felhom.eu/STATUS.md

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

Updated 2026-08-02.

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)

Three apps out of fifty-three kept their data where backups never looked. They reported healthy; the data would vanish on the next update. Two are fixed, the third is now clear to fix because it is installed nowhere. (R-156)

Local backups get 20 GB while apps get 50 GB. An app that outgrows the smaller space stops being backed up locally — and the off-site copy is made from the local one, so that stops too. Nothing is lost: the last good copy is kept intact. (R-163)

When that happens, only one page says so — no email, no alert. The page that answers "is this app backed up?" is the one that stays silent. (R-158)

The checks now have two nets, and the second one emails you. Every repository has one command that runs all of its checks; it runs by itself before every push and refuses a push that fails. That one lives on the workstation and can be skipped. So the build server now runs the same checks again, on a machine that does not care who pushed or what they typed — and when they fail it sends you an email, because a red mark on a page nobody watches is not a warning. Proven with a real broken change, not assumed. The one thing it still cannot do is stop the change: every change here goes straight to the main copy with no review step, so there is no point in the road for it to stand at. It notices, quickly, and tells you. (R-29, R-161, R-168, R-169)

A filling disk now warns the customer before anything breaks, and a failed backup now reaches you. Until today the first sign that a disk was filling up was a backup that did not happen — nothing said anything beforehand. Two things changed. The customer is now warned while there is still room to act, naming the drive and how much space is left, in plain Hungarian that says what to do about it. And when one app's backup fails for any reason, you are told which app and why, with the disk figures attached — the page that answers "is this app backed up?" was, until now, the one page that never said. The customer is deliberately not told about that second one: they can free up space, but they can do nothing about a backup that failed, so telling them would only alarm them.

Both were proven on the demo machine by actually filling a disk. One detail is worth knowing because it is why there are two rules and not one: the serious warning fired when free space dropped below a fixed amount while the disk was only 91% full — a percentage on its own would have missed it.

These went in before the partition change deliberately. The partition being removed is also a barrier against a runaway backup filling the space the machine needs to run; putting the warnings in first means that when it comes down, the thing watching is already working and already tested. (R-167, R-158)

What we're working on

• Now: the last app whose data was never saved; today's decisions written down.
• Next: merging the small backup partition into the large one — the warnings for it are already done and working, so this step is now only the partition change. It needs one decision from you first (below).
• After: rebuilding how the machine records whether an app is meant to be running.

Waiting on you

• How a new version reaches a machine. Pushing the installer publishes it — half a minute later every new machine downloads it, with no staging and no way back but another push. And publishing is a step we remember rather than one the release performs, forgotten twice: a fix can be live here and still not reach a new machine. Nothing is installing today, so this is the cheapest moment to settle both. (R-110, R-115)
• 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)
• The partition merge: one decision, now measured. Removing the backup partition also removes a barrier — today a runaway backup is refused on its own and cannot touch the space the machine needs to run; afterwards it can, and a machine out of that space is stopped, not slow. So: do we add a hard stop that refuses a backup before it eats the last of the room, or do we rely on the new warnings? The recommendation is the hard stop, because it keeps exactly what the barrier gave us. Second question, which only you can answer: does the tester's box need converting in place, or can it be reinstalled? It does not report to the hub, so nothing here can tell. (R-165, R-176)

Changed since last update

• 2026-08-02 — The false "host offline" warning is fixed, and the cause was not what it looked like. The hub's database was supposed to be in a mode where reading a page cannot block a machine's status update — the code said so, but a one-word syntax difference meant the setting had never taken effect, for the hub's whole life. So opening an operator page could make a machine's report fail; two failures in a row crossed the half-hour threshold and sent you an alert about a machine that was up and healthy. It had already done that twice that day. Now genuinely fixed and verified live. Also found while checking it: the hub's own database is not in any automatic backup — it holds every machine's emergency password and the escrow records. Filed, not yet fixed.

• 2026-08-02 — Boot recovery finished: the machine records what the customer asked for, and waits for the system to finish starting before deciding what is missing. Six hard resets, everything back every time. A hole the previous day's change had opened — starting an app whose external drive was missing — was found by reading the code, reproduced on the demo box first, and fixed the same day. A second instance of the same hole was found and fixed today, on the path that restarts an app after an interrupted backup.

• 2026-08-02 — Thirteen mechanical checks had built up across the four repositories and nothing ran most of them; two were failing quietly, one since 14 July. Both fixed, and the arrangement that replaced them is described above.

• 2026-08-02 — Decided: the 20 GB backup partition goes away and shares space with app data. That changes the disk layout, so it happens before any machine is installed outside the house. Measured since: no machine outside the house is registered yet, so this is as cheap now as it will ever be; and the two demo machines can simply be reinstalled rather than converted.

• 2026-08-02 — Decided: only this machine and the tester's box are protected; every other box, demo boxes included, may be broken or reinstalled freely. Two of the three apps that never saved their data are fixed; this page created.