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Johnathan Corgan
b4e9bfbc08
An ephemeral node wrote the private key of an identity it discards on every restart to fips.key, and overwrote any key already at that path, including an operator's key in the case where persistent: true was forgotten. It now writes only fips.pub, so the running npub stays visible, and holds the private key in memory only. A fips.key found at an ephemeral start is moved aside to fips.key.unused with a warning rather than used or overwritten, so an operator's key is recoverable and a stale key from an earlier release stops being read by fipsctl address. If that name is already taken or the rename fails, the file is left in place, a warning says so, and the start continues. Persistent and explicit-nsec identities are unchanged. The keygen note, the Windows service installer's closing note, and the documentation that described the old write are corrected, including the persistent identity how-to, which told operators to start once in ephemeral mode and then pin the key it wrote.
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 |