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`--agent-client-suffix` takes a value that opens with `-`, and clap reads one space-separated as a short-flag cluster. `swarm-nats.nix` passes it that way, so the responder aborted at startup on `unexpected argument '-a'`. A responder that never subscribes is not a degraded queue. `auth_callout` is fail-closed by design, so the server denies every client, and each denial arrives as `authorization violation` on the client — naming nothing, on a process that is itself healthy. Two unrelated daemons reported it at once and neither was at fault. The option's own `default_value` is `-agent`, so the binary could not accept the value it ships. Fixing the module's call site instead would leave that true for anyone running it by hand. The three tests parse argument vectors rather than assert on a struct: one is the literal vector the unit builds, one is the control that an ordinary value goes through the same flag, and one pins the default against the module. |
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| Cargo.toml | ||
| README.md | ||
swarm-nats-auth
The auth-callout responder for the swarm's NATS queue — the half that lets the server say yes.
nix/host-modules/swarm-nats.nix configures nats-server with an
auth_callout block. That block with no responder is the fail-closed
state, and it is the measured one rather than the obvious one: on the pinned
nats-server, both authorization { } and authorization { users: [] } answer
PONG to an anonymous client, while an auth_callout block sets
auth_required and refuses every client no responder has approved. So the
module ships the final config from the start and this crate only adds the
ability to approve. No interim hole is ever opened.
Why a crate and not more config
The reply is a signed NATS user JWT. Signing needs the account nkey seed and the JWT framing, which is program work — which is why the container and its config landed first and this arrived separately, rather than the pair being one change.
The invariant that is easy to break
⛔ issuer_account must be absent from the issued user token. It is an
operator-mode field. The module renders server-config mode (accounts { AUTH, APP }, no operator), where its mere presence makes the server refuse
the client — Error non operator mode account "AUTH": attempted to use issuer_account — while the responder cheerfully reports granted=true. The
account is named by the claims' aud instead.
nats_jwt::Token::new_user always sets it, so reaching for that constructor
reintroduces the bug. nats-jwt is a dev-dependency: it cannot express
aud on either token, and its role here is as the encoder's test oracle,
not part of the path that runs.
Rules the code follows
- A denial is a signed response carrying an error, never silence. The server cannot tell an absent responder from a refusing one, so staying quiet turns every rejection into a timeout and hides an outage inside what looks like ordinary denials.
- Anything that is not an explicit
{"active": true}denies — including an introspection call that could not be made. The failure modes of an HTTP call are exactly the conditions under which an attacker would most like this to fall open. - Every credential is a path, never a value. A value in nix config lands
in the world-readable store; a value in
argvis readable via/proc/<pid>/cmdline, which is0444. Paths are not secrets, so passing them as flags is fine. - The introspection timeout is pinned below the server's
authorization. timeout, with a test asserting the relation — a responder that answers after the server gave up is indistinguishable from one that never answered.
What the tests do and do not cover
Unit tests cover the JWT framing, including byte-equality against nats-jwt
on the one shape that crate models. They are not sufficient on their own:
this crate's shape is decided by a server that parses what it emits, so the
change was also driven against a real nats-server — every refusal repeated
with the responder live, because a responder that says yes to everyone
passes "a client can connect" perfectly. That harness lives outside this repo;
the PR that added this crate links it.
⚠️ Its introspection endpoint is a stub. Those runs prove this crate's own behaviour and nothing about the real authelia integration, which needs a deployment.