net-kingdom/workplans/NK-WP-0034-verification-that-verifies.md

---
id: NK-WP-0034
type: workplan
title: "Make the SSO/MFA verification actually verify"
domain: infotech
repo: net-kingdom
status: proposed
owner: codex
topic_slug: infotech
created: "2026-08-28"
related:
  - NK-WP-0033
  - CUST-ADR-012
---

# Make the SSO/MFA verification actually verify

## Goal

Close the blind spot `NK-WP-0033` exposed: verification that passes while the
thing it verifies cannot work.

## Why this exists

`reconcile-lldap-resolver-live.sh` was approved, documented, revision-pinned and
referenced by an incident workplan as the supported attended operation. Its first
execution on 2026-08-27 found four defects, two of which meant it could never
have completed a run under any circumstances.

`verify-t06.sh` reported success throughout.

It checked that a resolver and a realm existed. It did not check that
`GET /user/?realm=coulomb&username=<user>` returns a user — which is the entire
purpose of a resolver, and would have caught two of the four on the day they
landed. The resolver was also created without `TIMEOUT`, `CACHE_TIMEOUT` and
`SIZELIMIT`, so the WebUI had refused to save or test it for as long as it had
existed, and nothing noticed.

A verification that asserts its objects exist rather than that its property
holds is not a weaker check. It is a check that reports green while the system
is broken, which is worse than no check, because it is believed.

## Assert the property, not the objects

```task
id: NK-WP-0034-T01
status: todo
priority: high
```

Rewrite `verify-t06.sh` so it proves what the realm and resolver are *for*: that
a known user resolves through the realm, and that a privacyIDEA MFA validation
against that user succeeds. Existence checks may stay as diagnostics; they may
not stand in for the outcome.

Include the resolver's numeric parameters in what is asserted — a resolver the
WebUI cannot save or test is misconfigured whether or not it currently answers.

Acceptance: with the tuning fields cleared by hand, `verify-t06.sh` fails. With
them restored, it passes. Demonstrated in both directions, not argued.

## Audit the other verify scripts for the same shape

```task
id: NK-WP-0034-T02
status: todo
priority: medium
```

`verify-t02.sh` through `verify-t08.sh` were written the same way by the same
hand. Read each and record, per script, the property it is supposed to establish
and whether it establishes it.

The output is a list, not a rewrite. Fixing them all is a larger decision than
this task should make on its own.

Acceptance: one table — script, intended property, actual assertion, verdict.

## Label every attended procedure with its exercise status

```task
id: NK-WP-0034-T03
status: todo
priority: medium
```

`docs/attended-procedure-standard.md` requires an `Exercise status:` line in
each runbook. There are 32 shell scripts under `sso-mfa/k8s/`; the reconciliation
runbook is the only one carrying the line.

Work through them and record, honestly, which have ever been run. "Unknown"
is a permitted answer and a more useful one than a guess — the point is that an
operator learns before running whether they are the first.

Acceptance: every attended procedure's runbook carries the line; scripts with no
runbook are listed as a separate finding.

## One helper per API

```task
id: NK-WP-0034-T04
status: todo
priority: low
```

The `Content-Type`-on-bodyless-GET defect was found and fixed in
`bootstrap-realm.sh`'s `pi_api`, with a comment explaining it, and then
reintroduced verbatim in a script written later in the same directory.

Extract one privacyIDEA request helper and have both scripts use it. A fix
applied to a copy is a fix that expires the next time someone writes a script.

Acceptance: one implementation of the privacyIDEA request path in
`sso-mfa/k8s/privacyidea/`; both callers use it; the GET behaviour has a test
that fails if the header returns.