elway's sudo upload did scp-as-user then `sudo mv`, and mv keeps the owner,
so every file it installed "as root" (systemd units, /etc configs, root-run
scripts) ended up owned by the SSH user. A sudoers drop-in installed that
way would be rejected by sudo outright.
elway:
- Sudo uploads now chown to root:root by default. Playbooks can override
with `upload.owner:` and ad-hoc runs with `--owner`. An owner is refused
on a non-sudo upload, and `--owner` outside an ad-hoc `--upload` is an
error rather than silently ignored.
- Ownership and mode are applied to the STAGED file, then a single mv
publishes it, so a failed chown can no longer leave the live path owned
by the SSH user. chown runs before chmod so setuid bits survive. A trap
removes the staged file on every exit path.
- A directory dest is refused before anything moves. mv would otherwise
drop the file inside the directory under a staging name.
- `mode` was spliced unquoted into the remote root shell line. It is now
validated as octal (^[0-7]{3,4}$) and shell-quoted, on both the sudo
and non-sudo paths.
- `mode` and `owner` must be quoted YAML strings. YAML 1.1 turns a bare
0644 into 420, a bare 1000:0 into 60000 and a bare yes into True, and
str() of each is a different value that looks valid. All 85 playbooks
already quote them.
- New preflight(): every step is resolved before any remote action. An
undefined var or a templated owner that resolves badly is now refused
up front, not after earlier steps have already changed the host.
scripts/fleet-ownership-audit.sh (new, read-only) finds files in root's
territory owned by a normal user. Tier A lists /etc, /usr/local, /root and
cron, judging symlinks by their target. Tier X covers files that root-run
units exec from /opt, /srv, /home or /volume1, reading drop-ins and quoted
paths. Tier B only summarises /opt app trees. A host that is unprivileged,
whose find fails, or whose run dies is reported INCOMPLETE (exit 5), never
clean. Completion is marked with a per-run nonce.
Verification: 24 unit tests in scripts/test_elway.py. Live checks on
esh-docker-vm: default lands root:root; the override lands infra-ops:adm at
4755 with setuid intact; a bad group fails with dest untouched and no
staging left; a directory dest is refused; a bad mode is refused before
any copy. Audit positive controls on nh3-dev (a drop-in-only root Exec, a
quoted path containing a space, a symlink to a user-owned target) were all
flagged; esh-docker-vm negative control was 0. Probes removed. Cross-model
bug-hunt (heid, Gróa arm + seat) findings folded.
Operator decision. paperless-ngx's database lives on esh-vm-db and is backed
up at the source by that host's fail-closed pg_dumpall. esh-docker-vm's
second copy had failed auth every night since 2026-04-24 behind a WARN. Its
`> paperless.pg_dump` redirect left a 0-byte file in every snapshot
(confirmed in snapshot 6ec9f74f), which looked like a dump but held nothing.
The block was the only consumer of /etc/restic/dbcreds.env, so the creds
loader is gone and the template dbcreds.env.example is deleted. The host
file was moved (not deleted) to /var/lib/restic/repair-20260923/.
Paperless's media volumes are still captured under /var/lib/docker/volumes.
Also fixes ownership. elway's sudo upload does scp-as-user then `sudo mv`,
so the hook deployed at 08:04 landed infra-ops:infra-ops even though root
executes it. Both esh-docker-vm playbooks now chown it back to root and
verify root:root 700.
Verified: the live hook hash matches canonical (e0d3ddcef1bddf43), and
the manual backup saved snapshot decfae71 with 3 staged dumps and no WARN
lines.
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