cli: serving is an explicit verb; no arguments prints usage
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Running an unfamiliar binary by name should tell you what it does, not bind a
dozen ports and start answering the internet. --serve (or --daemon) now does
that, and a bare invocation prints usage and exits 2 - non-zero on purpose, so a
service manager sees a failure rather than concluding the server ran and
finished cleanly.

The hazard this creates is worth spelling out, because it bites once and
silently: three places started the binary with no arguments - the systemd unit,
the unit template, and the Dockerfile - and --self-update replaces the binary
but never the unit. A routine update would therefore leave a service that cannot
start, discovered whenever the host next rebooted.

So the updater repairs it: after replacing the binary it appends --serve to an
ExecStart that has no flags, but only in a unit this program wrote (identified
by its description). Editing an operator's hand-written unit would be overreach;
leaving ours broken would be negligence.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
mrambossek
2026-08-01 17:42:20 +02:00
co-authored by Claude Fable 5
parent 80d2092f1b
commit 3cdbccee18
5 changed files with 99 additions and 2 deletions
+40 -1
View File
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@ import (
"os/exec"
"path/filepath"
"runtime"
"strings"
)
const (
@@ -29,7 +30,7 @@ Wants=network-online.target
[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=%s
ExecStart=%s --serve
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5
StateDirectory=echolot-server
@@ -144,3 +145,41 @@ func UninstallSystemd() error {
fmt.Println("removed echolot-server units (state dir and env file left in place)")
return nil
}
// RepairExecStart brings an already-installed unit up to date with the current invocation.
//
// Serving became an explicit verb (--serve), which means every unit written before that change
// would start the binary with no arguments — and the binary now answers that with usage and a
// non-zero exit. A self-update replaces the binary but never the unit, so without this a routine
// update would leave a service that cannot start, discovered whenever the host next reboots.
//
// Only a unit this program wrote is touched, identified by its description line. Editing an
// operator's hand-written unit would be overreach; leaving ours broken would be negligence.
func RepairExecStart() (repaired bool, err error) {
b, err := os.ReadFile(unitPath)
if err != nil {
return false, nil // no unit installed: nothing to repair, and not an error
}
text := string(b)
if !strings.Contains(text, "Echolot probe server") {
return false, nil // somebody else's unit
}
lines := strings.Split(text, "\n")
changed := false
for i, ln := range lines {
t := strings.TrimSpace(ln)
// Only the serving unit's ExecStart; the timer's own line already carries its verb.
if strings.HasPrefix(t, "ExecStart=") && !strings.Contains(t, "--") {
lines[i] = ln + " --serve"
changed = true
}
}
if !changed {
return false, nil
}
if err := os.WriteFile(unitPath, []byte(strings.Join(lines, "\n")), 0o644); err != nil {
return false, fmt.Errorf("updating %s: %w", unitPath, err)
}
_ = exec.Command("systemctl", "daemon-reload").Run()
return true, nil
}