Resolves the explicit "Known follow-up" left by commit 2f8ceeab9 and
the resulting CI failures in tests/docker/test_dashboard.py and
tests/docker/test_s6_profile_gateway_integration.py.
The product gap
---------------
Every hermes runtime operation inside the container runs as the
hermes user (UID 10000) via s6-setuidgid. But s6-supervise — spawned
by s6-svscan running as PID 1 — creates each service's supervise/
and top-level event/ directories with mode 0700 owned by its
effective UID (root). That left every s6-svc / s6-svstat / s6-svwait
call from hermes hitting EACCES on the supervise/control FIFO and
supervise/status — i.e. the entire S6ServiceManager lifecycle
(register, start, stop, unregister) was inert in production.
The 2f8ceeab9 commit message called this out and deferred the fix.
The audit changes that landed alongside it (defaulting docker_exec
to -u hermes) made the integration tests reproduce the bug
deterministically; the fix below resolves it.
The fix: pre-create the supervise/ skeleton hermes-owned
----------------------------------------------------------
Reading s6's source (src/supervision/s6-supervise.c::trymkdir +
control_init), the mkdir and mkfifo calls that build the supervise
tree are EEXIST-safe: if the directory or FIFO is already present,
s6-supervise reuses it and skips the chown/chmod fix-up that would
normally make event/ 03730 root:root. So if we lay the skeleton
down with hermes ownership before triggering s6-svscanctl -a,
s6-supervise inherits our layout and never touches it. The
death_tally / lock / status regular files written later by
s6-supervise (still as root) land mode 0644 — world-readable —
which is all s6-svstat needs.
New module-level helper _seed_supervise_skeleton(svc_dir) in
hermes_cli/service_manager.py lays down:
svc_dir/event/ hermes:hermes 03730
svc_dir/supervise/ hermes:hermes 0755
svc_dir/supervise/event/ hermes:hermes 03730
svc_dir/supervise/control hermes:hermes 0660 (FIFO)
svc_dir/log/event/ hermes:hermes 03730 (if log/ present)
svc_dir/log/supervise/ hermes:hermes 0755
svc_dir/log/supervise/event/ hermes:hermes 03730
svc_dir/log/supervise/control hermes:hermes 0660 (FIFO)
The log/ branch matters because the logger is a second
s6-supervise instance — without it, unregister rmtree races on
the logger's root-owned supervise dir even after the parent
slot's supervise/ is hermes-owned. The helper is idempotent and
swallows PermissionError on chown so it works equally well when
called from root (cont-init.d) or hermes (runtime register).
Wiring
------
1. S6ServiceManager.register_profile_gateway calls
_seed_supervise_skeleton(tmp_dir) just before publishing the
slot via Path.replace. Runtime-registered profile gateways are
set up by hermes.
2. container_boot._register_service does the same in the cont-init.d
reconciliation path so boot-time-restored profile slots inherit
the same layout.
3. New cont-init.d/015-supervise-perms script chowns the supervise/
and event/ trees for STATIC s6-rc services (dashboard,
main-hermes). These are spawned by s6-rc before cont-init.d
gets to run, so the EEXIST-trick doesn't apply; we chown the
already-existing tree instead. s6-supervise keeps using the
same files; it never re-asserts ownership on a running service.
The script skips s6-overlay internal services (s6rc-*,
s6-linux-*) so the supervision tree itself stays root-only.
015- slot is intentional: lex-sorts between 01-hermes-setup
and 02-reconcile-profiles in the container's C-locale, so
the chown finishes before the reconciler walks the scandir.
Unregister teardown reordering
------------------------------
S6ServiceManager.unregister_profile_gateway now fires
s6-svscanctl -an BEFORE rmtree (with a 200ms grace), so
s6-svscan reaps the supervise child and releases its file
handles on supervise/lock + supervise/status before we try to
remove the directory. Previously rmtree raced s6-supervise on a
set of files inside the supervise dir, and even with the parent
supervise/ now hermes-owned, the contained files (death_tally,
lock, status, written by root) could still be in use.
Dashboard down-state redesign
-----------------------------
The original PR #30136 review fix wrote a 'down' marker file
into /run/service/dashboard/ via cont-init.d/03-dashboard-toggle.
That approach was broken in two ways:
(a) /run/service/dashboard is a symlink to a TRANSIENT
/run/s6-rc:s6-rc-init:<tmpdir>/ directory while s6-rc is
mid-transaction; the touch landed in a soon-to-be-discarded
tmp.
(b) Even when written to the final /run/s6-rc/servicedirs/
location, the 'down' file is only consulted by s6-supervise
at slot startup. s6-rc's user-bundle explicitly transitions
'dashboard' to 'up' on every boot, overriding any down
marker.
The right fix is the canonical s6 pattern: when HERMES_DASHBOARD
is unset, the dashboard run script exits 0 and a companion
finish script exits 125. Per s6-supervise(8), exit code 125 from
the finish script is the 'permanent failure, do not restart'
marker — equivalent to s6-svc -O. The slot reports as 'down' to
s6-svstat, matching the reality that no dashboard process is
running. When HERMES_DASHBOARD IS truthy, finish exits 0 and
restart-on-crash semantics apply.
03-dashboard-toggle is removed (its function is now subsumed by
the run/finish pair).
Tests
-----
Adds four unit tests for _seed_supervise_skeleton covering the
produced layout, the log/ subservice case, the skip-when-no-log
case, and idempotency. The live-container verification continues
to live in tests/docker/test_s6_profile_gateway_integration.py and
tests/docker/test_dashboard.py — both now pass against the
rebuilt image.
References
----------
* Skarnet skaware mailing list 2020-02-02 (Laurent Bercot
+ Guillermo Diaz Hartusch) on unprivileged s6 tool semantics:
http://skarnet.org/lists/skaware/1424.html
* just-containers/s6-overlay#130 — same EEXIST-preseed pattern,
community-validated 2016 onward
* https://skarnet.org/software/s6/servicedir.html — exit-code 125
semantics in finish scripts
(cherry picked from commit c41f908ad4)
BREAKING CHANGE: the container ENTRYPOINT is now /init (s6-overlay)
instead of /usr/bin/tini. Main hermes runs as the container CMD with
TTY inherited (preserving --tui), dashboard runs as a supervised s6-rc
service (HERMES_DASHBOARD=1 starts it; crashes auto-restart), and the
ground is laid for per-profile gateway supervision (Phase 3+4).
All five pre-s6 docker run invocation patterns continue to work
identically — verified by the Phase 0 docker harness:
docker run <image> → `hermes` with no args
docker run <image> chat -q "..." → `hermes chat -q ...` passthrough
docker run <image> sleep infinity → `sleep infinity` direct
docker run <image> bash → interactive bash
docker run -it <image> --tui → interactive Ink TUI
Phase 2 harness result: 12 passed, 2 xfailed (Phase 4 target). Hadolint
+ shellcheck pass cleanly.
Architecture pivot from plan v3 (documented in main-hermes/run header):
the plan called for main hermes to be an s6-supervised service, but
two real s6-overlay v3 mechanics blocked that — cont-init.d scripts
receive no arguments (CMD args are not visible to stage2-hook), and
`/run/s6/basedir/bin/halt` after writing the exit code did not
propagate the desired exit code (container exits 143). We use the
s6-overlay-native CMD pattern instead: main-wrapper.sh is the
container's main program (ENTRYPOINT prepends it so leading-dash
args like --version aren't intercepted by /init), exec's the final
program with stdin/stdout/stderr inherited, and the program's exit
code becomes the container exit code. main-hermes is now a no-op
`sleep infinity` slot kept for future supervised-gateway-container
modes. This trades "supervised restart of main hermes" for arg-
parity with the pre-s6 contract — main hermes was already unsupervised
under tini, so we lose nothing functional. Dashboard supervision is
the only new guarantee added by this phase.
Files added:
docker/main-wrapper.sh # arg routing + s6-setuidgid drop
docker/stage2-hook.sh # gosu-equivalent + chown + seed
docker/s6-rc.d/main-hermes/{type,run,dependencies.d/base}
docker/s6-rc.d/dashboard/{type,run,dependencies.d/base}
docker/s6-rc.d/user/contents.d/{main-hermes,dashboard}
Files changed:
Dockerfile: tini → s6-overlay install + ENTRYPOINT flip + service wiring
docker/entrypoint.sh: thin shim to stage2-hook.sh for back-compat
tests/docker/test_dashboard.py: add test_dashboard_restarts_after_crash
Refs: docs/plans/2026-05-07-s6-overlay-dynamic-subagent-gateways.md
Ben