Johnathan Corgan
6a564e26ac
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.
Mixed-Version Interop Test Harness
A CI lab harness for mixed-version interoperability testing. It runs an N-node full mesh where nodes run different builds of the FIPS daemon, and checks that every pair of versions interoperates — FMP link, FSP session, connectivity, and rekey survival — without a failure a same-version pair would not have.
What it tests
The static/rekey suites bake one binary set for all nodes, so they only ever test a version against itself. This harness breaks that assumption: each node runs an image built from its own git ref. The harness then looks for interop regressions — places where two different versions fail to interoperate:
- FMP handshake failures across versions
unknown FMP versiondrops- FSP / FMP AEAD decrypt failures
- replay storms / excessive-decrypt-failure removals
- link or session teardowns
- asymmetric connectivity drops
- rekey (FMP link + FSP session) that completes within a version but stalls or breaks across versions
Every failure is attributed to a specific version pair, classified same-version vs MIXED. The summary states whether failures are mixed-version-only (a genuine interop regression), both mixed and same (general instability), or same-version-only (a build is unstable even against itself).
The node-spec
The harness is parameterized by a node-spec: a multiset of image slots,
of size >= 2. Each slot is one of a, b, c, and the same slot may appear
more than once. The slots resolve to the three images built by
build-images.sh:
| Slot | Role | Intended ref |
|---|---|---|
a |
version under test | the branch tip / commit to vet |
b |
parent / comparison | parent commit on the same branch |
c |
release baseline | latest release tag |
build-images.sh is unchanged — it always builds exactly three images
from three refs. A node-spec like a a b c resolves to the same three
images; only the mesh topology grows.
Node identity vs image slot
Node identity and image slot are separate:
- A spec entry is a slot letter.
- Node id =
<slot><ordinal>, ordinal counting occurrences of that slot, 1-based. - Container name =
fips-interop-<nodeid>. - IPv4 =
172.30.0.1<index>, index = 0-based position in the spec (.10,.11,.12, ...). - Each node maps to its image slot:
a1,a2→fips-interop:a. - A pair is same-version iff the two nodes' slots resolve to the same
built SHA (read from
.build/refs.env); else MIXED.
Two same-slot nodes get distinct identities — derive_keys.py is keyed
by node id, so a1 and a2 are different npubs even though they run the
same binary.
Example specs
| Node-spec | Node ids | Pairs |
|---|---|---|
a b c |
a1 b1 c1 |
3 pairs, all MIXED — today's triangle (default). |
a a b c |
a1 a2 b1 c1 |
6 pairs: a1↔a2 same + 5 MIXED. |
a a a |
a1 a2 a3 |
3 pairs, all same — a same-version flake rig. |
Why the a a b c control topology matters
The triangle a b c has no same-version pair — every pair is mixed, so
under packet loss you cannot tell an interop regression from generic loss
noise. The a a b c spec adds a control arm: the a1↔a2 pair runs
identical binaries. Under a netem stress loop:
- a failure on a mixed pair the control pair does not share → an interop regression;
- a failure both the mixed pairs and the control pair share → loss-induced instability, not version-specific.
That control pair is what makes a stress run interpretable. It is the
default node-spec for interop-stress.sh.
The a a a spec is the degenerate case: all-same-version, used purely as a
flake rig — exercising a single build against itself under loss to find
loss-induced instability with no version variable at all.
Files
| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
build-images.sh |
Build fips-interop:a/b/c, one Docker image per git ref. |
generate-configs.sh |
Generate per-node configs, the generated compose, manifests. |
interop-test.sh |
Test driver: bring up, converge, rekey, analyze, attribute. |
interop-stress.sh |
Netem stress loop: N reps, pass rate, mixed-vs-same attribution. |
README.md |
This document. |
Generated at runtime: generated-configs/ (per-node configs +
docker-compose.generated.yml + nodes.env + npubs.env), .build/,
.stress-runs/. The root for these three is selected by the
FIPS_INTEROP_RUNS_DIR environment variable — see
Scratch directory location below.
The static docker-compose.yml is gone — the compose file is now generated
per node-spec into generated-configs/docker-compose.generated.yml.
How per-node images work
build-images.sh <ref-a> <ref-b> <ref-c> (unchanged — always three refs):
- For each ref,
git worktree add --detacha temp checkout of the repo. cargo build --releasethe four binaries (fips,fipsctl,fipstop,fips-gateway) in that worktree.- Copy the binaries into a build context alongside the shared
testing/docker/Dockerfile(andentrypoint.sh,resolv.conf). docker buildit, taggingfips-interop:<slot>and labelling the image with its ref + short SHA.- Remove the temp worktree (done per-ref so peak disk stays at one worktree).
It also writes .build/refs.env, recording each slot's ref and SHA. The
driver reads it to know which pairs are mixed-version. (If absent, it falls
back to the image labels.)
How to run it
Build the images (once per ref set)
cd /dpool/src/clabs/nostr/fips
bash testing/interop/build-images.sh <ref-a> <ref-b> <ref-c>
Example: A = tip of fix/fsp-rekey-overlapping-epoch, B = maint,
C = release tag v0.3.0:
bash testing/interop/build-images.sh fix/fsp-rekey-overlapping-epoch maint v0.3.0
Run a single mesh
bash testing/interop/interop-test.sh [node-spec...]
node-spec defaults to a b c (the original triangle). Examples:
bash testing/interop/interop-test.sh # a b c — 3-node triangle
bash testing/interop/interop-test.sh a a b c # 4-node, one control pair
bash testing/interop/interop-test.sh a a a # 3-node same-version flake rig
The driver regenerates configs automatically whenever the requested
node-spec differs from the one on disk, so changing the spec just works.
A run takes a few minutes (driven by REKEY_AFTER_SECS, default 35, times
two rekey cycles).
Run the netem stress loop
FIPS_INTEROP_NETEM="delay 10ms 5ms 25% loss 2%" \
bash testing/interop/interop-stress.sh [--reps N] [node-spec...]
--reps N— repetitions (default 10).node-spec— defaulta a b c(the control topology).- Reps run serially — the harness uses fixed container names and a fixed Docker network, so two reps must never overlap.
- If
FIPS_INTEROP_NETEMis unset the script warns (a stress run normally wants netem) but still runs a clean baseline loop.
Each rep invokes interop-test.sh with netem set and captures its full
output and exit code; a rep passes iff interop-test.sh exits 0. Artifacts
land in testing/interop/.stress-runs/<UTC-timestamp>/:
rep-NN/driver.log— full driver output for every rep.rep-NN/docker-<container>.log— per-containerdocker logsfor failed reps only.summary.txt— the aggregate report.
The aggregate report gives reps run, passed/failed counts and an integer pass rate, then tallies — across all failed reps — connectivity failures by pair kind (mixed vs same), and a verdict:
- mixed pairs only, never the control pair → interop-regression signal;
- both mixed and same pairs → loss-induced general instability;
- same-version control pair only → the build is unstable against itself.
interop-stress.sh exits non-zero only for the interop-regression
signal. A sub-100% pass rate under loss is expected and is not by itself a
failure, so every other outcome exits 0.
Options
| Variable | Effect |
|---|---|
FIPS_INTEROP_NETEM |
tc-netem string applied to each container's eth0, e.g. "delay 10ms 5ms 25% loss 1%". Passed through interop-stress.sh to interop-test.sh. |
REKEY_AFTER_SECS |
Rekey interval for generated configs (default 35). |
FIPS_INTEROP_KEEP_UP |
1 = leave containers running after the test. |
FIPS_INTEROP_KEEP_WORKTREES |
1 = keep build-images.sh worktrees (debug). |
FIPS_INTEROP_RUNS_DIR |
Root for the three scratch dirs — see Scratch directory location. |
The netem hook reuses the flake-lab mechanism (docker exec ... tc qdisc on
each container's eth0) — host-side bridge qdisc does not shape
inter-container port-to-port traffic, so the impairment must live inside the
containers.
Scratch directory location
The three scratch dirs the harness writes — .build/ (per-ref build
contexts and refs.env), generated-configs/ (per-node configs +
generated compose + manifests), and .stress-runs/ (stress-loop
artefacts) — are rooted under FIPS_INTEROP_RUNS_DIR when that
environment variable is set. With
export FIPS_INTEROP_RUNS_DIR=/var/lib/fips-interop
all three land under /var/lib/fips-interop/, and the source tree
stays clean.
When FIPS_INTEROP_RUNS_DIR is unset, each harness script falls back
to writing under testing/interop/ itself and prints a one-line
stderr warning naming the variable. The in-tree paths are
.gitignored, so accidentally running without the variable does not
dirty the checkout — but pointing the variable outside the source
tree is recommended, so lab runs do not interleave with the source
working copy at all.
How to read the output
The driver runs seven phases:
| Phase | Check |
|---|---|
| 0 | Bring up the mesh (+ optional netem). |
| 1 | All nodes reach N-1 authenticated peers; all directed pairs ping over fips0 (the definitive FSP-session check). |
| 2 | First FMP rekey cutover completes within the timeout. |
| 3 | All pairs still ping after the first rekey. |
| 4 | Wait out a second rekey cycle. |
| 5 | All pairs still ping after the second rekey. |
| 6 | Per-node / per-pair interop log analysis. |
Phase 6 is the interop-specific part. It reports:
- Global health — panics,
ERRORlines,unknown FMP versiondrops, link teardowns, decrypt failures, handshake failures, rekey-msg2 failures. Any non-zero count is broken down per node, attributed to a specific build. - Rekey machinery exercised — both FMP and FSP rekey cutovers fired.
- Per-pair interop summary — each unordered pair, classified same-version vs MIXED, with whether it stayed healthy through the run.
The final verdict lists every failure attributed to a specific
x[ref@sha] <-> y[ref@sha] pair or build, then states the attribution:
- mixed-version only → a genuine interop regression.
- both mixed and same → general instability, not version-specific.
- same-version only → a build is unstable even against itself.
Exit code is 0 only if every check passed and no per-pair failure was
recorded; non-zero otherwise, with a diagnostic dump (peer/link snapshots and
interop-relevant log tails for all nodes).
CI integration
The harness is self-contained and slots into .github/workflows/ci.yml
alongside the existing integration matrix suites. A future matrix entry
would, per push to a PR branch:
- Resolve the three refs — e.g.
A = github.sha,B = git rev-parse github.sha^,C = $(git describe --tags --abbrev=0)or a pinned release tag. bash testing/interop/build-images.sh "$A" "$B" "$C".bash testing/interop/interop-test.sh a a b cfor the control topology, orinterop-stress.shfor a loss sweep.- On failure, upload the diagnostic dump (or
.stress-runs/) as an artifact.
The three cargo build --release passes are the cost driver; on a CI runner
this suite is heavier than the single-image suites. Reasonable options are to
run it only on release branches / tags, gate it behind a label, or cache the
fips-interop:c (release) image since the release tag rarely moves.
Until then the harness runs on demand locally — the same way the flake-lab is used today.