The token file is 0600 root-owned and the precondition ran as the unit's
dynamic gitea-runner user, so it could not read it -- and it did not fail
closed. `[ -s ]` succeeds on a stat alone, grep then died with EACCES,
and `! grep` turned that error into true, so the gate exited 0 on a file
it had never read. It has reported 'a real token is present' without
looking for its entire existence, which is why the runner kept retrying
instead of holding still and saying why.
Prefix the step with + so it runs with full privileges. This grants the
runner nothing new: tokenFile becomes EnvironmentFile=, which systemd
already reads as root before dropping privileges, so the payload never
passes through an unprivileged reader either way -- the + only lets the
gate observe what systemd observes.
Also assert readability separately and loudly, rather than folding it
into the placeholder test: an unreadable file and a real token produced
the same verdict, so 'I could not look' was indistinguishable from 'I
looked and it is fine'.
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