Audiobuzz
394ad10824
Root cause of the blank chrony fields (found on comet-beacon-54): chrony 4.x (RHEL 9) defaults its command interface to the UNIX socket only (/run/chrony/chronyd.sock), usable by root or the chrony group with a writable /run/chrony. The fleet-agent unit is hardened — DynamicUser (group tss, not chrony) + ProtectSystem=strict (/run read-only) — so it cannot open the unix socket nor create chronyc's reply socket. Bench proof: normal-user 'chronyc tracking' -> 506 Cannot talk to daemon; only sudo worked; 'chronyc -h 127.0.0.1' failed and ss showed no UDP :323. So the probe always failed and every chrony_* field stayed empty. SELinux permissive did NOT help — it was never (only) an SELinux problem; the nnp_transition module (prev commit) is still needed for the enforcing exec transition. Fix: bind chronyd's command socket on 127.0.0.1 (bindcmdaddress in chrony.conf, idempotent in the 2c provisioner) and point the probe at it (chronyc -n -h 127.0.0.1 tracking). UDP needs no fs write or group and rides the unit's already-allowed AF_INET. Loopback + monitoring-only (state changes still need the root unix socket), so exposure is minimal. Rejected the unix-socket route (chrony group + ReadWritePaths=/run/chrony) because /run/chrony is 0750 (group has no write). Documented in docs/stig-deviations.md #17; .te bench note updated for the enforcing UDP path. Needs a workstation image rebuild + reboot.
fleet-agent — on-host control-plane client (telemetry v1)
The workstation-side half of the fleet management plane. It dials the
fleet-manager agent plane, identifies with the host's TPM, and streams
health telemetry up. It is the client peer of the server hub in
serving/fleet-manager/ (agent.go + proto/fleet_agent.proto).
Baked into the immutable verity image, so — like fleet-hostapi and fleet-enrol
— it is a static, reproducible, CGO_ENABLED=0 Go binary built out of the
build VM by CI (deps proxy-fetched, go.sum-pinned) and file-provisioned in.
What it does (v1 — telemetry only)
- Reuses the TPM identity for mTLS. Loads the signing key at the persistent
handle (
0x81000100) as acrypto.Signer(tpmkey.LoadSigner— the private key never leaves the TPM) and the enrolment cert from NV (0x01800100), and presents them as the mTLS client cert. The manager verifies the chain to the fleet CA and derives the cert serial = inventory key — a host can only ever report as itself (agent.go:peerSerial). - Opens the long-lived
Sessionbidi stream (host dials out; no inbound host port — works across the OPNsense L3 hop from the host VLAN to the mgmt plane). - Sends
Hello(image version, kernel, kiosk URL, root hash, starship name — the fleet-generic facts, pulled fromfleet-hostapion127.0.0.1:9099). - Sends a
HealthSnapshoteveryFLEET_AGENT_INTERVAL— load/cpu/temp/mem/ tmpfs, nvme-root, 802.1X-macsec, selinux, chrony, kiosk-active — probed read-only from/proc+/sys(each probe degrades gracefully; a failure never kills the stream). - Receives
DesiredState/Commandand LOGS them. This build does not act on them. The reconcile actuators (apply kiosk URL, reboot, drain) are a deliberate follow-up (seedocs/TODO.md#14) — the receive path is wired now so adding them needs no protocol change.
A dropped stream is retried with jittered backoff; the manager treats stream loss as the host going offline.
Prerequisite: the host must already be enrolled
The manager rejects the stream (PermissionDenied) until an inventory record
exists for the host's cert serial — that record is born when an admin approves
the host's TPM enrolment (fleet-enrol → enrol-broker → manager). Enrolment
precedes the agent; this ordering is expected.
Config (/etc/fleet-agent/agent.env)
All values are fleet-generic (invariant #1). See the file for the full list:
FLEET_AGENT_MANAGER (manager host:port), FLEET_AGENT_CA (fleet root, reused
from /etc/dot1x/radius-ca.pem), FLEET_AGENT_HANDLE / FLEET_AGENT_NVINDEX (TPM
identity, mirror rd.dot1x.*), FLEET_AGENT_INTERVAL, FLEET_AGENT_HOSTAPI.
Layout
| file | purpose |
|---|---|
main.go |
config, connect loop (jittered backoff), Session send/recv |
identity.go |
TPM-backed mTLS client cert + fleet-CA-verifying tls.Config |
snapshot.go |
read-only /proc+/sys health probes + hostapi facts fetch |
tpmkey/ |
copy of files/enrol/tpmkey + read-only LoadSigner (see its header) |
proto/ |
copy of the generated fleet.agent.v1 package (one .proto contract, two peers) |
fleet-agent.service |
hardened unit (tss group for the TPM, INET egress) |
Build / test
cd files/agent
CGO_ENABLED=0 go build -trimpath -buildvcs=false -ldflags '-s -w -buildid=' -o bin/fleet-agent .
go test ./...
# TPM handshake end-to-end (go-tpm software simulator, CGO — isolated module):
( cd simtest && CGO_ENABLED=1 go test ./... )