Two precision fixes to the runbook landed in fd0e88e, both making it weaker in
the sense that matters.
The PDB source-hash entry read as though hashes settled the 2026-08-09
provenance question by themselves. They did not: a hash match and a
contemporaneous deploy record written that evening independently named the same
two commits, and the agreement is what makes the result trustworthy. A hash
match alone tells you which sources a binary was built from — not that the build
was intentional, nor which host it reached. A future reader holding only one of
the two derivations should know to look for a second.
The two-swap timeline was asserted from the investigation's timestamps, which a
later reader cannot re-derive. It is also confirmable from artifacts still on
disk — windev keeps two worker backup directories from that day and wonder one,
because there were two worker operations. Records that, so the story can be
checked against the boxes rather than believed.
A 2026-08-11 investigation treated the windev production binary as having no
traceable provenance. Both pieces of evidence were normal output of our own
build and deploy procedure, and the binary was fine — but nothing in the repo
said so, so it cost a forensics pass to establish.
The version stamp is the first trap. SHA stamping landed in ec6f82b (TST-11)
and was broken on Windows until 0152180 (NEXT-09) a month later: the trailing
backslash in MSBuildThisFileDirectory escaped the Exec's closing quote, and
because the target runs ContinueOnError with ConsoleToMSBuild, git's stderr was
stamped as the revision. Every Windows build in that window reads
`0.1.2+fatal: cannot change to ...`. The point an operator needs is that this
is non-diagnostic in *both* directions — it neither incriminates a build nor
confirms one — which is not obvious from a stamp that looks like a failure.
The second is that the build directory is *supposed* to be gone: deploys build
from a detached worktree so the host's checkout stays on its own branch, and
remove it afterwards.
Records what does identify a build instead, cheapest first — including the wire
probe for the worker, since plain Write/Write2 carrying statuses[0] separates
53f69cd from b948e69 without host access or symbols — plus the deploys to date.
Also records something that went unlogged and is the reason this read as a
mystery rather than an improvement: the 2026-08-09 deploy returned the x86
worker to mainline. Production had been running dd7ca163, contained only by
origin/test/client-e2e-coverage and not an ancestor of main, so the worker in
production was not rebuildable from any mainline commit.
NEXT-07 is struck: windev was redeployed from origin/main (a346d51) and the service is
healthy, and the root cause the row predicted is confirmed -- the 2026-06-25 build's
Auth.ApiKeys 0.1.2.0 supports auth-DB schema 2 while the database sits at schema 3, which
is the current shared-lib version, so deploying forward was the fix rather than touching
the DB. The original text stays for the triage record.
Three findings surfaced by that work, each deliberately left for the next cycle rather
than patched in passing:
- NEXT-08: the shared GLAuth offers no TLS, so SEC-06 makes GatewayConfiguration.md's
"deployed hosts must set Ldaps or StartTls" unsatisfiable for anything genuinely
labelled Production. windev's relabel to Staging is honest for a dev rig but defers
the posture question rather than answering it.
- NEXT-09: Directory.Build.props:29 quotes a path ending in a backslash, so the SHA-stamp
git invocation is malformed on Windows and ContinueOnError stamps git's stderr into
InformationalVersion -- a Windows binary cannot be correlated to a commit, which is what
TST-11 exists to guarantee.
- NEXT-10: glauth.md's pre-provisioned-user table contradicts both the directory and its
own dashboard section, and was the root cause of the NEXT-06 fixture drift. Reconciling
it sweeps the OPC-UA group taxonomy, so it is scoped out here on purpose.
The TST-30 runner work is hygiene, not closure: runner-1 now mounts its registration token
from a 0600 file like runner-2, but both still share one instance-scope token that was
world-readable for months and is provably still live. Gitea 1.26.4 cannot rotate it from
the CLI or API, so the UI reset is recorded as a pending operator action with its
follow-through (refresh the token file, shred the token-bearing compose backups).
SEC-36's primary check -- dashboard /login through the real DashboardAuthenticator
search bind -- was deferred because windev's gateway was crash-looping on the stale
deployment filed as NEXT-07. That host was redeployed 2026-08-07, so the check ran:
login as multi-role returns 302 with the dashboard cookie and the authenticated page
renders the admin nav, while an anonymous control still redirects to /login. The
rotated service-account credential is now proven end-to-end on the deployed host, not
only by the equivalent ldapsearch primitive, and the runbook's Correction 3 is past
tense throughout rather than describing a fault that no longer exists.
Also record why windev runs the Staging environment name. The redeploy tripped SEC-06's
Production hard-stop on Ldap:Transport=None, and windev cannot satisfy it: it binds the
shared GLAuth, which offers no TLS, and runs Dashboard:DisableLogin=true. The Production
label contradicted its own configuration, so the host was relabelled rather than the
guard weakened -- exactly the permissive-staging-rig case the SEC-35 section already
carves out.
The local act_runner on this Mac registered as instance runner id 4 with
ubuntu-latest/22.04/20.04 labels, so it competed with the two docker
runners on 10.100.0.35 for Linux jobs it had no Docker daemon to run --
13 of the last 20-run window in historiangw landed on it and all but one
failed. Registration deleted; local config kept disabled for re-use with
mac-specific labels.
Doc half of TST-30 (single shared Gitea runner is a CI throughput/availability
bottleneck): docs/GatewayTesting.md's Continuous Integration section gains a
"Runner capacity is shared and finite" subsection covering the maxParallel=1
instance-level runner shared with dohertj2/lmxopcua, the ~20-30 min queue
latency observed under cross-repo contention, and Gitea 1.26's missing run
cancel/delete API. The existing "windev tier down" degraded-mode paragraph now
also covers "runner contended" as a reason to bypass the queue via
CI_SHA=<sha> scripts/ci/run-windev-ci.sh <mode> or the manual windev worktree
flow, generalizing it per the finding's design note.
New operator runbook docs/runbooks/TST-30-second-ci-runner.md carries the
actual runner registration (option a: second act_runner instance on
10.100.0.35 with the same container.network: traefik config, recommended;
option b: dedicated labelled runner, escalation only; option c: runner on
windev, rejected) plus verification steps and the no-cancel caveat. The
optional workflow-level concurrency group is documented as unverified --
framed as "verify before relying on it" -- and left unimplemented in ci.yml,
since registering the runner and any runs-on gating is operator/infra work
outside this repo's tree.
Tracking: TST-30 -> Done (doc half; runner registration operator-pending) in
both registers + change-log row.
Repo-side half of SEC-36. The appsettings.json plaintext was already discharged
before this branch (HEAD ships the fail-closed ${secret:ldap/mxgateway/bind}
store reference), so the residual leak was the literal value in glauth.md,
docs/GatewayTesting.md, and the historical archreview SEC-06 evidence -- all
scrubbed to <service-account-password> placeholders pointing at the source of
truth scadaproj/infra/glauth/.
- csproj: add <UserSecretsId>mxaccessgw-server</UserSecretsId> (dev channel)
- GatewayOptionsValidator: blank-password message now names both channels
(dev user-secrets, deployed MxGateway__Ldap__ServiceAccountPassword)
- test: assert the message names both channels
- docs: GatewayConfiguration.md (three channels + rotation note), glauth.md
(placeholders + rotation-required + runbook pointer), GatewayTesting.md
- new operator runbook docs/runbooks/SEC-36-ldap-credential-rotation.md
(live rotation + NSSM staging remain operator-pending)
- tracking: SEC-36 -> Done (repo-side) in both registers + change-log
Deviation: kept the ${secret:} reference in appsettings.json rather than
deleting it (spec step 2 assumed the stale plaintext baseline); deleting it
would regress the shipped/documented/tested secret-store channel.
git grep -i for the old value is empty across all tracked files.
Joseph Doherty