Johnathan Corgan
b285c83538
Carries the v0.5.3 maint batch and the master-only portable_atomic change up to next. The link and session rekey fixes from maint are written against the IK link handshake and the XK session handshake; next runs XX on both, so each was adapted or left out as follows. Previous-session link frames kept out of MMP: adapted. Both decrypt paths in the encrypted-frame handler report which session authenticated the frame, and a previous-session frame is not counted by the MMP receiver and a ReceiverReport it carries is dropped. Next has no spin bit, so that part of the change has nothing to gate. Next's initiator msg3 confirm on the same paths is left as it was. The node tests are rebuilt on next's three-message rekey: the initiator reads msg2, its msg3 is held back from the responder, and it cuts over on its own tick. Resend of a lost link rekey msg2, the per-peer record of answered msg1s, and answering msg1 on the established link: not carried. All three depend on the IK responder installing its new session when it answers msg1 and holding it until adopted. Under XX msg1 carries no identity, so the responder cannot tie a msg1 to a peer, holds nothing until an authenticated msg3 declares the rekey, and answers a duplicate msg1 from the same address with its stored msg2. A replayed msg1 cannot be carried to a msg3, since that needs the initiator's ephemeral key. The msg2 has to go to the msg1's source because the peer is not known yet. The FMP core, peer and handshake-handler changes and their tests are dropped, along with their changelog entries. Forged session msg3 and setup: the setup hold is carried. A setup naming an established peer while a handshake that peer armed awaits its msg3 is dropped and counted as rekey_held, and the dual-initiation tie-break now runs only for a handshake this node initiated, with the retry and tie-break tests updated to match. The rolling-back msg3 read targets the XK read, which next does not have; next's XX msg3 arms are left as they were here and get their own change.
Tutorials
If you have just installed FIPS, this is where to start. The tutorials below take you from a freshly-installed daemon to a node that:
- Has joined the public test mesh and can reach other nodes on it.
- Carries a stable identity that other operators can address.
- Discovers peers — and is discoverable — over Nostr.
- Hosts and consumes real services across the mesh.
Each tutorial is a complete, working session at the keyboard. You configure something, restart the daemon, watch it come up, and verify the result. The point is to build muscle memory, not to cover every option.
Read them in order. Each tutorial assumes the state the previous one left you in. If you skip ahead, the cross-references that lead you back may not match what you have on disk.
The new-user progression
| # | Tutorial | What you'll do |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | join-the-test-mesh.md | Add one public test peer to your config, watch the link come up, ping that peer and a second mesh node it routes you to. The starting point for everything else. |
| 2 | persistent-identity.md | Pin your daemon to a stable Nostr keypair so your address stops changing on every restart. Other operators can now add you to their peers: lists; the services you host get a fixed name. |
| 3 | resolve-peers-via-nostr.md | Stop hard-coding peer addresses. Drop the address line from your peer entry and let the daemon look up the current endpoint from public Nostr relays at dial time. |
| 4 | advertise-your-node.md | Publish your own UDP endpoint to Nostr so any operator who knows your npub can reach you, with a short final section on udp:nat best-effort hole-punching for nodes without a directly reachable UDP endpoint. |
| 5 | open-discovery.md | Switch to policy: open and let your peer list populate itself from the ambient fips-overlay-v1 namespace. Hands-off mesh participation. |
| 6 | reach-mesh-services.md | Drive ordinary IPv6 tools — ping6, nc, traceroute6, curl, ssh — at mesh nodes by <npub>.fips. Get a feel for the daemon's IPv6 adapter, which makes unmodified IPv6 software work over the mesh. |
| 7 | host-a-service.md | Bring up an HTTP server bound to fips0 so mesh nodes can reach it, with a deliberate exposure decision (mesh-only vs every interface), and the mesh firewall as a default-deny baseline. The peer ACL (a separate, transport-layer control over which npubs may peer with your node) is briefly mentioned alongside. |
| 8 | ground-up-mesh.md | Bring up a second deployment mode: two devices joined by Ethernet (or WiFi, or BLE) with no IP infrastructure between them. The mesh emerges from layer 2 up. Coexists with overlay peers — the same daemon can carry both. |
After tutorial 8 you have a fully participating mesh node that reaches services hosted by other mesh nodes and hosts services of its own, with identity, discovery, reachability, an explicit exposure policy, and an understanding of both deployment modes — overlay on top of existing IP, and ground-up where the mesh is the network.
There are also two side trips you can take:
-
ipv6-adapter-walkthrough.md — trace one
sshfrom DNS query through session setup to the far-side TUN, usingfipstopandfipsctlto watch each step. Optional, but if you like seeing how the pieces fit together, this is the doc that shows you. Take it any time after tutorial 1. -
native-api-walkthrough.md — write a program against the experimental native datagram API, addressing a peer by public key and port with no IPv6 emulation and no TUN. Runs two throwaway nodes on one machine, so it needs no mesh and no root, and you can take it without doing the tutorials first.
Advanced
These are not part of the new-user progression. They assume you have already worked through the tutorials above and now want to fold FIPS into a wider network deployment.
- deploy-fips-gateway.md — Stand up a
fips-gatewayon an OpenWrt access point so unmodified LAN hosts can reach<npub>.fipsdestinations through a DNS- allocated virtual IPv6 pool and kernel nftables NAT, with no per-host FIPS install. Also walks through one inbound port forward exposing a LAN service to mesh peers. Aimed at operators bridging a LAN segment into the overlay from the edge router. For a non-OpenWrt host the same deployment is in ../how-to/deploy-gateway.md.
When to use the how-to guides instead
The tutorials here walk through one specific path each. The how-to guides under ../how-to/ are the operator recipes — alternative provisioning paths, less-common configurations, troubleshooting techniques. Once you have the shape of FIPS in your head from these tutorials, the how-tos are where you'll go to look up "how do I do X?" without being walked through the surrounding context.