felhom.eu/STATUS.md

STATUS — what works, what's broken, what's next

Updated 2026-08-03.

A view, not a source. documentation/backlog/OPEN-ITEMS.md is the authority on open work; this page restates part of it in plain words, and nothing may exist only here. Not CONTEXT.md, which is technical state written for Claude Code — keep the two separate. Maintenance: update at the end of every session in which something shipped, broke, or was decided. One screen; cut items rather than extend it.

What works right now

A blank machine boots the Felhom disc, installs itself unattended, and is claimed by the customer, who sets their own password. They install apps from a catalogue of fifty-three, share files over the home network, and open apps from a launcher or a shared link. Backups run on their own to three places — the machine's drive, a second drive, and an encrypted off-site copy — and a customer can restore files and app data from the drive alone. Proven end to end on real hardware.

Apps come back after a power cut. The machine tells an app the customer switched off from one that simply did not come back, and waits for the system to finish starting before deciding instead of glancing once, five seconds in. Hard-reset the demo box six times in a row: everything came back every time, and an app switched off deliberately stayed off every time.

What's broken

The off-site copy can be erased by the machine that made it — the credential that writes it can also delete it. A daily snapshot is armed as a stopgap, and we have never restored from that copy. (R-95, R-87)

A full disk tells you about ONE app and silently swallows the rest. Yesterday this was written down the wrong way round — as too many emails. Measuring the receiving end reversed it: of nine refusals the machine reported today, two emails were sent. When two apps are refused in the same second you are told about one of them, and the other leaves no trace anywhere — not an email, not even a line in the log saying it was held back. So a second app can be going unbacked-up while you have already been told the problem is handled. It is the same fault we fixed once before for whole-machine backups, in a second place that never opted into the fix. (R-182)

What shipped recently

Pushing the installer no longer publishes it. The script that runs as root on a brand-new machine was copied from the main branch and served within thirty seconds, so pushing it was publishing it, with no staging and no way back but another push. It now comes from a labelled version: publishing is moving the label, and undoing it is moving the label back — about half a minute, no deploy. The website is untouched by this and still updates in thirty seconds, because a typo fix must never need a release. Proven by actually doing it: a real push changed nothing that anyone downloads, moving the label published it, moving it back restored the previous bytes exactly.

The catch that would have made it cosmetic was found and covered. While it runs, the installer fetches sixteen more files — not nine, and from the agent's repository, not the website's. They now come from the same version of the agent the machine is installing. That closed a real fault nobody had noticed: a new machine was getting the agent's tested program and its untested settings files, in one install, from two different places. (R-110, R-183)

Releasing the agent now publishes it, in one command. Putting a built agent where a new machine can download it was a step someone had to remember, and it was forgotten three times in five days — the last time leaving both demo machines running a version nobody could download, so a rebuild would have quietly installed the older one and reported success. There is now one command that builds, labels, publishes and then downloads it back to check — and a check that refuses to stay quiet if a released version cannot actually be fetched. Proven by making CI fail on purpose and then go green again on the same code. (R-115)

The backup partition is gone and both demo machines run on the new shape — wiped, rebuilt and taken through the whole customer journey on 3 August, by two deliberately different routes so the disk shape and the delivery route are both proven. The space a backup can use went from 19 GB to 65 GB on the small machine and 45 GB to 233 GB on the big one. Their previous demo apps and data are gone; that was the point of a wipe, and you approved it. (R-165, R-178)

What replaced the wall now watches the right moment. The wall was quietly keeping a runaway backup from eating the space the machine needs to run. As first built, that replacement was checked too late — the big write happened first, unchecked — while still promising your last good copy was untouched. Fixed and proven on 3 August: the machine decides once, per app, before it writes anything, and that one answer covers all three steps, so a refused app writes nothing, is not restarted, and the promise is now literally true. It also stopped being blind to size. Nothing is ever deleted to make room. (R-181)

The last of the three apps that never saved their data is fixed. Installed nowhere, so nothing was stranded — checked on both demo machines and in the fleet list rather than assumed. Proven by the check that caught it, run in both directions: it clears the fixed version and still convicts the old one. (R-156)

A filling disk warns the customer before anything breaks, and a failed backup reaches you — the customer while there is still room to act, naming the drive and the space left; you when one app's backup fails, with the disk figures. The customer is deliberately not told about the second: they can free space, but they can do nothing about a failed backup. Both proven by filling a real disk. There are two rules and not one because the serious warning fired on free space while the disk was only 91% full — a percentage alone would have missed it. (R-167, R-158)

The checks have two nets and the second emails you. Every repository has one command that runs all its checks, before every push. That one can be skipped, so the build server runs them again and emails you on failure. It cannot stop a change — everything goes straight to the main copy with no review step — but it notices quickly and tells you. (R-29, R-161, R-168, R-169)

What we're working on

• Now: nothing outstanding from today — the reserve, the last unsaved app, and both of your decisions are all built and proven.
• Next: the alert that tells you about one app and swallows the second (R-182).
• After: the off-site copy that the machine making it can still erase (R-95, R-87).

Waiting on you

• A job, not a decision: the hub password needs changing. A diagnostic command printed it into a session log; nothing suggests anyone else saw it. (R-132)
• Nothing else. Both decisions you took on 3 August are now built and proven. One small question will come back later: the automatic check cannot see which version you have told machines to install, only which ones exist — closing that either needs a password given to the build server or a check inside the hub itself. Filed, not urgent. (R-184)

Changed since last update

• 2026-08-03 — Publishing became something you do rather than something that happens: the installer and the agent both moved onto labelled versions with a way back, and a check now refuses a release nobody can download. Earlier the same day: the reserve now guards the step that fills the disk and its promise is true, and the last app whose data was never saved is fixed. All proven on real machines, not just in tests. Earlier the same day: both demo machines wiped and rebuilt from the new base image and taken through set-up → install an app → back it up → restore it, with the backup space ceiling gone and measured.

• 2026-08-02 — The false "host offline" warning is fixed. The hub's database was supposed to be in a mode where reading a page cannot block a machine's status update; a one-word difference meant that setting had never taken effect, for the hub's whole life. Fixed and verified live. Also found: the hub's own database is in no automatic backup — it holds every machine's emergency password. Filed, not yet fixed.

• 2026-08-02 — Thirteen mechanical checks had built up and nothing ran most of them; two were failing quietly. Fixed. Decided the same day: the 20 GB backup partition goes away; and only this machine and the tester's box are protected, every other box may be broken or reinstalled freely.