rig/drill/README.md
claude-bot-andresmgsl 5bcd8853d4 docs: the run is written down, and the doctrine stops claiming there is no instrument
drill/README.md is the repeatable procedure #107's second checkbox asks
for: prerequisites (the throwaway machine, the tagged key, the fork's
drill workflow, the pins), the invocation, what each leg asserts, where
the record lands. drills/README.md's harness disclaimer flips to point
at the instrument, its legs list and example record match what
drill.sh actually runs and emits, and CONTRIBUTING's drill sentence
names the script. Changelog entry under Unreleased.

(ceremony flow: issue #105)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-24 00:34:30 +00:00

4.6 KiB

The drill — running it

drill/drill.sh is the instrument; drills/ is the record it feeds (see drills/README.md for what a record means and how the three repos' drills relate). rig's drill asserts convergence: a machine reaches its role, idempotently. This file is the procedure — written down so a run is repeatable, not reconstructed from memory each release (#105, and #107's debt).

What you need

  • A throwaway Debian 13 machine you can format, reached as root. The drill hardens its sshd, renames it, joins it to a tailnet, and installs box/Incus, Coolify and a GitHub runner on it. It is not coming back. The machine is its own reset — there is no teardown script and no need for one.
  • The pinned candidate refs, both of them. --rig-ref and --box-ref are required; the harness refuses to run without them and refuses to continue if what installed disagrees with what was asked (INSTALLED_FROM, both trees). Until heavy-duty/rig#103 lands, both installers default to main when unpinned — which is exactly why the drill will not let a ref go unstated.
  • A single-use, tagged tailscale pre-auth key in TS_AUTHKEY (tag:local for the default staging-server role — bootstrap refuses tag:server outside the control-plane shapes).
  • A users file (--users) naming at least one operator — leg 1 asserts the accounts and keys actually converged.
  • For leg 3 (runner lifecycle): a fork to register against (--runner-repo you/rig) carrying a workflow_dispatch workflow — default name drill.yml — whose job has runs-on: [self-hosted, drill] and does something trivial (echo drilled). Tokens come from an authenticated gh, or from RUNNER_TOKEN / RUNNER_REMOVE_TOKEN. Without a fork the leg skips, loudly, into the record.
  • For leg 4 (coolify): a version pin, --coolify-version 4.1.2. No pin, no leg — rig's own coolify install refuses to default a version and so does its drill. The skip is recorded.
  • A run ID (--run-id) when this drill shares a substrate with box's or cast's — the shared ID is what lets the per-repo records be joined afterwards. Defaults to drill-<date>.

Running it

From a checkout of this repo on the throwaway machine (the record lands in the checkout's drills/):

TS_AUTHKEY=tskey-... bash drill/drill.sh \
  --rig-ref release/0.4.0 --box-ref release/0.10.0 \
  --users ./drill-users --run-id drill-2026-07-24-a \
  --coolify-version 4.1.2 --runner-repo you/rig --yes

It runs unattended from there. Legs execute as 1, 4, 2, 3 — Coolify's installer is what puts Docker on the box and the db leg needs a daemon — and the record lists them as they ran. A failing check never aborts the run (set -u, no -e: a failing check is data), and the summary counts passes, failures and skips separately.

What it asserts

  1. Convergence, and idempotence. rig bootstrap <role> --users … reaches the declared role, asserted on effective state — the marker, sshd -T, the granted tailnet tag, the operators' accounts and keys. Then bootstrap runs again, and the state captured before and after the re-run must diff empty. The diff is mechanical; "watched it not obviously break" is exactly what this leg exists to replace. Riding along, the --host yes assertions: the pinned box installed (INSTALLED_FROM matches --box-ref, fatal if not), box doctor passes. It stops there and says so in the output — the isolation boundary is box's drill's assertion, never rig's.
  2. dbtest/db-integration.sh from the installed tree: a real dump/restore round-trip. Its clean-skip contract (no Docker → loud skip, exit 0) survives into the record as a SKIP, never a pass.
  3. Runner lifecycle — register against the fork, dispatch the drill workflow and watch the runner take it, deregister, and assert the box's registration is actually gone.
  4. Coolify — installed at the pin, AUTOUPDATE=false landed in the effective .env, container running.

The record

The run always ends by writing drills/<version>.md (the version is the installed tree's own VERSION) — on failures too: a failed drill is a valid record; the gate wants evidence, not success. Skipped legs are named as not-run so the record can never read as a clean sweep. Commit the file on the release branch; the drill-recorded guard reads that file and nothing else.

The instrument's own honesty — the refusals, the skip accounting, the capture-and-diff, the emitter — is test/drill.sh's job, and CI runs it on every PR. The live four-leg run is a release's job, once per cycle.