Arjen
98786e527a
The macOS package accumulated a single unbounded log file — 717 MB on a node running at debug level. Nothing rotated it, and nothing could. fips logs to stdout and leaves capture to the supervisor, which is right where the platform rotates that stream: journald does, and so does syslog under procd. launchd does not. It redirects stdout to a plain file and appends to it forever, and the usual rename-and-signal rotators cannot help, because launchd holds the descriptor and passes it as fd 1 — the daemon has no way to reopen a file rotated out from under it, and signalling it achieves nothing. Rotation therefore has to happen in the process that writes, which means the daemon has to own the file. `node.log_file` names it, and is unset by default so every platform whose supervisor already rotates keeps logging to stdout exactly as before — setting it there would only duplicate what journald and syslog hold. `node.log_rotation` (hourly/daily/never, default daily) and `node.log_max_files` (default 7) govern the roll. Both parse leniently in the same way as `node.log_level`: a typo falls back to the default rather than refusing to boot, and the resolved values are logged at startup. Rotation is by period rather than by size, so `node.log_level` is what actually governs volume — debug costs roughly an order of magnitude more per day than info. Retention bounds the rest. Writes go through a non-blocking appender, so a slow or full disk cannot stall the tick loop behind a log write. The worker guard is held for the lifetime of the daemon; dropping it would silently discard every line logged afterward. The live file carries the date the current period opened, since that is how the appender names a rolled file. Splitting the configured path on its extension rather than suffixing the whole name keeps `.log` on the end, so `/var/log/fips/fips.log` is written as `fips.2026-08-31.log`. That does mean the current file no longer has a fixed name; the packaged config carries the `tail` incantation for it. Opening the log is fatal on failure, matching how this binary treats an unusable config. A daemon that silently dropped its logging because a directory was unwritable would present as exactly the disappearing-logs problem this exists to fix. macOS packaging is the only one that turns this on. The plist stops redirecting stdout and stderr, which would otherwise reintroduce the unbounded file alongside the rotated one; the cost is that a failure before logging initialises, and a panic, now go nowhere rather than to fips.log. The setting is inserted after the `node:` key rather than appended to the shared config, which ends at a top-level `peers:` key — an appended block would land under the wrong mapping, and a second top-level `node:` would collide with the first.
FIPS Packaging
This directory contains packaging for all supported target platforms.
Most build outputs go to deploy/ at the project root; make ipk
and make apk write to dist/ instead.
Quick Start
make deb # Debian/Ubuntu .deb
make tarball # systemd install tarball
make ipk # OpenWrt .ipk (opkg, OpenWrt 24.x and earlier)
make apk # OpenWrt .apk (apk-tools, mandatory on OpenWrt 25+)
make aur # Arch Linux AUR package (fips-git, local build + namcap)
make pkg # macOS .pkg installer
make freebsd # FreeBSD .pkg package (on FreeBSD; use gmake)
make zip # Windows .zip package
make all # deb + tarball (default)
Build Prerequisites
These targets build FIPS from source, so the host needs a build
environment in addition to a Rust toolchain (the version pinned in
rust-toolchain.toml is auto-installed by rustup).
On Linux, libclang is required: the LAN gateway's nftables
bindings are generated by bindgen at build time, which needs
libclang.so on the build host. Without it the build fails inside the
rustables crate with an "Unable to find libclang" error.
sudo apt install libclang-dev # Debian / Ubuntu
This is a build-time prerequisite only — it is not a runtime
dependency, so hosts installing a pre-built .deb do not need it.
BLE is not optional, and it is not universal either. build.rs sets
ble_available for glibc Linux or Android, which is the set of
platforms with a concrete backend: the transport is absent from musl
Linux, macOS, FreeBSD and Windows builds entirely. On glibc Linux
libdbus-1-dev and pkg-config are hard build prerequisites: there is
no probe that skips BLE when they are missing. The BlueZ daemon is a
runtime dependency and is not needed to build.
Directory Structure
packaging/
aur/ Arch Linux AUR packaging (PKGBUILD, supporting files)
common/ Shared assets (default config, hosts file)
debian/ Debian/Ubuntu .deb packaging via cargo-deb
freebsd/ FreeBSD .pkg packaging via pkg-create(8)
macos/ macOS .pkg installer via pkgbuild
nixos/ NixOS flake module (services.fips.*)
systemd/ Generic Linux systemd tarball packaging
openwrt-ipk/ OpenWrt .ipk packaging via cargo-zigbuild (opkg)
openwrt-apk/ OpenWrt .apk packaging via cargo-zigbuild + apk mkpkg
windows/ Windows .zip package with service scripts
Formats
Debian/Ubuntu (.deb)
Built with cargo-deb. Installs
fips, fipsctl, fipstop, and fips-gateway to /usr/bin/, ships
the fips, fips-dns, fips-firewall, and fips-gateway systemd
units, and enables the fips and fips-dns services.
The default configuration ships as an example at
/usr/share/fips/fips.yaml.example and is not a dpkg conf-file.
(It is deliberately not under /usr/share/doc, which minimal and
container installs path-exclude, since the postinst reads it at install
time.)
On install, postinst seeds /etc/fips/fips.yaml (mode 600) from the
example only if it does not already exist, so a configuration that
was rendered by configuration management or edited by an operator is
never prompted for or clobbered on upgrade. To reset to defaults, remove
/etc/fips/fips.yaml and reinstall, or copy the example back manually.
# Build
make deb
# Install
sudo dpkg -i deploy/fips_<version>_<arch>.deb
# Remove (preserves config and keys)
sudo dpkg -r fips
# Purge (removes config and identity keys)
sudo dpkg -P fips
systemd Tarball
A self-contained tarball with binaries and an install.sh script for
any systemd-based Linux distribution.
# Build
make tarball
# Install (on target host)
tar -xzf deploy/fips-<version>-linux-<arch>.tar.gz
sudo ./fips-<version>-linux-<arch>/install.sh
See systemd/README.install.md for full installation and configuration instructions.
OpenWrt (.ipk, opkg — OpenWrt 24.x and earlier)
Cross-compiled with cargo-zigbuild and assembled as a standard .ipk
archive. Supports aarch64, mipsel, mips, arm, and x86_64 targets.
# Build (default: aarch64)
make ipk
# Build for a specific architecture
bash packaging/openwrt-ipk/build-ipk.sh --arch mipsel
See openwrt-ipk/README.md for router-specific installation instructions.
OpenWrt (.apk, apk-tools — mandatory on OpenWrt 25+)
OpenWrt 25 makes apk-tools the mandatory package manager (it is opt-in on
24.10). Same SDK-free approach
(cargo-zigbuild), but the .apk container is assembled by apk mkpkg
rather than hand-rolled, so the build additionally needs an apk-tools v3
apk binary built from source. The installed-filesystem payload is shared
with the .ipk package.
# Build (default: aarch64; also x86_64)
make apk
# Build for a specific architecture
bash packaging/openwrt-apk/build-apk.sh --arch x86_64
Packages are unsigned; install with apk add --allow-untrusted. See
openwrt-apk/README.md for building apk-tools and
router-specific installation.
macOS (.pkg)
Built with pkgbuild (included with Xcode command-line tools). Installs
binaries to /usr/local/bin/, config to /usr/local/etc/fips/, sets up
the /etc/resolver/fips DNS resolver for .fips domains, and loads a
launchd daemon. The TUN device is named utun<N> (kernel-assigned)
rather than fips0.
# Build
make pkg
# Install
sudo installer -pkg deploy/fips-<version>-macos-<arch>.pkg -target /
# Remove
sudo packaging/macos/uninstall.sh
FreeBSD (.pkg)
Built natively on a FreeBSD host with pkg create. Ships fips,
fipsctl, and fipstop (fips-gateway is excluded — its NAT backend
is nftables, Linux-only), rc.d services, and .fips DNS integration
for local_unbound, unbound, or dnsmasq. Config installs
sample-style under /usr/local/etc/fips/ (edits survive upgrades).
# Build (on FreeBSD; this Makefile needs GNU make — pkg install gmake)
gmake freebsd
# or directly, no gmake needed:
./packaging/freebsd/build-pkg.sh
# Install
pkg add ./deploy/fips-<version>-freebsd-<arch>.pkg
sysrc fips_enable=YES fips_dns_enable=YES
service fips start
service fips_dns start
See freebsd/README.md for host resolver setup and field-tested caveats.
Windows (.zip)
A ZIP archive containing binaries, default config, and PowerShell service helper scripts. Requires the wintun driver for TUN support.
# Build
make zip
# Or directly
powershell -File packaging/windows/build-zip.ps1
# Extract and install as service (requires Administrator)
Expand-Archive deploy\fips-<version>-windows-x86_64.zip -DestinationPath fips
cd fips
powershell -File install-service.ps1
# Uninstall (preserves config)
powershell -File uninstall-service.ps1
# Uninstall and remove config
powershell -File uninstall-service.ps1 -RemoveAll
Arch Linux (AUR)
Two AUR packages are maintained: fips (release, builds from tagged
tarball) and fips-git (development, builds from latest git master).
# Build and validate locally (git variant)
make aur
# Install from AUR
yay -S fips-git # development build from master
yay -S fips # release build from latest tag
See aur/README.md for AUR publication instructions and maintainer guide.
Nix / NixOS (flake)
A flake at the project root builds all four binaries
(fips, fipsctl, fips-gateway, fipstop) from source. It pins the
exact toolchain from rust-toolchain.toml via
fenix and wires up the
build-time native dependencies (libclang for bindgen, plus dbus
and pkg-config for BLE), so it needs no system setup beyond Nix with
flakes enabled.
nix build .#fips # build the package (all four binaries)
nix run .#fips -- --help # run a binary directly
nix run .#fipsctl -- show status
nix develop # dev shell with the pinned toolchain + cargo-edit
nix flake check # build + validate the flake
The flake also exposes:
overlays.default— addspkgs.fipsto nixpkgsnixosModules.default— a NixOS module (packaging/nixos/) that providesservices.fips.enableand runs the daemon as a systemd service
As a package only (no service management):
environment.systemPackages = [ fips.packages.${system}.default ];
As a managed NixOS service (recommended — starts on boot, journalctl logs):
# flake.nix
{
inputs.fips = {
url = "github:jmcorgan/fips";
inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
};
outputs = { self, nixpkgs, fips, ... }@inputs: {
nixosConfigurations.myhost = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
system = "x86_64-linux";
specialArgs = { inherit inputs; };
modules = [
./configuration.nix
fips.nixosModules.default
{ services.fips.enable = true; }
];
};
};
}
See packaging/nixos/README.md for the full option
reference (services.fips.enable, .package, .configFile,
.openFirewall).
Shared Assets
common/ contains assets used across packaging formats:
fips.yaml— default configuration (ephemeral identity, UDP/TCP/TUN/DNS)hosts— static hostname-to-npub mappings for.fipsDNS resolution