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Document actual infrastructure scope and intent gaps 
Assistant: codex
Assistant-Model: gpt-5.6-sol
Assistant-Session: 01a02994-7685-7940-bf34-3555b8256018
2026-08-23 10:45:02 +02:00

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SCOPE

This file describes the repository as it works today. Aspirational direction belongs in INTENT.md; known differences are recorded under history/.

One-liner

The S1 host substrate for Railiance: source-backed inventory, Ansible OS convergence, host firewall policy, SSH bootstrap, and recurring baseline verification for the existing Railiance servers.

Core Idea

railiance-infra owns host-level facts and controls below Kubernetes. It keeps the current server identities in source, converges supported Linux hosts toward a security baseline, and checks the resulting live state. A higher layer should receive a reachable, hardened host rather than needing to configure the host itself.

The two current managed hosts are existing Host Europe virtual servers. The repository also contains a Hetzner Terraform and cloud-init path, but that path is not an operable representation of the current inventory: it supports only Hetzner and expects provisioning fields that the two adopted Host Europe entries do not contain.

In Scope

  • Canonical connection inventory for Railiance01 and CoulombCore in inventory/servers.yaml
  • Dynamic Ansible inventory, including per-host exceptions
  • Debian/Ubuntu host convergence for base packages, SSH hardening, fail2ban, timezone, swap, user resource limits, and host access keys
  • Declared UFW management where ufw_manage is enabled
  • Tunnel-only k3s API policy, source-restricted Flannel grants, and removal of retired public grants
  • Grant validation before opening public web ports 80/443 for a reef
  • Installation of OpenBao SSH user-CA trust and per-user principals
  • Installation of SOPS/age tooling and SOPS-encrypted storage of the Hetzner provider token
  • Goss host checks, TAP evidence, and an hourly on-host pass/fail signal
  • Non-secret Railiance01 identity, capacity, utilization, and host-operations evidence for downstream resource accounting
  • Local age-encrypted snapshots of selected S1 OS configuration and installed package selections
  • A reference NetKingdom host-bootstrap capability declaration

Out of Scope

  • Kubernetes installation and runtime management (railiance-cluster, S2)
  • OpenBao, databases, ingress, Forgejo, and other platform services (railiance-platform, S3)
  • Developer tooling and application deployment (S4/S5)
  • Workload execution contracts (rail-*) and workload packaging (rapp-*)
  • Reef topology, workload placement, and exposure decisions; this repo only enforces a supplied substrate grant
  • Provider billing, contracts, lifecycle dates, and cost records
  • Secret issuance or live credential custody; this repo encrypts selected material at rest and installs client tooling
  • Host Europe provisioning or lifecycle automation; the current Host Europe servers are adopted resources
  • Cluster, database, or application backup and restore

Historical Forgejo migration and restore-drill material remains in this repo, but it is not an S1 capability or an ownership precedent.

Relevant When

  • Adding or changing a managed host identity
  • Converging or auditing host packages, SSH, fail2ban, UFW, swap, or resource limits
  • Changing host-level network grants or proving k3s API exposure remains tunnel-only
  • Installing SSH CA trust or automation public keys on a host
  • Running or collecting host baseline checks
  • Producing non-secret host-capacity evidence
  • Developing or repairing the Hetzner provisioning path

Not Relevant When

  • The change is to Kubernetes objects, cluster components, platform services, or applications
  • The request is for a secret value, login token, provider contract, or invoice
  • The decision concerns which workloads or rails belong in a reef
  • A backup or restore concerns persistent application or cluster data

An already-provisioned host can still be in scope: convergence, firewall maintenance, evidence collection, and drift checks are ongoing S1 work.

Current State

  • Status: maintained and operational for adopted-host convergence and verification
  • Managed inventory: Railiance01 (92.205.62.239) and CoulombCore (92.205.130.254), both reached as user tegwick
  • Railiance01: UFW is managed from this repo; the k3s API is tunnel-only and the Host Europe Nydus exception is declared
  • CoulombCore: UFW is deliberately unmanaged because its live packet filter has not been migrated safely to this repo's UFW model
  • Verification: Goss can run on demand and hourly on-host. CoulombCore is a documented expected failure for the uniform UFW-active assertion, so the repository does not currently provide an all-host green handoff gate
  • Provisioning: a Hetzner-only Terraform template and helper scripts exist. They do not currently plan against the mixed/adopted inventory and do not provision either live Host Europe server
  • Secrets: secrets/hetzner-token.yaml is SOPS-encrypted. The Ansible sops_agent role installs tools but intentionally does not place a private age key on a host
  • Evidence: the latest committed Railiance01 capacity observation is a point-in-time record, not continuous resource telemetry

How It Fits

  • Upstream tools: Ansible, Goss, SOPS/age, Terraform, SSH, and provider APIs
  • Downstream: railiance-cluster depends on host reachability and an acceptable S1 posture; higher layers depend on it transitively
  • Access path: ops-bridge supplies the SSH tunnels used for private cluster and State Hub access; this repo declares host-side SSH access and firewall posture but does not own tunnel orchestration
  • Resource accounting: resource-control consumes the non-secret evidence interface under docs/evidence/resource-hosteurope-railiance01/; fin-hub owns booked cost

Terminology

  • Adopted host: an existing provider resource represented and managed here, but not created by this repo
  • Convergence: applying Ansible roles to move a host toward declared state
  • Verification: evaluating live host state with Goss
  • Substrate grant: an approved host-level network opening supplied by the owning reef declaration
  • S1: the infrastructure-substrate layer below the cluster runtime

Related / Overlapping

  • railiance-cluster — owns the S2 Kubernetes runtime
  • railiance-platform — owns S3 shared services and service data protection
  • ops-bridge — owns workstation-to-host tunnel orchestration
  • resource-control — owns the resource portfolio assembled from evidence produced here
  • reef-* repos — own substrate grouping and exposure intent
  • railiance-hosts — superseded predecessor; not a second source of truth

Getting Oriented

  • Session and work routing: AGENTS.md and .custodian-brief.md
  • Current host identities: inventory/servers.yaml
  • Host convergence: ansible/playbooks/bootstrap.yaml and ansible/roles/
  • Host-specific posture: ansible/inventory/host_vars/
  • Firewall defaults: ansible/roles/base/defaults/main.yml
  • Verification: goss/baseline.yaml.j2, docs/verification.md, and docs/conformance-loop.md
  • Hetzner prototype path: terraform/hetzner/ and docs/provisioning.md
  • Operator entry points: make converge, make converge-check, make converge-firewall, make verify, and make goss-status

Provided Capabilities

type: infrastructure
title: Adopted-host inventory and convergence
description: Resolve the two current server identities into Ansible inventory and converge supported Debian/Ubuntu host packages, SSH posture, fail2ban, swap, resource limits, and access keys.
keywords: [ansible, inventory, host, convergence, hardening, linux]

type: security
title: Host firewall grant enforcement
description: Converge declared UFW rules, keep the k3s API tunnel-only, restrict Flannel peers, revoke retired sources, and require a reef exposure grant before opening public web ports.
keywords: [ufw, firewall, k3s, tunnel, flannel, reef, exposure]

type: infrastructure
title: Recurring host baseline verification
description: Render inventory-aware Goss checks, run them on demand or hourly on-host, retain local failure state, and collect TAP evidence; the current all-host gate has a documented CoulombCore exception.
keywords: [goss, verification, drift, systemd-timer, tap, evidence]

type: security
title: SSH trust bootstrap
description: Install automation public keys and OpenBao SSH user-CA trust with host-specific authorized principals; certificate issuance remains with ops-warden.
keywords: [ssh, certificate-authority, openbao, principals, access]

type: infrastructure
title: Host capacity evidence interface
description: Collect a bounded, non-secret Railiance01 observation across provider metadata, operating-system capacity, and k3s allocatable state for resource-control.
keywords: [capacity, evidence, hosteurope, resource-control, inventory]

Notes

The exact differences between this operational scope and the aspirational mission in INTENT.md are assessed in history/2026-08-23-scope-against-intent.md.