Files
fips/packaging/aur/README.md
T
Johnathan Corgan 6a564e26ac Prepare the v0.5.0 release content
Everything the release needs except the version number, which stays at
0.5.0-dev until the tag.

The changelog entry covers only the work that is new on this line. The
point release's forty-six entries arrived under their own heading with the
forward merge and are left alone; the twenty that remained are regrouped by
topic and eight more added for changes no entry covered. Three of those
eight matter to someone upgrading. Five root modules and four re-exports
left the public library surface and Node::connections narrowed, none of it
recorded anywhere; the entry names what to use instead and distinguishes
the removed connection-phase enum from the Noise type of the same name,
which is a different type that still exists. Tracing targets moved, so an
existing RUST_LOG filter stops matching rather than erroring. And the
handshake resend interval key no longer governs the first resend, which is
now a constant, though it still governs later ones.

Seven more entries cover the work that landed after the first content pass
was written: the experimental native datagram API, the fipsctl probe
diagnostic, per-instance transport addressing, the app-owned UDP socket
seam, and the connect, disconnect and path-MTU fixes. The four bug fixes
among them all reach the deployed line, so the release notes no longer
claim this release carries exactly one fix for a shipped bug; it carries
four.

There is no security section, because after the split every security entry
belongs to the point release. The release notes say so plainly rather than
leaving a reader upgrading across both releases to conclude this one
carries no security work.

The notes are organized by audience, since the release spans OpenWrt
routers, embedders, FreeBSD, and the existing platforms, and a single list
serves none of them. The native datagram API is given a section of its own
rather than folded into the embedding seam: it is a client-facing API
rather than a way to host a node, and its one rule with no Berkeley-socket
counterpart, that the v1 wire carries no half-close, needs to be somewhere
a client author will read it. FreeBSD is advertised as supported on x86_64
only, stated wherever the platform appears. Android is advertised as an
embedding seam and not as a supported platform: a compile-gated library
surface with no artifact and no host application guide.

The configuration table rename is carried through every shipped file that
taught the old spelling: nine documentation files, the OpenWrt sample
config and a test generator, twenty-two sites in all. Guides written this
same cycle were among them, which is how the omission was found. The
documentation that arrived with the native API was checked for the same
omission and was already clean. The compatibility tests keep the old
spelling deliberately, since they exist to test the fold.

The changelog section is the fold of master's [Unreleased], not a snapshot
of it. An earlier version of this commit took a copy that then drifted, so
each section ended up holding a bullet the other did not and re-folding
them would have picked a winner silently. Both causes were fixed on master
instead — the NixOS module had never been recorded there, and the
pre-release batch of fixes was new — so [Unreleased] is a strict superset
and this is a copy rather than a merge. [0.5.0] carries all forty-six
bullets byte for byte, [Unreleased] is empty, and [0.4.2] is untouched,
checked by hashing it against master's copy.

The BLE work landed after the content pass and gets one summary entry in
the changelog and one section in the release notes rather than nine
bullets: the ble_available gate replacing target_os = "linux",
packet-boundary recovery for stream-oriented backends, peer recognition by
node identity instead of a rotating link address, the L2CAP PSM moving
into the backend seam and onto the advertisement, the embedder-supplied
Android radio, bounded probe retry, and inbound handshakes moved off the
accept loop.

The two release-notes copies no longer share their link paths. Relative
links resolve from one directory only, so the seven written for
docs/releases/ all 404ed from the root copy. The root copy now uses paths
from the repository root and the versioned copy keeps the ../ form; both
sets were resolved against the tree. The same two links are broken the
same way in the v0.4.0 through v0.4.2 notes, left as shipped history.

The contributor tallies are re-derived against maint..HEAD rather than
adjusted: twenty commits from outside the project and 171 from me, with
Arjen at fifteen and fr34aky at two. An earlier count of twelve and 138
was carried from a measurement taken three days before this content was
written, and the BLE branch widened the gap after it. Arjen's NixOS flake
module, the UDP sin6_scope_id fix and most of the BLE rework were
uncredited, as was fr34aky's L2CAP PSM seam. They want one last re-derive
at tag time if anything lands before the tag.

A sweep of all 99 tracked markdown files against the tree corrected
fifty-three of them. Four told the reader to run a build.sh that does not
exist; the only harness builder is testing/scripts/build.sh. The BLE build
prerequisites were described as optional on the strength of a probe that
build.rs does not perform, and bluez was named a build prerequisite when
libdbus-sys asks only for libdbus-1-dev and pkg-config and bluez is the
runtime daemon. Link cost is the primary sort key in next-hop ranking, not
reserved for future use; Ethernet runs on macOS as well as Linux; the BLE
MTU is the L2CAP CoC MTU rather than a negotiated ATT_MTU; effective
Ethernet MTU is 1497; the LAN discovery subsystem is src/mdns and eight
citations still named a src/discovery that never existed here. The
connectivity states in three tutorials were invented, and their jq filters
matched nothing including healthy peers. One command filtered on a literal
fd97: address prefix, which only the first byte of fixes, so it returned
empty for all but one reader in 256 and every later step using the
variable failed silently. transports.tor.advertise_on_nostr was
undocumented despite being validated against node.rendezvous.nostr.enabled.

The transport design document gains the BLE section it never had, written
from the source: the backend cascade and its compile_error tripwire, the
platform gate, the PSM advertisement wire layout and the byte budget that
forces a 16-bit service-data key, and the probe and admission bounds.

Three source files carried the same class of staleness and are corrected
with the documentation: the OpenWrt ipk usage line and Makefile error text
both named a packaging/openwrt that does not exist, and chaos.sh parsed
--subnet without listing it.

Folded in with the content commit, having been prepared alongside it:

The three GitHub Action pins that had gone stale. Every third-party
action is pinned to a commit SHA, nothing reports that a pin has aged,
and re-resolving all ten against their tags found dorny/test-reporter@v2,
taiki-e/install-action@v2 and vmactions/freebsd-vm@v1 had moved. The
three install-action@nextest references stay unpinned, since that action
reads the tool to install from the ref name. check-action-pins.sh passes
at 75 references and all nine workflow files parse.

The lockfile refresh, which is the mutating half of the dependency sweep.
Thirty-six packages move to their latest semver-compatible versions and
every one is transitive; nothing declared in Cargo.toml changes version.
No advisory forces any of them. It was taken before the validation
battery, because a gate run against a lockfile that later moves proves
nothing about what ships.

The sha2 0.10 to 0.11, hkdf 0.12 to 0.13 and bech32 0.11 to 0.12 majors,
three of the four deferred at v0.4.0 for change surface rather than
security. All three land with no source change. sha2 and hkdf must move
together, since both depend on digest 0.11, and neither changes an
algorithm. That matters because the chaining-key KDF in the Noise
handshake is built on Hkdf::<Sha256>, where an output change would be a
wire break rather than a compile error; no known-answer vectors exist for
that path, so the wire-compatibility gate is what covers it. secp256k1
0.31 is deliberately absent, since nostr's own requirement would leave
two copies of the ECC library in the tree.

The README support matrix, rebuilt as one feature table broken out by
Linux variety. A single Linux column hid that Debian, Ubuntu, Arch and
NixOS are one glibc build differing in packaging, that OpenWrt is musl
and drops BLE, and that Android is not a daemon platform. Transport rows
sort by how many platforms carry them. A Native API row reads its
platform set from the cfg gates. The installer row becomes a package
format row naming the artifact, and only the .deb is exercised per
release.

Four changelog and release-note gaps the BLE re-walk found: a Bluetooth
LE bullet stranded inside the released 0.4.2 section, a missing Fixed
entry for the scan and probe loop counting a pool-refused connection as
an established link, the unnamed embedder call that installs an
application-owned radio, and the fact that stopping the transport now
stops scanning as well as advertising.

Three release-document gaps found walking the unsurveyed commits: the UDP
reuse-flag fix stated in the direction opposite to the one it was made,
with the silent second-daemon bind it prevents left unsaid; the corrected
native-API socket paragraph carried into both release-note copies, which
still named SOCK_SEQPACKET on FreeBSD and two kernels where three are
handled; and the coordinate-cache hardening, which shipped with no text
anywhere despite adding four operator-visible status fields. That last
entry states plainly that the checks are mitigations and not a closure,
since the coordinate is still not authenticated.

Also folded in, the documentation pass that followed the content commit:

A stage-pipeline diagram for the probe, embedded in the fipsctl
reference under the five-stage list. It draws the five stages left to
right with each stage's failure reasons below it, and the bypass that
skips both lookup stages when the coordinates are cached or the target
is a direct peer. Its branches come from the probe state machine rather
than from the report, so the path stage is drawn as the one failure that
does not stop the probe.

A rewrite of the README's "What FIPS does" section. It now opens with
what a machine running FIPS gets, rather than with the two deployment
modes, and gives the self-organizing and permissionless property its own
paragraph since it holds for both modes.

A regrouping of the README's feature list into the mesh, getting traffic
onto it, and running a node, with a bullet added for the native datagram
API, which had none despite sitting in the support matrix. The Quick
start now leads with the released packages rather than a source build.
It also fixes a real defect: the package enables fips.service and
fips-dns.service and starts neither on a fresh install, so .fips name
resolution was silently dead until the next reboot and neither page said
to start the service.

A rewrite of the release notes. They opened with seven subsections of
upgrade caveats and reached the first feature two hundred lines in; they
now open with a summary of the release and elaborate below it in the
same order. Android is stated as supported through an embedded crate
rather than as a standalone daemon, consistently across all three
documents. The OpenWrt pair is corrected: it is 802.11s between routers
with FIPS supplying encryption, authentication and routing, plus a
convention of an open !FIPS SSID a client joins over WiFi, not meshing
over a router's own radios. The probe's path output is described as the
least-common-ancestor walk, which is the worst-case fallback route
rather than the route a packet takes. Detail that did not change what a
reader does was cut from the notes and kept in the changelog.
2026-08-30 10:42:59 +00:00

9.4 KiB

AUR Publication Guide for FIPS

This directory contains Arch Linux packaging files for two AUR packages:

  • fips -- release package, builds from a tagged GitHub tarball
  • fips-git -- development package, builds from latest git master

Overview

Files in This Directory

File Purpose
PKGBUILD Release package build script (builds from tagged tarball)
PKGBUILD-git Git development package build script (builds from latest master)
fips.install Pacman post-install/post-upgrade messaging
fips.sysusers sysusers.d fragment (creates fips system group)
fips.tmpfiles tmpfiles.d fragment (creates /run/fips/)
fips.service Symlink to ../debian/fips.service
fips-dns.service Symlink to ../debian/fips-dns.service
build-aur.sh Local fips-git build plus namcap validation (run by make aur)
patch-pkgbuild.sh Rewrites pkgver, pkgrel, conflicts, options, and b2sums in the PKGBUILD at publish time

Both PKGBUILDs reference files from packaging/debian/ (service files) and packaging/common/ (config files) at build time. These are pulled from the source tree during package(), not from this directory.

What Gets Installed

Both PKGBUILDs install the same payload, kept at parity with the Debian package:

  • Binaries: fips, fipsctl, fipstop, fips-gateway
  • Systemd units: fips.service, fips-dns.service, fips-gateway.service, fips-firewall.service
  • DNS helpers: /usr/lib/fips/fips-dns-setup, /usr/lib/fips/fips-dns-teardown
  • Config: /etc/fips/fips.yaml, /etc/fips/hosts, /etc/fips/fips.nft
  • sysusers/tmpfiles fragments for the fips group and /run/fips/

The fips.nft baseline is shipped as a conffile (listed in backup=()) so operator edits to the nftables ruleset survive package upgrades. fips-firewall.service is shipped disabled by default, matching the Debian package: operators opt in by enabling it explicitly.

Both PKGBUILDs opt out of makepkg's automatic *-debug split packages. The package metadata still conflicts with stale peer debug package names (fips-debug / fips-git-debug) so switching between release and development variants removes old debug-file owners cleanly.

Local Build and Validation

Build and validate the -git package locally using the Makefile target:

make -C packaging aur

This runs makepkg -sf followed by namcap on the resulting package.

For manual testing of individual steps:

# Build the -git package (uses local git clone, no network download needed)
cd packaging/aur
makepkg -sf -p PKGBUILD-git

# Lint the built package
namcap fips-git-*.pkg.tar.zst

# Lint the PKGBUILD itself
namcap PKGBUILD-git

The -git variant builds from the local git clone, so no network download is needed for the source. The release PKGBUILD requires a tagged release tarball on GitHub to build and cannot be tested without one.

Prerequisites for AUR Publication

1. AUR Account

Register at https://aur.archlinux.org/register/ using the maintainer email (jcorgan@corganlabs.com).

2. SSH Key

Generate a dedicated ed25519 key for AUR access:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/aur -C "jcorgan@corganlabs.com" -N ""

3. SSH Config

Add the following to ~/.ssh/config:

Host aur.archlinux.org
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/aur
    User aur

4. Register the Key with AUR

  1. Copy the public key contents:
    cat ~/.ssh/aur.pub
    
  2. Go to https://aur.archlinux.org -> My Account -> SSH Public Key
  3. Paste the public key and save

5. Test the Connection

ssh -T aur@aur.archlinux.org

This should print a welcome message or your username. If it hangs or returns "Permission denied", verify that the key was added correctly.

Initial Push -- fips-git Package

Follow these steps exactly. Each command is concrete and copy-pasteable.

Step 1: Clone the AUR Repo

Cloning an AUR repo that does not yet exist creates the package entry:

git clone ssh://aur@aur.archlinux.org/fips-git.git /tmp/aur-fips-git

If the package does not exist yet, this creates an empty repository.

Step 2: Copy Required Files

From the root of the fips source repository:

cp packaging/aur/PKGBUILD-git /tmp/aur-fips-git/PKGBUILD
cp packaging/aur/fips.install /tmp/aur-fips-git/
cp packaging/aur/fips.sysusers /tmp/aur-fips-git/
cp packaging/aur/fips.tmpfiles /tmp/aur-fips-git/

Only PKGBUILD, .SRCINFO, and files referenced in source=() or install= go into the AUR repo. Service files and config files are NOT copied -- they come from the source tree at build time via the source=() git clone.

Step 3: Generate .SRCINFO

This step is critical -- AUR requires .SRCINFO alongside every PKGBUILD:

cd /tmp/aur-fips-git
makepkg --printsrcinfo > .SRCINFO

Step 4: Commit and Push

cd /tmp/aur-fips-git
git add PKGBUILD .SRCINFO fips.install fips.sysusers fips.tmpfiles
git commit -m "Initial import of fips-git"
git push

Step 5: Verify

Visit https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/fips-git -- the package should appear within a few seconds of the push.

Initial Push -- fips Release Package

Same pattern as the -git package, but using the release PKGBUILD.

Step 1: Clone the AUR Repo

git clone ssh://aur@aur.archlinux.org/fips.git /tmp/aur-fips

Step 2: Copy Files

From the root of the fips source repository:

cp packaging/aur/PKGBUILD /tmp/aur-fips/PKGBUILD
cp packaging/aur/fips.install /tmp/aur-fips/
cp packaging/aur/fips.sysusers /tmp/aur-fips/
cp packaging/aur/fips.tmpfiles /tmp/aur-fips/

Step 3: Verify the Release PKGBUILD

Before pushing, ensure the PKGBUILD is correct for the current release:

  1. Verify pkgver matches the latest tagged release. The checked-in value is a placeholder; patch-pkgbuild.sh rewrites it at publish time
  2. If the tarball b2sum is a placeholder, download the tarball and compute:
    curl -sL https://github.com/jmcorgan/fips/archive/v<VERSION>.tar.gz | b2sum | cut -d' ' -f1
    
  3. Update the first entry in b2sums=() in the PKGBUILD with the real hash

Step 4: Generate .SRCINFO

cd /tmp/aur-fips
makepkg --printsrcinfo > .SRCINFO

Step 5: Commit and Push

cd /tmp/aur-fips
git add PKGBUILD .SRCINFO fips.install fips.sysusers fips.tmpfiles
git commit -m "Initial import of fips <VERSION>"
git push

Step 6: Verify

Visit https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/fips -- the package should appear.

Verification

After both packages are pushed, verify everything works end-to-end.

Search AUR

yay -Ss fips

Or visit https://aur.archlinux.org/?K=fips in a browser.

Install the Git Variant

yay -S fips-git

Verify the Installation

fips --version
fipsctl --version
fipstop --version
systemctl cat fips.service
cat /usr/lib/sysusers.d/fips.conf
cat /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/fips.conf

Test the Release Variant

On a separate machine or after removing fips-git:

yay -R fips-git
yay -S fips

Then run the same verification commands above.

GitHub Secrets for CI

AUR publication is automated: .github/workflows/aur-publish.yml pushes the release package, and aur-publish-git.yml pushes fips-git. The manual steps above are the fallback for when the workflow cannot be used. The automation needs a separate SSH key.

Step 1: Generate a CI-Specific Key

Generate a separate passphrase-less ed25519 key for CI. Do NOT reuse the personal key from the prerequisites section:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f /tmp/github-aur -C "github-actions-aur" -N ""

Step 2: Add the Public Key to AUR

AUR supports multiple SSH keys per account. Add the contents of /tmp/github-aur.pub to the AUR account alongside the personal key:

  1. Go to https://aur.archlinux.org -> My Account -> SSH Public Key
  2. Paste the new public key (you can have multiple keys, one per line)

Step 3: Add the Private Key to GitHub

  1. Go to https://github.com/jmcorgan/fips/settings/secrets/actions
  2. Create a new repository secret named AUR_SSH_PRIVATE_KEY
  3. Paste the contents of /tmp/github-aur (the private key file)

Step 4: Clean Up Local Key Files

rm /tmp/github-aur /tmp/github-aur.pub

Updating Packages

fips-git (Development)

AUR convention is to only push when the PKGBUILD itself changes (new dependencies, build flags, source URL changes, etc.). Users get new builds automatically via:

yay -Syu --devel

Do NOT push pkgver-only bumps to the AUR -- the pkgver() function handles versioning at build time.

fips (Release)

Push an update when a new version is tagged. The steps are:

  1. Update pkgver in the PKGBUILD to the new version
  2. Reset pkgrel to 1
  3. Recompute the tarball b2sum:
    curl -sL https://github.com/jmcorgan/fips/archive/v<NEW_VERSION>.tar.gz | b2sum | cut -d' ' -f1
    
  4. Update b2sums=() with the new hash
  5. Regenerate .SRCINFO:
    makepkg --printsrcinfo > .SRCINFO
    
  6. Commit and push both PKGBUILD and .SRCINFO

The AUR Publish workflow performs these steps automatically on a new GitHub release; run them by hand only as a fallback.

For a packaging-only republish of an existing release tag, run the AUR Publish workflow manually with the existing tag and incremented pkgrel (for example, tag=v0.3.0, pkgrel=2). This keeps the upstream source tarball unchanged while forcing AUR helpers to rebuild with the corrected package metadata.