The tick arm runs twenty-six housekeeping steps in sequence on the one
runtime thread, and is polled last, so anything slow in it holds up
inbound packets, TUN traffic and control commands behind it. Field
evidence says that happens for over a second at a time, but the
attribution behind that is two months old and predates the
connect-on-send gate, the control read isolation, and the peer lifecycle
rework. This measures it rather than continuing to reason about it.
Per step it records exact count, max and total into fixed static
counters; a dedicated writer thread drains them every ten seconds to a
TSV under /var/log/fips, one file per capture, capped at 32 MB. Nothing
accumulates: the counters are swapped to zero each interval and the
thread holds no history. Arming is `fipsctl profile tick on`, served in
the control accept task so the toggle cannot queue behind the very
behaviour it measures, and it does not survive a restart.
The whole thing is behind a Cargo feature that is off by default,
because the risk worth eliminating is the twenty-six edited call sites
in the hot loop. With the feature off the macro expands to the bare
expression, which makes the default build's neutrality something you
read off the generated code rather than something a benchmark fails to
disprove.
The measurement that matters is how late each tick is against the
deadline it was scheduled for, since the arm is polled last and that
lateness is the delay. Two earlier designs derived it from the interval
between entries and both under-reported: the schedule is fixed, so a
steady delay leaves every gap exactly one period and any gap-derived
figure reads zero under precisely the sustained overload this is meant
to find. The interval hands back its own deadline, so the delay is now a
subtraction with no model behind it, and a test drives three late ticks
at a constant gap to keep it that way.
CI gains a default-features clippy and a feature-on build and test on
both runners, closing the gap left by clippy already running with all
features.
Add log_level field to NodeConfig (case-insensitive, default: info).
The daemon now loads config before initializing tracing so the
configured level takes effect. RUST_LOG env var still overrides if
set.
Remove hardcoded Environment=RUST_LOG=info from systemd units and
OpenWrt procd init script — these prevented config-driven log levels
from working.
Rekey dual-initiation race (FMP + FSP):
When both sides' rekey timers fire simultaneously on high-latency links
(Tor ~700ms RTT), both msg1s cross in flight before dampening can
suppress the second initiation. Each node acts as both initiator and
responder, with set_pending_session() from the responder path destroying
the initiator's in-progress state. Each side ends up with a
pending_new_session from a different Noise handshake, causing AEAD
verification failure after cutover and link death. Fix: deterministic
tie-breaker in both FMP msg1 handler and FSP SessionSetup handler
(smaller NodeAddr wins as initiator). Also guard against pending session
overwrite from retransmitted msg1s.
Parent selection SRTT gate:
Peers without MMP RTT data are excluded from parent candidacy via
has_srtt() filter, preventing freshly reconnected peers from appearing
artificially attractive. First-RTT triggers immediate parent re-eval.
The gate in evaluate_parent() skips unmeasured candidates when any peer
has cost data, but falls back to default cost 1.0 during cold start
when no peer has MMP data yet.
Auto-reconnect on all peer removal paths:
The excessive-decryption-failure and peer-restart epoch-mismatch removal
paths were missing schedule_reconnect() calls, causing auto-connect peers
to be permanently abandoned after those events.
Control socket accessibility:
Socket and parent directory chowned to root:fips with mode 0770/0750 so
group members can use fipsctl/fipstop without root.
Log level changes:
Default RUST_LOG changed to debug in systemd service files. "Unknown
session index" log reduced from debug to trace.
Packaging directory structure:
- packaging/common/ — shared config (fips.yaml) used by all formats
- packaging/systemd/ — systemd-specific installer and service units
Systemd packaging includes:
- build-tarball.sh: builds release binaries and creates a self-contained
install tarball with stripped binaries
- fips.service: systemd unit running the daemon with security hardening
- fips-dns.service: oneshot unit configuring resolvectl to route .fips
domain queries to the FIPS DNS shim on 127.0.0.1:5354
- install.sh: deploys binaries to /usr/local/bin, installs systemd units,
creates fips group for non-root control socket access
- uninstall.sh: removes service and binaries, optional --purge for
config and identity key files
- README.install.md: installation and configuration guide
Default config enables UDP (2121), TCP inbound (8443), TUN, and DNS
resolver. Identity is ephemeral by default for privacy; operators can
uncomment persistent: true to maintain a stable npub for static peer
publishing. Ethernet transport is commented out for per-node setup.
Johnathan Corgan