Two boxes cloned from one snapshot came up holding the SAME IP address —
10.87.0.128, on the same dnsmasq lease, matching to the second on the
lease timer. Incus does regenerate the MAC (they differed), but
/etc/machine-id rides along inside the disk image, and systemd derives
its DHCP client identifier from it. Same client-id, same lease.
This breaks the workflow claudebox exists for: log in once, snapshot,
clone forever. Every clone of a snapshot is, to the network, the same
machine as its source and as its siblings.
Truncating /etc/machine-id makes systemd mint a fresh one at next boot,
so the clone path now resets it and restarts before handing the box
over. Costs one reboot; the alternative is colliding boxes.
Found by the drill on a live host (#26) — and it also explains why the
sibling-isolation probe (#15 A3) could never work: it was aiming box A
at box A's own address.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>