fab2a0dedc
Read all 94 write-good.Passive hits across docs/swarm/ (ca.md, README.md, secrets.md, services.md, sso.md, ui.md) in context. 44 are genuine catches with a nameable, usually already-established actor (swarm-controller, authelia, swarmctl, the controller, the gateway, this module, hyperhive itself, or 'the operator' for manual actions) — rewritten to active. 50 are legitimate passives or false catches, left alone: predicate-adjective state descriptions (is expected/misconfigured/ broken), negative-capability idioms (no X is needed/placed, can't be Yed/listed/fetched), config-state conditionals (whenever/when X is enabled/configured/set), requirement-list labels (is required), 'is tracked as' idiom, backward-looking changelog facts with no actor (was removed/verified/introduced), ambiguous-actor statements left conservatively alone (agents are created and destroyed — could be hive-c0re or swarm-controller, doc doesn't say), and a couple of deliberately-parallel idiom pairs. Several sibling-inconsistency fixes: a passive clause sitting next to an already-active sibling describing the same fact/mechanism (ca.md's two-bullet consumer list, README's 4-item WireGuard-mesh bullet list, README's controller-registers-hooks paragraph, sso.md's followed-a-302 sentence). Verified via vale on the whole directory, diffed against main's exact baseline (not just the Passive count): write-good.Passive 94 -> 50 exactly, every other category unchanged (1 pre-existing Microsoft.Contractions error at services... at secrets.md:182, 8 TooWordy, 1 Microsoft.We, 1 Microsoft.FirstPerson — same counts, same locations).
197 lines
9.2 KiB
Markdown
197 lines
9.2 KiB
Markdown
# Swarm CA
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A hive's internal TLS chains to a **swarm root CA**: the root signs each
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hive's own CA, and that hive CA signs the gateway leaf. A peer that
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trusts the root once validates every hive in the swarm, present and
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future, instead of pinning to each one by hand.
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That's the whole point of the hierarchy — it turns per-peer trust from
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O(n²) hand-pinning into one anchor per swarm.
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## Two provisioning modes, one structure
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What differs is who puts the artifacts on disk:
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| | swarm root | this hive's CA |
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| ---------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- |
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| default | operator-provided | operator-provided, else self-signed as before |
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| `autoConfigure = true` (all on one host) | generated by `swarm-ca.service` on first boot | issued by `hive-tls-ca.service` under the root |
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`services.hyperhive.swarm.ca.autoConfigure` selects between them, and is
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**off by default**: a swarm's services and its hives can live on
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different hosts, and a host can't tell whether it's the one holding
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the root, so setting the swarm CA up is an operator action rather than
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something a host assumes. Turn it on for an all-on-one-host deployment
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and the hierarchy costs no configuration.
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It defaults from `services.hyperhive.deploy.singleHostSwarm`, the single
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switch that says "this box is the whole deployment."
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**A hive given neither artifact keeps the self-signed CA it has always
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had.** It serves TLS exactly as before and isn't part of a
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swarm's trust hierarchy — the right outcome for a hive nobody has
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federated yet. Only `autoConfigure` issues a hive sub-CA, because only
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that case can: signing one needs the root's private key.
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Moving the swarm CA onto its own host is then a matter of moving
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`services.hyperhive.swarm.ca.stateDir` and leaving `autoConfigure` off —
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there is no second code path to switch to.
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### The warning about uncovered service names
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The swarm's service names (`swarm.forge.domain`,
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`swarm.matrix.gatewayHost`, `swarm.authelia.domain`) default to
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siblings of the hive domain — `forge.<swarm.domain>`, not
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`forge.<hive domain>`. The hive CA's leaf is a **single-label** wildcard
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over the hive's own domain, so it can't cover them; only the
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swarm-services leaf can, and this host signs that one only under
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`autoConfigure`. A hive with neither serves the hive leaf on those names
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and every client sees a name mismatch.
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`hive-tls` emits an eval-time **warning** naming the uncovered names.
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It's deliberately not an assertion: this module can see what _it_ is
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able to issue, but not an operator-installed sub-CA in
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`swarm.ca.stateDir`, an external ACME setup, or a certificate delivered
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by any other means. If you have arranged one, the warning is expected
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and can be ignored. Otherwise either install the sub-CA, or pin the
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names back under the hive domain — a supported migration, since the
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sub-CA carries a name constraint on the _configured_ names and the
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swarm root carries no name constraints at all.
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## Constraints on the material
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The root's private key never reaches the nix store: the store is
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world-readable and content-addressed, so a key committed to a flake is a
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key published to everyone who builds it. Only certificates are
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distributed.
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Each hive CA is **name-constrained** (X.509 `nameConstraints`) to that
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hive's own domain, so a hive CA that leaks can only mint names inside
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its own subdomain — enforced by every verifier rather than by
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convention. The constraint excludes both IP families as well, since a
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permitted-DNS-only constraint says nothing about IP SANs.
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The root is issued with `pathlen:1`: it may sign hive CAs, and those may
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sign leaves, and the chain stops there.
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## What to hand a peer
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`hivectl peer-config` prints the `services.hyperhive.swarm.hives."<name>"`
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block a peer operator pastes into their own config. When this hive's
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gateway serves a self-signed leaf under the hierarchy (detected by the
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presence of `<deploy.hive-controller.tls.stateDir>/trust-bundle.pem`), it
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also prints a one-time
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`scp` line installing the **swarm root** —
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`<swarm.ca.stateDir>/root.pem`, not this hive's own CA — on the peer's
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host:
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```
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scp /var/lib/swarm-ca/root.pem <peer-host>:/var/lib/swarm-ca/root.pem
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```
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That's the point of the hierarchy: the operator installs the root
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**once per swarm host**, not once per peer, so a hive joining later
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needs no edit on the hives already running. A hive whose cert already chains to a public
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CA has nothing to install — `peer-config` says so instead.
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Handing a peer this hive's own `ca.pem` would not work even as a
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one-off: once a hive CA is an intermediate under the swarm root, it's
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no longer something a verifier can build a chain _to_ — OpenSSL won't
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terminate a chain at a trusted non-self-signed certificate without
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`-partial_chain`. That's why the tool distributes the root, not a
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per-hive file.
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## Adopting the hierarchy on an existing hive
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A hive that predates the swarm root carries a self-signed `ca.pem`, and
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adopting the hierarchy means replacing it. That invalidates an anchor
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consumers already trust, and they refresh on their own schedule — agents
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only pick up new trust when their container restarts, peers only on
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their own rebuild. **Who is allowed to decide that's what splits the
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two cases.**
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### Where this host owns the root (`autoConfigure`)
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Adoption happens by itself, once. `hive-tls-ca.service` notices that
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`ca.pem` doesn't chain to the root, keeps the old certificate as
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`ca-previous.pem`, and re-issues under the root; the new CA signs the
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next leaf.
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It's safe to automate here precisely because this is the
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all-on-one-host shape: every consumer is on this box, so "when will they
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have refreshed" is knowable rather than guessed.
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The old CA stays in `trust-bundle.pem` afterwards, so adoption is
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**additive to the anchor set before it's subtractive** — a container
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that hasn't restarted yet still validates. Removing `ca-previous.pem`
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is a deliberate later step: how long is long enough is a property of the
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deployment, not something the unit can know.
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A marker file (`.swarm-ca-adopted`) records that this ran. Its _absence_
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is the trigger, so adoption fires once per hive rather than being
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re-decided on every activation.
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### Everywhere else
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No automatic adoption. `hive-tls-ca.service` fails, loudly, naming both
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certificates and giving the two-command recipe:
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```
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rm <deploy.hive-controller.tls.stateDir>/ca.pem <deploy.hive-controller.tls.stateDir>/ca-key.pem
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systemctl restart hive-tls-ca.service
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```
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Failing rather than warning is deliberate: a hive whose CA doesn't
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chain to the root it received is misconfigured, and a warning in a
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build log isn't something anyone reads twice.
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To keep the current CA on purpose — a hive that deliberately stays
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outside the hierarchy, or one mid-migration — `touch` the marker file
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named in the message. That's a decision, and it's recorded as one.
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A hive with **no** root configured at all isn't affected by any of
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this: it self-signs exactly as it always has.
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## Distributing the root
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The root **key** is a runtime file for the reason in
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[Constraints on the material](#constraints-on-the-material).
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The root **certificate** is a runtime file as a _consequence_ — it lives
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beside the key under `swarm.ca.stateDir` — and that has a cost worth
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naming, because it's subtle and it bites at a distance:
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> **Nothing whose trust store is assembled at build time can reference
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> the swarm root.** The derivation reads `security.pki.certificateFiles`
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> inside itself; the root doesn't exist there.
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Two consumers, and only one of them is fine:
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- **`hive-tls.nix` covers agents.** It folds the root into this hive's
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`trust-bundle.pem`, hive-c0re receives that path as
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`HIVE_TLS_CA_PATH`, and the meta-flake renderer embeds that one file
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next to every agent's flake. The bundle is the runtime-to-build-time
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bridge.
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- **The Matrix container crosses the same bridge**, via the shared
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`lib/hive-ca-trust.nix` helper that `hive-ci` and `hive-forge` already
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use: the bundle is bind-mounted read-only into the container, and a
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oneshot concatenates it with the system CAs before tuwunel starts.
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The consumption differs per runtime and is the part worth knowing.
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tuwunel links no openssl, which makes `SSL_CERT_FILE` look inapplicable
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— it isn't: its rustls-based TLS stack still resolves trust through the
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platform certificate store on Linux, and that store honors
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`SSL_CERT_FILE`, so the env var takes effect the same way it would for
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an OpenSSL-linked binary.
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> ⚠️ **Concatenate; never point `SSL_CERT_FILE` at the anchor alone.**
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> `openssl-probe` uses it _instead of_ the default store, so naming
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> just the bundle would drop every public CA and break federation with
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> the wider matrix network — a much bigger outage than the one being
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> fixed. The same caveat applies to `hive-forge` (Go) for the same
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> reason.
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To put the root on another host, copy the certificate to the same path
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there (`scp <stateDir>/root.pem <host>:<stateDir>/root.pem`). One anchor
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per host, not one per peer: a hive joining later needs no edit on the
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hives already running, which is the whole point of the hierarchy.
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