mirror of
https://github.com/jmcorgan/fips.git
synced 2026-10-05 11:08:25 +00:00
Johnathan Corgan
9979826235
Move the staged changelog entries under a 0.5.2 heading dated 2026-09-28 and leave an empty Unreleased section above it. The date is provisional: a comment beside the heading says so, and the two release-notes files carry the same date with the same marker, so the check at the version bump finds all three. Add the release notes and mirror them byte for byte to RELEASE-NOTES.md. Every link is absolute so the Release body resolves them, and each paragraph and list item is on one line, because the Release page shows every newline inside a paragraph as a line break; the file exempts itself from the line-length lint rule. The notes lead with who should upgrade and with the three defaults that changed: the gateway's DNS port, the Windows config directory, and an ephemeral node no longer writing its key file. They say what was measured and what was not, including the mixed-version interop run against v0.5.1 and v0.5.0, the Windows installer checks on Windows Server under Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell 7, and the checks still outstanding. They state that a link to a v0.5.0 or v0.5.1 node can still drop after a lost rekey reply until that node is upgraded, since the fix is on the answering side. The Windows upgrade notes say to stop the service before every run of the installer, and to move fips.yaml and fips.key from \etc\fips into C:\ProgramData\fips before upgrading a service that was set up by hand to read its config from \etc\fips, which otherwise comes up under a new identity with no warning. The README's status badge, release-notes link and status paragraph follow the release. Correct documentation that no longer matches the gateway, tree, Windows and packaging behavior: - The gateway design document, how-to, OpenWrt tutorial and the configuration reference describe the NAT rebuild as one transaction, the 1000-mapping ceiling and the new-name rate limit in place of the pool size as a hard cap, and which DNS queries allocate a mapping. - The spanning-tree documents describe the periodic re-broadcast and the resend of an unconfirmed announce, and the bloom filter update triggers include a parent switch and a child joining or leaving. - The fips, fipsctl and security references cover the restricted C:\ProgramData\fips on Windows, the ACL and key paths on macOS, FreeBSD and Windows, the legacy peer ACL fallback in \etc\fips, and the Debian fips.yaml's actual mode and conffile status. - The packaging guides no longer list MIPS as supported, the arm64 .deb leg is described as also purging the package, and the OpenWrt SDK-feed README says a package built from its Makefile carries none of the released packages' maintainer scripts. - The testing README gains a section for the OpenWrt maintainer-script suite and says the ACL allowlist suite runs by hand only, and the interop README lists the mesh-size check as its eighth phase. The upgrade notes were then corrected where following them as written would have left a node worse off: - Gateway DNS port: a fips.yaml that sets gateway.dns.listen keeps its port through the upgrade, and the v0.5.1 example config and deployment guide set it to [::1]:5353, so the resolver instruction depends on whether the config sets it. - OpenWrt: an operator who had the gateway disabled must stop it and then disable it after the first opkg upgrade. - FreeBSD: an upgrade step that restarts fips and fips_dns; the command comes from pkg's source and is listed as not measured. - Debian: the upgrade re-enables and starts fips-dns every time; `systemctl mask fips-dns` keeps it off. The .deb start bound is 90 seconds for fips-gateway. - Arch and the systemd tarball: what to restart or start after the upgrade, and that only a .deb upgrade reloads the firewall. - Ephemeral nodes: set persistent before upgrading to keep a key. - Windows: one ordered sequence in an elevated PowerShell, with the installer run under -ExecutionPolicy Bypass. - Building from source on glibc Linux also needs libdbus-1-dev and pkg-config. README, getting-started and the packaging README install the .deb with apt install ./ and point to the packaging README for per-format install commands. The notes record an OpenWrt 24 router test of the gateway DNS port, and that a gateway that fails to start leaves dnsmasq forwarding .fips to its port, with how to hand .fips back to the daemon. Drop the test-us03-next alias from the shipped hosts file and from the roster in the host-aliases how-to.
How-To Guides
Task-oriented, step-by-step recipes for operators with a specific goal in mind. Each guide assumes the reader already knows what FIPS is and wants to get a particular thing done — enable a feature, deploy a component, troubleshoot a class of problem.
How-to guides do not teach concepts (that is the role of design/) and do not enumerate options (that is the role of reference/). They take the reader along the shortest correct path from "I want to do X" to "X is done".
Available Guides
| Guide | Goal |
|---|---|
| enable-mesh-firewall.md | Activate the default-deny nftables baseline on fips0 |
| enable-nostr-discovery.md | Turn on Nostr-mediated discovery (3 capabilities — resolve, advertise, open — across 5 scenarios) |
| deploy-tor-onion.md | Run a Tor onion service for inbound FIPS connections |
| tune-udp-buffers.md | Set host sysctls so FIPS UDP sockets don't get clamped |
| tune-file-descriptors.md | Raise RLIMIT_NOFILE so a busy node doesn't exhaust file descriptors (EMFILE) as peer count grows |
| run-as-unprivileged-user.md | Run the daemon under a dedicated unprivileged service account (drops the default-root posture) |
| deploy-gateway.md | Manually deploy fips-gateway on a non-OpenWrt Linux host (LAN-to-mesh outbound + mesh-to-LAN inbound port-forwards). For the OpenWrt path, see the gateway tutorial. |
| troubleshoot-gateway.md | Diagnostic recipes for the gateway, organised by half (outbound, inbound, common) |
| persistent-identity.md | Provision a stable Nostr keypair so the node keeps the same npub across restarts |
| host-aliases.md | Use shortnames (test-us01.fips, my-laptop.fips) instead of full npubs by editing /etc/fips/hosts or setting peer aliases |
| set-up-bluetooth-peer.md | Configure a Bluetooth Low Energy peer link |
| set-up-80211s-mesh-backhaul.md | Link OpenWrt FIPS routers over an open 802.11s radio backhaul (FIPS provides encryption, authentication, and routing) |
| set-up-open-access-ssid.md | Broadcast the open !FIPS access SSID so phones and laptops roam onto the mesh (one ESS: save once, roam every FIPS router) |
| diagnose-mtu-issues.md | Triage MTU-shaped failures and rule out their imposters (bufferbloat, transport saturation) |
| use-the-native-datagram-api.md | Enable the experimental native datagram API and write a program that sends and receives datagrams by pubkey and port (no IPv6 emulation, no TUN). Read the fips group warning first |
| write-a-native-api-client.md | Speak the native datagram API's line protocol directly from C, Python or Go, where there is no client library |
| serve-many-peers-on-one-thread.md | Handle every native API flow from one poll loop instead of a thread per peer |