that RECORDS a golden bake, which is the very act that
|
|
clears the warning. So the check was blocking its own cure, and we had skipped it thirteen times.
|
|
**What changed:** the release repository now prints a reminder the moment a release is committed
|
|
(it never blocks — you cannot bake a golden for a version you have not pushed yet), and the
|
|
documents repository still runs the check on every push and still says so loudly, but only refuses
|
|
a push that touches real code. **Every other check still blocks everything, always.** Nothing was
|
|
silenced and no product code changed. **Reopens if:** a release ever ships without a golden and
|
|
nobody noticed — that would mean the reminder is not reaching anyone, and the answer would be to
|
|
make the release repository refuse rather than remind.
|
|
|
|
- **Getting old backups back yourself: NOT BUILT, deliberately.** **Reopens if:** a real customer
|
|
asks. *(R-312)*
|
|
- **The unopenable old copy on `demo-felhom`: KEPT as a test fixture** — the only state in existence
|
|
where a set-aside store is present and cannot be opened. **Delete when:** that work ships or is
|
|
abandoned. *(R-313)*
|
|
- **A machine in two kinds of trouble says both things: LEFT AS IT IS.** **Reopens if:** observed
|
|
outside a constructed test. *(R-303)*
|
|
|
|
## What works
|
|
|
|
Both demo machines are home, healthy and reporting — agent **0.130.0** published and running on both.
|
|
**Which controller each box runs, and where the floor sits, is item 1 above and is not restated here** —
|
|
R-395: this paragraph carried a second copy of those numbers, it went stale by seven releases, and the
|
|
page then disagreed with itself about the thing an operator checks first. Ask the hub (`/hosts`,
|
|
`/configs`) or the box for what is live; a doc is never the authority on a version.
|
|
Off-site is credentialed on `demo-hp` and its store opens with the machine's own key.
|
|
|
|
**The fleet, because two summaries have been misread:** five customer records, three machines.
|
|
`demo-felhom` and `demo-hp` are ours and disposable; `drill-r50` is a nested drill VM, reverted and
|
|
off. **`peti-felhom` is a real machine we have not heard from since 15 July** and has no host record.
|
|
**`tester-1` is a record with no machine.**
|
|
|
|
## Shipped
|
|
|
|
- **Something finally checks that the off-site copies are still there and readable** (R-359 + R-397,
|
|
controller 0.227.1, proven on `demo-hp`). Until today **nothing did** — not the box, not the agent.
|
|
The whole-machine backups had their own checks; the copies holding your customers' documents and
|
|
photos had none, so we would have found a problem at restore time, with a customer waiting.
|
|
Now the box checks its own off-site store about once a week and tells you only if something is
|
|
wrong. **A pass sends no e-mail, on purpose** — a weekly "everything is fine" is how people stop
|
|
reading their alerts. **It also catches itself up:** it asks „has it been more than seven days?",
|
|
not „is it Sunday?", so a machine that was switched off on its check day is checked the next day.
|
|
**And it never gets in the backup's way** — if a backup or restore is running, the check steps aside
|
|
and tries again tomorrow. That is not politeness: the tool would otherwise clear a lock that a live
|
|
backup was holding. Proven live, twice over — a real check against your real store (35 seconds), and
|
|
a second check fired during the first, which correctly stepped aside without doing anything.
|
|
**Read item 2 under „Waiting on you" for what this check does NOT see.**
|
|
- **The product stopped claiming a check it never ran.** The monitoring page said an integrity check
|
|
ran every Sunday. It did not exist. The e-mail text, the settings checkbox, the hub's side of it and
|
|
a debug button were all built and wired to nothing (R-397). They now have the missing piece.
|
|
|
|
- **Taking the safety copy no longer destroys the app's own backup** (R-361, controller 0.221.1,
|
|
proven on `demo-hp`). Before every restore the machine saves a copy of your live database. To do
|
|
that it called the ordinary backup routine — **which always writes to the app's normal backup
|
|
filename first** — so the app's real backup was overwritten and then renamed away. Until the next
|
|
nightly run the app had **no database backup of its own**, and a local recovery in that window would
|
|
have told you the app never had a database. A comment in the code said this could not happen; it
|
|
could, and had been happening for four months. Proven fixed the only way it can be: the app's own
|
|
backup file is now **byte-identical before and after a restore**, on both database types.
|
|
- **A failed database restore now puts your data back by itself** (R-379/R-380, controller 0.220.2,
|
|
proven on `demo-hp`). Until today, if a restore of an app's database went wrong, the machine had
|
|
already taken a copy of your live database — a good copy — and **nothing in the product could put it
|
|
back.** You were shown a filename. On one of the two database types it was worse: part of the
|
|
restore applied, part did not, and **the dashboard said the app was healthy**. Now the machine puts
|
|
your own copy back automatically and says plainly: the restore failed, your data is as it was, the
|
|
app is running. Proven on both database types, byte-identical both times.
|
|
**If even that fails**, the app is deliberately **stopped and held** rather than started — a running
|
|
app on a half-written database lets you type into it and makes the damage permanent — and you are
|
|
told to contact us. That was your ruling this morning. **Two things also stopped:** the error no
|
|
longer pastes raw database text at you (it was 615 bytes once, including rows out of your own
|
|
database), and the undo copies no longer pile up forever — three per app, and they were being copied
|
|
off-site permanently.
|
|
- **An empty package can no longer wipe out a good one** (R-403, controller 0.230.0). Yesterday we
|
|
wrote this down as *suspected* and said plainly it had not been tested. **We tested it first, and it
|
|
was real.** On a demo machine, on yesterday's build: an app's copy on the second drive went from
|
|
**120 MB — four database backups and three data archives — to 7 KB, nothing left**, in a single
|
|
nightly run, and the run reported success. The cause was that the nightly job only asked *does the
|
|
folder exist* before copying over it, and an empty package is a folder that exists.
|
|
Now the nightly job refuses to replace a **complete** package with an **empty** one. It keeps what it
|
|
has, says so on the app's own backup page, and carries on with everything else. Proven on the same
|
|
machine, in the same state: **all seven files still there, byte for byte.**
|
|
Two more things came with it. The page no longer calls that copy fresh when the run did not refresh
|
|
it — it names the real date of the package instead. And after a restore from the second drive, the
|
|
first drive's package is filled back in immediately, so the empty state that started all this cannot
|
|
happen again. A copy that legitimately gets smaller still gets smaller; only the one dangerous case
|
|
is fenced.
|
|
- **The copy on the second drive can now bring an app back** (R-102 + R-103, controller 0.229.0,
|
|
proven on `demo-hp`, **and delivered** — golden 0.229.0 is vouched and the fleet floor is raised, so
|
|
a machine installed today has it). Every night the box copied each app's whole recovery package onto the second
|
|
drive — its settings, its database and its data. It did that for months. **Nothing could open those
|
|
copies.** No button, no screen, no command. That mattered most in the one fault the second drive
|
|
exists for: if the first drive dies, the package on it dies too, and the copy that survived could
|
|
not be read. For **45** of the 53 apps that is everything they own.
|
|
Now the same restore that always worked from the first drive can read the copy on the second one,
|
|
and the button is on the app's own backup row. **Proved with the first drive's package taken away:**
|
|
Docmost came back in 29 seconds — its database, all three data volumes, a file with a Hungarian
|
|
accented name back byte for byte, and the app then read its own rows with its own password. Done
|
|
again with the app's password file also taken away: the copy carried the passwords too (2 of 2).
|
|
The screen that used to say „press that other button on another page" now offers the action itself.
|
|
It says plainly that **this one overwrites** what is there — the gentle „Fájlok visszaállítása"
|
|
beside it still only adds back missing files — and it names the date of the copy, so nobody puts
|
|
last week over today by accident.
|
|
- **We counted the apps this affects, and settled it.** Two of our own notes disagreed — 43 or 45.
|
|
The answer is **45**, counted with the product's own rule against the live catalogue. The older
|
|
count missed **radarr and sonarr**.
|
|
- **The off-site restore now works for the other 40 apps** (R-356, controller 0.219.0, proven on
|
|
`demo-hp`). It used to refuse before starting, tell the customer a running app „nincs telepítve",
|
|
and send them to reinstall it "to the same place" — a place those 40 apps never offer, because they
|
|
were never given a drive to choose. It was asking one question to answer two. Proven today on
|
|
`privatebin`: data planted through the app itself, backed up, **deleted**, restored — **all 15 files
|
|
back byte for byte**, Hungarian accented names included, message „0 fájl és 1 adatkötet
|
|
visszaállítva". The 13 apps that do have a drive are unchanged, checked the same way.
|
|
- **The off-site restore gives an app's data back at all** (R-354, controller 0.218.0). It used to say
|
|
„0 fájl visszaállítva", report success, and the folder was simply not there. It now names what came
|
|
back, because a restore that mentions only its file count is how a silent loss reads as a success.
|
|
- **Paperless's database is in the backup, and restoring it takes an undo copy first** (R-355,
|
|
controller 0.218.0). The dump was landing in a folder named after an app that does not exist. **One
|
|
app of 53 was affected**, established with a check first proved able to catch a planted second case.
|
|
- **The system tells you when it cannot see the off-site copies** (R-339) — a mail after ~30 minutes,
|
|
hourly while it lasts, one all-clear. **Caveat:** it watches whether the machine answers, so it
|
|
would *not* have caught the 18 August fault, where one service was wedged and the machine stayed
|
|
healthy.
|
|
- **The connection leak was ours and is fixed** (R-344). Our agent opened a connection to the off-site
|
|
box every 15 minutes and never closed it; the idle timer was switched off. Proved by fixing one
|
|
machine and leaving the other: same work, 4 more leaked on the untouched one, none on the fixed one.
|
|
The off-site box is back to **17** open connections from **415**.
|
|
- **A dated check can no longer be quietly missed** (R-341) — but it speaks on the next push, not on
|
|
the day. **A machine we tell to be quiet is no longer reported as dead** (R-321). **One name per
|
|
secret** (R-295, R-323). **The hub's own words are under a guard** (R-324). **Removal reverses the
|
|
installation** (R-316). **A correct recovery code is no longer called wrong** (R-311). **The drive
|
|
can be re-attached after a reinstall** (R-280).
|
|
|
|
## Broken, or knowingly incomplete
|
|
|
|
- **We do not know what the deep check costs on a BIG store** (R-401). Since 0.228.0 the weekly check
|
|
re-reads **all** your stored data, not just the list of it. We had to: a copy was damaged in a way
|
|
that left its size unchanged, and the old shallow check said „no errors were found". Only the deep
|
|
check caught it. **The cost we measured was four seconds** — 35.0 s before, 39.2 s after — but that
|
|
was on a 134 MB store, and it will not stay four seconds. So the box now tells us: any check that
|
|
takes longer than five minutes writes a warning naming this item. **If you do nothing:** every
|
|
machine re-reads its whole store every week, however large it grows, and the first person to notice
|
|
would be a customer whose upload is busy. The warning is there so that does not happen.
|
|
- **We ask the off-site box a question about once a second** (R-336) — ~85,000 a day for a box we
|
|
write to weekly. The leak that made this dangerous is fixed (R-344); the volume is not. The ceiling
|
|
is **under a year** away on the corrected measurement, not two.
|
|
- **Peti's machine has no recovery route at all.** A real machine belonging to a real person, silent
|
|
since 15 July, no key, no off-site copy, no local backup. **If that drive fails, everything on it is
|
|
lost.** First act of any visit: copy the ~3.6 GB off before anything is reinstalled.
|
|
- **The agent picks dnsmasq by looking at a file another package owns** (R-317) — one line; LAN name
|
|
resolution goes missing quietly.
|
|
- **Three facts the machines send still have no reader** (R-264); **the storage page has its own
|
|
reason for an empty list** (R-298); **two thirds of the standing picture is unproven** (R-326:
|
|
23 of 55 claims walked — `python3 scripts/unproven.py`); **the picture still describes one defect we
|
|
fixed twice** (R-327).
|
|
|
|
## Working on next
|
|
|
|
The 2026-08-09 batch (R-279 … R-292), still untriaged; the three remaining R-264 readers; R-317 (one
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|
line in the agent); R-327 (decide the naming claim's status); R-359 (nothing reads the off-site store).
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