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Johnathan Corgan 6a564e26ac Prepare the v0.5.0 release content 
Everything the release needs except the version number, which stays at
0.5.0-dev until the tag.

The changelog entry covers only the work that is new on this line. The
point release's forty-six entries arrived under their own heading with the
forward merge and are left alone; the twenty that remained are regrouped by
topic and eight more added for changes no entry covered. Three of those
eight matter to someone upgrading. Five root modules and four re-exports
left the public library surface and Node::connections narrowed, none of it
recorded anywhere; the entry names what to use instead and distinguishes
the removed connection-phase enum from the Noise type of the same name,
which is a different type that still exists. Tracing targets moved, so an
existing RUST_LOG filter stops matching rather than erroring. And the
handshake resend interval key no longer governs the first resend, which is
now a constant, though it still governs later ones.

Seven more entries cover the work that landed after the first content pass
was written: the experimental native datagram API, the fipsctl probe
diagnostic, per-instance transport addressing, the app-owned UDP socket
seam, and the connect, disconnect and path-MTU fixes. The four bug fixes
among them all reach the deployed line, so the release notes no longer
claim this release carries exactly one fix for a shipped bug; it carries
four.

There is no security section, because after the split every security entry
belongs to the point release. The release notes say so plainly rather than
leaving a reader upgrading across both releases to conclude this one
carries no security work.

The notes are organized by audience, since the release spans OpenWrt
routers, embedders, FreeBSD, and the existing platforms, and a single list
serves none of them. The native datagram API is given a section of its own
rather than folded into the embedding seam: it is a client-facing API
rather than a way to host a node, and its one rule with no Berkeley-socket
counterpart, that the v1 wire carries no half-close, needs to be somewhere
a client author will read it. FreeBSD is advertised as supported on x86_64
only, stated wherever the platform appears. Android is advertised as an
embedding seam and not as a supported platform: a compile-gated library
surface with no artifact and no host application guide.

The configuration table rename is carried through every shipped file that
taught the old spelling: nine documentation files, the OpenWrt sample
config and a test generator, twenty-two sites in all. Guides written this
same cycle were among them, which is how the omission was found. The
documentation that arrived with the native API was checked for the same
omission and was already clean. The compatibility tests keep the old
spelling deliberately, since they exist to test the fold.

The changelog section is the fold of master's [Unreleased], not a snapshot
of it. An earlier version of this commit took a copy that then drifted, so
each section ended up holding a bullet the other did not and re-folding
them would have picked a winner silently. Both causes were fixed on master
instead — the NixOS module had never been recorded there, and the
pre-release batch of fixes was new — so [Unreleased] is a strict superset
and this is a copy rather than a merge. [0.5.0] carries all forty-six
bullets byte for byte, [Unreleased] is empty, and [0.4.2] is untouched,
checked by hashing it against master's copy.

The BLE work landed after the content pass and gets one summary entry in
the changelog and one section in the release notes rather than nine
bullets: the ble_available gate replacing target_os = "linux",
packet-boundary recovery for stream-oriented backends, peer recognition by
node identity instead of a rotating link address, the L2CAP PSM moving
into the backend seam and onto the advertisement, the embedder-supplied
Android radio, bounded probe retry, and inbound handshakes moved off the
accept loop.

The two release-notes copies no longer share their link paths. Relative
links resolve from one directory only, so the seven written for
docs/releases/ all 404ed from the root copy. The root copy now uses paths
from the repository root and the versioned copy keeps the ../ form; both
sets were resolved against the tree. The same two links are broken the
same way in the v0.4.0 through v0.4.2 notes, left as shipped history.

The contributor tallies are re-derived against maint..HEAD rather than
adjusted: twenty commits from outside the project and 171 from me, with
Arjen at fifteen and fr34aky at two. An earlier count of twelve and 138
was carried from a measurement taken three days before this content was
written, and the BLE branch widened the gap after it. Arjen's NixOS flake
module, the UDP sin6_scope_id fix and most of the BLE rework were
uncredited, as was fr34aky's L2CAP PSM seam. They want one last re-derive
at tag time if anything lands before the tag.

A sweep of all 99 tracked markdown files against the tree corrected
fifty-three of them. Four told the reader to run a build.sh that does not
exist; the only harness builder is testing/scripts/build.sh. The BLE build
prerequisites were described as optional on the strength of a probe that
build.rs does not perform, and bluez was named a build prerequisite when
libdbus-sys asks only for libdbus-1-dev and pkg-config and bluez is the
runtime daemon. Link cost is the primary sort key in next-hop ranking, not
reserved for future use; Ethernet runs on macOS as well as Linux; the BLE
MTU is the L2CAP CoC MTU rather than a negotiated ATT_MTU; effective
Ethernet MTU is 1497; the LAN discovery subsystem is src/mdns and eight
citations still named a src/discovery that never existed here. The
connectivity states in three tutorials were invented, and their jq filters
matched nothing including healthy peers. One command filtered on a literal
fd97: address prefix, which only the first byte of fixes, so it returned
empty for all but one reader in 256 and every later step using the
variable failed silently. transports.tor.advertise_on_nostr was
undocumented despite being validated against node.rendezvous.nostr.enabled.

The transport design document gains the BLE section it never had, written
from the source: the backend cascade and its compile_error tripwire, the
platform gate, the PSM advertisement wire layout and the byte budget that
forces a 16-bit service-data key, and the probe and admission bounds.

Three source files carried the same class of staleness and are corrected
with the documentation: the OpenWrt ipk usage line and Makefile error text
both named a packaging/openwrt that does not exist, and chaos.sh parsed
--subnet without listing it.

Folded in with the content commit, having been prepared alongside it:

The three GitHub Action pins that had gone stale. Every third-party
action is pinned to a commit SHA, nothing reports that a pin has aged,
and re-resolving all ten against their tags found dorny/test-reporter@v2,
taiki-e/install-action@v2 and vmactions/freebsd-vm@v1 had moved. The
three install-action@nextest references stay unpinned, since that action
reads the tool to install from the ref name. check-action-pins.sh passes
at 75 references and all nine workflow files parse.

The lockfile refresh, which is the mutating half of the dependency sweep.
Thirty-six packages move to their latest semver-compatible versions and
every one is transitive; nothing declared in Cargo.toml changes version.
No advisory forces any of them. It was taken before the validation
battery, because a gate run against a lockfile that later moves proves
nothing about what ships.

The sha2 0.10 to 0.11, hkdf 0.12 to 0.13 and bech32 0.11 to 0.12 majors,
three of the four deferred at v0.4.0 for change surface rather than
security. All three land with no source change. sha2 and hkdf must move
together, since both depend on digest 0.11, and neither changes an
algorithm. That matters because the chaining-key KDF in the Noise
handshake is built on Hkdf::<Sha256>, where an output change would be a
wire break rather than a compile error; no known-answer vectors exist for
that path, so the wire-compatibility gate is what covers it. secp256k1
0.31 is deliberately absent, since nostr's own requirement would leave
two copies of the ECC library in the tree.

The README support matrix, rebuilt as one feature table broken out by
Linux variety. A single Linux column hid that Debian, Ubuntu, Arch and
NixOS are one glibc build differing in packaging, that OpenWrt is musl
and drops BLE, and that Android is not a daemon platform. Transport rows
sort by how many platforms carry them. A Native API row reads its
platform set from the cfg gates. The installer row becomes a package
format row naming the artifact, and only the .deb is exercised per
release.

Four changelog and release-note gaps the BLE re-walk found: a Bluetooth
LE bullet stranded inside the released 0.4.2 section, a missing Fixed
entry for the scan and probe loop counting a pool-refused connection as
an established link, the unnamed embedder call that installs an
application-owned radio, and the fact that stopping the transport now
stops scanning as well as advertising.

Three release-document gaps found walking the unsurveyed commits: the UDP
reuse-flag fix stated in the direction opposite to the one it was made,
with the silent second-daemon bind it prevents left unsaid; the corrected
native-API socket paragraph carried into both release-note copies, which
still named SOCK_SEQPACKET on FreeBSD and two kernels where three are
handled; and the coordinate-cache hardening, which shipped with no text
anywhere despite adding four operator-visible status fields. That last
entry states plainly that the checks are mitigations and not a closure,
since the coordinate is still not authenticated.

Also folded in, the documentation pass that followed the content commit:

A stage-pipeline diagram for the probe, embedded in the fipsctl
reference under the five-stage list. It draws the five stages left to
right with each stage's failure reasons below it, and the bypass that
skips both lookup stages when the coordinates are cached or the target
is a direct peer. Its branches come from the probe state machine rather
than from the report, so the path stage is drawn as the one failure that
does not stop the probe.

A rewrite of the README's "What FIPS does" section. It now opens with
what a machine running FIPS gets, rather than with the two deployment
modes, and gives the self-organizing and permissionless property its own
paragraph since it holds for both modes.

A regrouping of the README's feature list into the mesh, getting traffic
onto it, and running a node, with a bullet added for the native datagram
API, which had none despite sitting in the support matrix. The Quick
start now leads with the released packages rather than a source build.
It also fixes a real defect: the package enables fips.service and
fips-dns.service and starts neither on a fresh install, so .fips name
resolution was silently dead until the next reboot and neither page said
to start the service.

A rewrite of the release notes. They opened with seven subsections of
upgrade caveats and reached the first feature two hundred lines in; they
now open with a summary of the release and elaborate below it in the
same order. Android is stated as supported through an embedded crate
rather than as a standalone daemon, consistently across all three
documents. The OpenWrt pair is corrected: it is 802.11s between routers
with FIPS supplying encryption, authentication and routing, plus a
convention of an open !FIPS SSID a client joins over WiFi, not meshing
over a router's own radios. The probe's path output is described as the
least-common-ancestor walk, which is the worst-case fallback route
rather than the route a packet takes. Detail that did not change what a
reader does was cut from the notes and kept in the changelog.
2026-08-30 10:42:59 +00:00

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# Join the FIPS Test Mesh
In this tutorial you will connect your FIPS daemon to a public
test peer over UDP, watch the link come up, and reach the peer's
mesh address from your machine. By the end you will have seen one
complete end-to-end flow — config, handshake, live link, traffic
— for a real peer somewhere out on the public internet.
The whole exercise should take about ten minutes. If you have
already worked through [getting-started.md](../getting-started.md)
and have the `fips` daemon running on your host, you have
everything you need.
## What you'll build
```text
┌────────────────────┐ UDP/IPv4 ┌──────────────────────┐
│ your fips node │ ──────────────────────── │ test-us01 │
│ ephemeral npub │ test-us01.fips.network │ npub1qmc3...zel98 │
│ fips0 fd97:..:Y │ :2121 │ fips0 fd97:..:T │
└────────────────────┘ └──────────────────────┘
```
Your daemon will peer with one of the public test nodes the
project maintains. `test-us01` has a stable DNS name, listens on
UDP/2121, and is reachable from any network that permits arbitrary
outbound UDP.
> **Peer vs. node.** In FIPS terminology, a *peer* is a node
> you have a direct link to — same Noise IK handshake, same
> transport socket. A *node* is any participant on the mesh,
> whether you peer with it directly or reach it through one or
> more hops via your peer's connections. Peering is a local
> configuration choice; reachability is mesh-wide. One good peer
> connects you to everyone the rest of the mesh connects to.
After the link to `test-us01` establishes, your daemon's `fips0`
adapter can reach `test-us01` itself and — through `test-us01`'s
connections — any other node on the test mesh, exactly as if you
had a direct connection to each of them.
> **About the test mesh.** The project maintains a small roster
> of public test nodes (`test-us01` through `test-uk01`) intended
> for new-user on-ramps and integration testing. They accept
> inbound peering from arbitrary npubs without prior coordination.
> A future reference doc will list the full roster; for this
> tutorial you only need `test-us01` as your peer, and `test-us02`
> later on as a second mesh destination to demonstrate
> forwarding.
## Step 1: Confirm the daemon is running
```sh
sudo systemctl status fips
```
Expect `active (running)`. If it is not running, the
[getting-started](../getting-started.md) guide covers installation
and service management. While you're checking, note your daemon's
current npub:
```sh
sudo fipsctl show status
```
Look for the `npub` field. With the default ephemeral-identity
config, this regenerates on every restart — that is fine for the
tutorial. `test-us01` admits any inbound npub.
## Step 2: Add a static peer to the daemon config
Edit `/etc/fips/fips.yaml`. Find the line that reads `peers: []`
and replace it with:
```yaml
peers:
- npub: "npub1qmc3cvfz0yu2hx96nq3gp55zdan2qclealn7xshgr448d3nh6lks7zel98"
alias: "test-us01"
addresses:
- transport: udp
addr: "test-us01.fips.network:2121"
connect_policy: auto_connect
```
What each field does:
- `npub` — the canonical Nostr public key of `test-us01`. This is
who your daemon will mutually authenticate with over Noise IK.
- `alias` — a short name your daemon will use when referring to
this peer in logs and `fipsctl show peers` output. Optional.
- `addresses` — one or more transport endpoints. UDP on the
published hostname and port is the most direct path.
- `connect_policy: auto_connect` — your daemon initiates an
outbound connection rather than waiting for the peer to reach
in.
## Step 3: Restart the daemon
```sh
sudo systemctl restart fips
```
Watch the daemon's journal as it comes back up and dials the
peer:
```sh
sudo journalctl -u fips -f
```
Within a few seconds you should see lines mentioning:
- An outbound connection attempt to `test-us01` or
`test-us01.fips.network:2121`
- A handshake completion (a "Noise IK link handshake complete"
style line, or "peer authenticated" with the test-us01 npub)
- An MMP / link metrics entry naming `test-us01`
If the handshake does not complete within roughly 30 seconds, jump
to [Troubleshooting](#troubleshooting) below.
## Step 4: Verify the link
```sh
sudo fipsctl show peers
```
Expect one entry whose `display_name` is `test-us01`. Useful
fields:
- `connectivity` — should be `connected`.
- `transport_addr` — the resolved UDP endpoint your daemon is
using to reach `test-us01`.
- `transport_type` — `udp`.
- `mmp.srtt_ms` — appears once the first MMP report has been
exchanged. This is your round-trip time to `test-us01`.
The transport view confirms your UDP listener and the peer
mapping:
```sh
sudo fipsctl show transports
```
## Step 5: Ping your peer
`test-us01`'s mesh address derives from its npub. Address it as
`<npub>.fips` and your daemon's local DNS responder will translate
that to its `fd97:...` mesh address.
First see the resolved address:
```sh
dig npub1qmc3cvfz0yu2hx96nq3gp55zdan2qclealn7xshgr448d3nh6lks7zel98.fips AAAA +short
```
You should see one `fd97:...` line.
Now ping it:
```sh
ping6 -c 4 npub1qmc3cvfz0yu2hx96nq3gp55zdan2qclealn7xshgr448d3nh6lks7zel98.fips
```
Expect four replies. The first packet may take noticeably longer
than subsequent ones — that round trip includes destination
discovery, FSP session establishment, and the proactive path-MTU
probe. After that, the RTT settles to a steady value reflecting
the path between your host and `test-us01`.
This confirms the direct link works. So far, though, you have only
reached the peer you configured. The next step demonstrates the
mesh-wide reach that peering buys you.
## Step 6: Reach a different node through the mesh
`test-us02` is another public test node. You did **not** add it
to your `peers:` block — your daemon has no direct link to it.
But because `test-us01` participates in the same mesh and has its
own connections to other nodes, your daemon can reach `test-us02`
through `test-us01` without any additional configuration.
```sh
ping6 -c 4 npub10yffd020a4ag8zcy75f9pruq3rnghvvhd5hphl9s62zgp35s560qrksp9u.fips
```
Same form, different npub. Expect replies. The packets travel
from your daemon to `test-us01` over the direct UDP link, then
onward through `test-us01` (and possibly other test-mesh nodes)
to reach `test-us02`'s `fips0` adapter. Replies retrace the path.
This is the central FIPS guarantee: **peering is local, but
reachability is mesh-wide.** You only need one good peer to talk
to everyone else they (transitively) talk to.
If the `test-us02` ping fails while the `test-us01` ping
succeeded, the test mesh's routing between those two nodes is
momentarily unhealthy — try again in a minute, or pick a different
test node from the roster. The link to your peer is unaffected.
## What you've learned
You now have a single FIPS node connected to one peer in the
public test mesh, with reach to every node that mesh routes you
to. You have seen:
- **Identity.** Your daemon's ephemeral keypair authenticated to
`test-us01` over Noise IK without either side trusting anyone in
advance.
- **Transports.** A UDP socket on your host carries
authenticated, encrypted mesh frames to your peer. No central
server, no VPN concentrator.
- **Peering vs. reachability.** You configured one peer
(`test-us01`) and got reach to a second node (`test-us02`) for
free, through the mesh. The same shape extends to every other
node `test-us01` can reach.
- **Naming.** The local `.fips` resolver translated npub-form
hostnames into their `fd97:...` mesh addresses with no external
DNS traffic.
- **End-to-end.** ICMPv6 traffic over the FIPS data plane reached
both destinations and came back, end-to-end encrypted along
every link layer in the path.
> **By the way: shortnames.** Those long `npub1...fips`
> destinations are the canonical addresses, but the installer
> ships an `/etc/fips/hosts` file with shortname entries for
> the public test mesh, so `test-us01.fips` and
> `test-us02.fips` resolve to the same addresses without
> typing 80 characters of bech32. You can add your own entries
> too. See
> [../how-to/host-aliases.md](../how-to/host-aliases.md). The
> rest of the tutorials use shortnames where they're available.
## Troubleshooting
If the handshake does not complete:
- **Outbound UDP may be blocked.** Some networks filter
arbitrary outbound UDP or block return traffic. From a
UDP-filtered network you cannot reach peers that only
publish UDP endpoints — your reachable peers are limited
to those that accept incoming TCP (outbound TCP is
typically allowed even on networks that block UDP). The
test-mesh nodes publish a TCP endpoint on port 443 for
exactly this case; replace the `udp` entry in the peer's
`addresses:` block with the TCP equivalent:
```yaml
addresses:
- transport: tcp
addr: "test-us01.fips.network:443"
```
Restart the daemon and re-check `fipsctl show peers`. The
link will be slower than UDP but is the supported transport
for restrictive egress environments.
- **Confirm the testnode is reachable at the IP layer.** Run
`dig +short test-us01.fips.network` to confirm DNS, then
`nc -uvz test-us01.fips.network 2121` to confirm UDP
reachability.
- **Confirm your config parsed.** `sudo journalctl -u fips -n 50`
near the daemon-start time will show config-load lines and any
parse errors.
- **Time skew.** A heavily skewed system clock can make
signature validation fail. `timedatectl status` should show
the system clock as synchronized.
## What's next
These are the natural follow-on tutorials in the new-user
progression. Some are still being written and will appear
alongside this one in the [tutorials/](.) directory.
- **Make your node's identity persistent.**
[persistent-identity](persistent-identity.md) walks through
pinning the daemon to a stable Nostr keypair so your npub
does not change across restarts — the prerequisite for other
operators adding you to their `peers:` blocks.
- **Resolve peers via Nostr.**
[resolve-peers-via-nostr](resolve-peers-via-nostr.md) is the
smallest useful step toward Nostr-mediated discovery:
configure a peer by npub alone and let the daemon look up
the current endpoint from public relays. The first of three
tutorials covering Nostr discovery; the others —
[advertise-your-node](advertise-your-node.md) and
[open-discovery](open-discovery.md) — round out the
publish and ambient-consume sides.
- **Trace a connection end-to-end.**
[ipv6-adapter-walkthrough](ipv6-adapter-walkthrough.md) walks
the data path from a `.fips` DNS query through session setup
to the far-side TUN adapter, using `fipstop` and `fipsctl` to
observe each step.
- **Reach services on other mesh nodes.**
[reach-mesh-services](reach-mesh-services.md) generalizes the
`ping6` you just ran to any IPv6-capable tool — `nc`,
`traceroute6`, `curl`, `ssh` — addressed by `<npub>.fips`.
The point is that the FIPS data plane is just IPv6;
applications don't need to know they're on a mesh.
- **Host a service of your own.**
[host-a-service](host-a-service.md) walks through bringing up
a small HTTP server bound to `fips0` so mesh nodes can reach
it, with a deliberate exposure decision (mesh-only vs every
interface), the mesh firewall, and a brief signpost to the
separate, unrelated peer ACL (which controls who may peer
with your node, not what they can reach on your `fips0`).
- [ground-up-mesh](ground-up-mesh.md) — Bring up two devices on
a shared physical link — Ethernet, WiFi, or Bluetooth — with
no pre-existing IP infrastructure. The second deployment mode
of FIPS, coexisting on the same daemon as the overlay peer to
`test-us01` you just configured.
For "what just happened, in detail":
- [../design/fips-architecture.md](../design/fips-architecture.md) —
the protocol stack and the two-layer encryption model.
- [../design/fips-mesh-layer.md](../design/fips-mesh-layer.md) —
Noise IK link encryption, hop-by-hop forwarding.
- [../design/fips-session-layer.md](../design/fips-session-layer.md)
— end-to-end Noise XK, session lifecycle.
- [../design/fips-ipv6-adapter.md](../design/fips-ipv6-adapter.md) —
the TUN, the local DNS responder, MTU enforcement.
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