265 lines
13 KiB
Markdown
265 lines
13 KiB
Markdown
# DRILL — R-201, the night run: **THE KEY CAME BACK. The verdict was not reached.**
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**Date:** 2026-08-04, 21:30–22:40 · **Box:** `demo-hp` (Tier 0) · **Unattended, by operator decision.**
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**The wipe happened.** The box is up, its apps are serving, and it is left mid-drill by deliberate
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choice — see §7 for the exact state and the one command that resumes it.
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> **THE RESULT, first.** A real rebuild was performed: the controller's data volume was destroyed and
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> the sentinel deleted from disk. The customer's recovery code then produced
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> `8a9e33aa4da6769c5aea1831f87759e10930e2ec1dea0062576484e0598d080a` — **byte-identical to the key the
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> box used before the wipe, and to the hash the hub had independently recorded.**
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>
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> **The off-site backup key is recoverable after a machine is rebuilt. That has never been shown
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> before.**
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>
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> **And the drill did not finish**, because three separate things stand between a recovered key and a
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> restored file. All three are measured below. That is the other half of the night's result, and it is
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> the half nobody knew.
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---
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## 1. The verdict
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**NOT REACHED.** Step 10 (restore the sentinel and compare) was not run.
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| | |
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|---|---|
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| sentinel sha256, pre-wipe | `643166269103a25cf41d34a26b75fd6ebba0a837bbcd7e0d2b5aba7106bcbe7c` |
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| sentinel sha256, post-restore | **not obtained** — the restore was never reachable |
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| snapshot count at step 9 | **not obtained** — the run was refused before it started |
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**This is not a FAIL.** A fail is "the file came back wrong" or "a fresh empty history was started".
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Neither happened, because the box never got as far as running a backup. What the night established is
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where the wall is.
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---
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## 2. What was proven, in order, on hardware
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### Step 6 — the wipe
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The controller's data volume was destroyed and the bootstrap re-ran. Fresh data directory, everything
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stamped `2026-08-04 20:00:2x`:
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```
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encryption.key 32 B 2026-08-04 20:00:21 ← brand new: every pre-wipe app secret is undecryptable
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claimed = None ← the fresh-install signal
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offbox = null ← no off-site target
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```
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**Faithful to the incident, and deliberately so.** The 2026-08-03 rebuild that R-193 is filed against
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was **not** a guest reprovision — the journal shows guest 9201 running continuously through that
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window, with no `pct destroy`, no `pct restore` and no `--selftest=provision`. What changed was the
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controller and its data volume. Reproducing *that* is what the drill needs; a guest destroy plus an
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unrehearsed provisioning chain, improvised unattended, is what §8.10 exists to prevent.
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### Step 7 — the assertion that keeps recovery possible: **PASSED**
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```
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host_escrow (demo-hp-bb76ea), AFTER the wipe:
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identity_blob = 572 bytes ← unchanged
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restic_pw_sha256 = 8a9e33aa4da6… ← unchanged
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updated_at = 2026-08-04 11:11:37 ← unchanged; nothing re-escrowed
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stale_at = NULL
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```
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**No ceremony was run and nothing re-escrowed itself.** The sealed key survived the rebuild untouched.
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### Step 8 — **THE KEY CAME BACK**
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```
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=== offsite key recovery check (R-200) — compares, never installs ===
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recovered sha256: 8a9e33aa4da6769c5aea1831f87759e10930e2ec1dea0062576484e0598d080a
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[FAIL] there is no repository password on this box to compare against
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(the recovery itself SUCCEEDED — this box simply has no local key. That is the
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rebuilt-box shape, where the next step is to INSTALL rather than compare.)
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```
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Exit 1 is **correct and designed**: there was nothing to compare against, because the wipe removed it.
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The recovered hash matches the pre-wipe on-disk key and the hub's own record — three independent
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sources agreeing, one of them recovered through the full chain (hub → agent → unseal → extract) on a
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box that had just lost everything it knew.
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### Step 9a — installed cleanly
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```
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=== offsite key recovery INSTALL (R-200) ===
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on-disk sha256: (none — this box has no repository password)
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recovered sha256: 8a9e33aa4da6…
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[INSTALLED] the recovered repository password is in place and reads back identical.
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```
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The "installed" branch — the rebuilt-box shape v0.196.0 was written for — took its first real run.
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### Step 9b — the apply kept it
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After the target was reconfigured, the on-disk key was still `8a9e33aa4da6…`. `WriteOffboxSecrets`
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found the file present and kept it, exactly as documented.
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---
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## 3. The wall — three blockers, each measured
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### (a) R-193, reconfirmed live: a rebuilt controller cannot configure its off-site tier
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```
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[INFO] [offsite-apply] settle-gate: GO — at/above floor 0.156.0 (we are 0.197.0)
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[WARN] [offsite-apply] reconcile: offsite-apply: consume one-time password:
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no unconsumed offsite password (already consumed or none provisioned)
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(retries on next config refresh/restart)
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```
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The ledger, measured: `demo-hp` one-time secret created `07:11:51`, consumed `07:12:06` — **by the
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previous controller**. The rebuilt one has nothing to consume and retries forever. Exactly the state
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demo-hp sat in for 25 hours on 2026-08-03.
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**Remedy:** an operator Re-issue. Performed here through the designed endpoint
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(`POST /configs/demo-hp/offsite-reissue`, HTTP 303), after which the target configured normally.
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### (b) R-196, measured live — and it lands squarely on the recovery path
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```
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host_escrow (demo-hp-bb76ea), after the Re-issue:
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stale_at = 2026-08-04 20:15:49 ← set
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restic_pw_sha256 = 8a9e33aa4da6… ← UNCHANGED. The key did not move.
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```
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**The escrow was marked stale while it perfectly covers the box's current key** — the recovered one.
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That is R-196's false staleness, and here it is not a cosmetic lie: a stale escrow makes the hub
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**withhold the hash from the report ACK**, so `EscrowAutoConfirmer` can never flip `pending →
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escrowed`, and `OffboxRunnable` (`configured && escrowed`) **refuses to run any off-site backup**.
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> **The remedy for (a) disables the recovery it was needed for.** The only documented way to clear a
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> stale escrow is a fresh ceremony — which supersedes the identity blob, i.e. **destroys the very key
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> being recovered**. Under hub v0.93.0 the old blob is now *retained*, but nothing can serve a
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> superseded blob back (R-199's inventory: the endpoint serves the CURRENT row only).
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**Superseded rows still number 2** — no ceremony was run tonight. The key is intact.
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### (c) The claim gate — undocumented as a recovery step
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```
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[DEBUG] [web] claim gate: intercepting POST /backup/offbox/confirm-escrow (unclaimed)
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```
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A rebuilt box is **unclaimed** (`claimed = None`, fresh `settings.json`), and the claim gate correctly
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intercepts every non-claim route. **So no controller endpoint can be driven at all** — not the manual
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escrow confirm, not the backup trigger — until the customer re-claims the box. Both POSTs returned 302
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to the claim page and neither reached its handler; `last_run` stayed null, which is why the earlier
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reading of "the run was refused" needed this second look to be accurate.
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This is correct behaviour and it is **not wrong** — but it is a step in the customer's recovery journey
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that appears in no design document, and it comes *before* anything else can happen.
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---
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## 4. Why the session stopped here
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By 22:35 the path forward was a chain of workarounds assembled live — Re-issue, then the deprecated
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manual confirm, then the root-gated `--print-reset-code` escape hatch to re-claim, then the confirm
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again, then the run. Each is individually defensible; the accumulation is precisely the pattern §8.10
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names:
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> *"If anything is ambiguous at 03:00, stop and leave it for the morning. An unattended session that
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> halts with a clear state beats one that improvises."*
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The remaining steps need about five minutes **with a person present**. They are not worth improvising
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alone at the end of a long night, on the one box whose off-site history the drill is trying to prove.
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**Nothing was left broken.** The box is up, all six app containers are serving, and the recovered key
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is on disk.
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---
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## 5. §5's five conditions, as recorded before the wipe
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| # | Condition | Evidence |
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| 1 | §4 confirmed, sentinel **listed by name** | snapshot `e6132ae5` (19:36:26) — `-rw-r--r-- 1000 1000 181 … /DRILL-SENTINEL.txt` |
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| 2 | deliberate rollback archive, **verified** | `vzdump-lxc-9201-2026_08_04-21_44_24.tar.zst`, 1 606 765 083 B; **full zstd stream read OK** (4 867 573 760 B uncompressed); the sentinel confirmed **inside** it |
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| 3 | §3's option | see §6 |
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| 4 | demo-felhom untouched | `health=ok`, `escrow_state=escrowed`, not touched at any point |
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| 5 | free space | nvme-1tb 883 GB free, root 20 GB, local-lvm 34.32 % |
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**A precondition had drifted and was repaired before the wipe, not worked around.** The staged
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snapshot no longer contained the sentinel: the afternoon's `[WARN] mandatory data path missing`
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experiment produced a *later* same-day calibre-web snapshot, and restic's `forget --keep-daily 7
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--group-by host,tags` had pruned the good one in its favour. The fixture on disk was correct, so one
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backup re-established it and it was re-verified by listing. **Lesson worth carrying: a good snapshot is
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not durable against a later bad run on the same day.**
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## 6. §3 — the recovery code
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**Option B as already in place, with a strict improvement: no new copy was created, so nothing needed
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shredding.**
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The operator placed `R_DEMO-HP` in their own `~/.config/credentials` on DooPlex (mode `0600`) two
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sessions ago, deliberately, for this purpose. This session read it from there and **piped it to stdin**
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for each of the two invocations that needed it. It was never an argument, never exported, never written
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to a second file, and never logged.
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**Nothing was shredded, and that is the point:** the operator's own permanent store is theirs, not a
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drill artefact, and destroying it would have destroyed their record. Because no additional copy was
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made, there is nothing left behind to prove gone — a stronger position than option B's
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create-then-shred.
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**Verified afterwards** with the planted-copy positive control, exactly as on 2026-08-04 afternoon —
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see §8.
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---
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## 7. The exact state the box is in, and how to resume
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```
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controller felhom-controller:0.197.0, healthy
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apps privatebin opengist calibre-web filebrowser cloudflared traefik — all serving
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claimed None ← must be re-claimed before any controller endpoint responds
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escrow_state pending ← R-196: the Re-issue marked the escrow stale
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repo key 8a9e33aa4da6… ← THE RECOVERED KEY, on disk
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sentinel absent from disk (deliberately) — present in off-site snapshot e6132ae5
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```
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**To resume (operator present, ~5 minutes):**
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1. Re-claim the box — `docker exec felhom-controller /usr/local/bin/felhom-controller
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--print-reset-code`, then the claim page.
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2. Confirm the escrow (`/backup/offbox/confirm-escrow`) so `OffboxRunnable` allows a run. **Do NOT run
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a new ceremony** — it would supersede the identity blob and destroy the key under test.
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3. Run an off-site backup. **The observable is whether the repository OPENS** — and whether the
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pre-wipe snapshot `e6132ae5` still exists with the sentinel in it. A same-day `forget` keeps one
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snapshot per tag, so the *count* is a poor discriminator; the surviving history is the real one.
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4. Restore the sentinel through the customer restore flow; compare to `643166269103a25c…`.
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**Rollback, if preferred:** `pct restore 9201` from
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`/mnt/nvme-1tb/dump/vzdump-lxc-9201-2026_08_04-21_44_24.tar.zst` — verified by a full read before the
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wipe. It returns the box to its pre-wipe state and voids the remaining drill.
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---
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## 8. R persisted nowhere — searched, with a positive control
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Swept the agent journal, the controller container log, and `/tmp`, `/var/tmp`, `/var/lib/felhom-agent`,
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`/root` on demo-hp for the recovery code: **0 hits**, and **0** leftover `felhom-idesc-*` unseal
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staging directories. A planted copy was found by the same sweep (**1**) and not found after shredding
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(**0**), so the instrument is shown sensitive rather than assumed to be.
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---
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## 9. Teardown — three layers
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| layer | state |
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| the guest | **Nothing torn down.** The wipe is the evidence; the apps are serving; the recovered key is in place. The scratch band is empty — no restore-test guest was created tonight. |
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| the host | `vzdump` snapshot LVs removed cleanly by the archive job (`snap_vm-9201-disk-0/1_vzdump` both released). One new archive, 1.6 GB, on `nvme-1tb` (883 GB free). Nothing deleted. |
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| the hub | **No new customer records.** `demo-hp` is the same customer row throughout — the rebuild was a controller-data wipe, not a re-enrolment, so nothing accumulated. One Re-issue staged a fresh one-time secret (consumed at 20:16) and set `stale_at`. The two superseded escrow rows are **unchanged** — no ceremony ran. |
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**Nothing was deleted on the storage endpoint**, including the ~1.2 GB of previously-orphaned
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ciphertext. Ruled, still owed, and deliberately not ridden along with a drill.
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## 10. Part 2 — not run, and why
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Its gate is *"the drill PASSED"*. It did not — the verdict was not reached. Running a second wipe on a
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box whose first result is incomplete would have destroyed the staged state that makes the first one
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finishable in five minutes. **R-198's retention therefore remains unit-proven only**, unchanged from
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this morning.
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