Files
diskless-workstation/files/agent
Audiobuzz 4ca0b6dd06 agent: read chrony status from tracking.log instead of the command socket
Bench on comet-beacon-54 proved every command-socket route is blocked for the
hardened agent: chronyd's unix socket is owner-write-only (0755, so even a
chrony-group member can't connect), and STIG closes the UDP command port
(cmdport 0). Rather than re-open a port or expose chrony's privileged socket,
enable chronyd's tracking log and have the agent READ it — no port, no socket,
no group, no SELinux domain transition, full hardening intact.

- chrony.conf: enable 'log tracking' (idempotent) so chronyd appends
  source/stratum/offset to /var/log/chrony/tracking.log. Write volume is a ~130B
  line per clock update (backing off to ~maxpoll when stable) and capped by the
  chrony RPM's logrotate — negligible on the RAM overlay. cmdport 0 stays, so no
  STIG deviation.
- agent: chronyTracking() now reads the last data line of tracking.log via
  parseTrackingLog() (source f[2], stratum f[3], offset f[6], leap/sync f[7]);
  replaces the chronyc exec + parseChrony. Unit test swapped accordingly.
- revert the two abandoned approaches: drop the bindcmdaddress line (394ad10)
  and the fleet_agent_chronyc SELinux nnp_transition module + provisioner block
  (e6fd4a2, .te deleted) — no chronyc exec means no transition to allow. Removed
  stig-deviations #16 and #17 (both waivers no longer needed).

Needs a workstation image rebuild + reboot. BENCH-VERIFY: tracking.log is
world-readable so the DynamicUser agent can read it; under enforcing
unconfined_service_t can read chronyd_var_log_t (add a minimal file-read allow
if denied); and the offset sign matches chronyc on a synced host.
2026-07-10 09:36:37 +00:00
..

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)

  1. Reuses the TPM identity for mTLS. Loads the signing key at the persistent handle (0x81000100) as a crypto.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).
  2. Opens the long-lived Session bidi stream (host dials out; no inbound host port — works across the OPNsense L3 hop from the host VLAN to the mgmt plane).
  3. Sends Hello (image version, kernel, kiosk URL, root hash, starship name — the fleet-generic facts, pulled from fleet-hostapi on 127.0.0.1:9099).
  4. Sends a HealthSnapshot every FLEET_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).
  5. Receives DesiredState/Command and LOGS them. This build does not act on them. The reconcile actuators (apply kiosk URL, reboot, drain) are a deliberate follow-up (see docs/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 ./... )