thermograph/docs/onboarding/08-infra-secrets.md

8. Infra and secrets

infra/ owns how and where the already-built images run. It never builds app source. Hosts' /opt/thermograph is a checkout of this whole monorepo.

Read infra/CLAUDE.md alongside this.

The machines

Host	Public	Mesh	Orchestrator	Login
prod	169.58.46.181 / thermograph.org	10.10.0.1	Docker Swarm	agent, passwordless sudo
beta	75.119.132.91 / beta.thermograph.org	10.10.0.2	compose	agent, passwordless sudo
desktop	—	10.10.0.3	compose (LAN dev)	it's your box

ssh -i ~/.ssh/thermograph_agent_ed25519 agent@169.58.46.181   # prod
ssh -i ~/.ssh/thermograph_agent_ed25519 agent@75.119.132.91   # beta

Beta also hosts Forgejo (git + CI + registry) and Grafana + Loki, which is why beta is guarded as strictly as prod: a destructive command there takes out git, CI and the registry at once. The LAN dev box is deliberately unguarded.

Every root-effective command on the VPSes is logged by auditd (ausearch -k agentcmd). That's a feature — fixes are attributable.

Prefer Centralis for routine work (run_on_host, fleet_status, deployed_version) over raw SSH.

The two orchestrators

Which path a host takes is decided by /etc/thermograph/deploy-mode: the string stack makes deploy.sh exec deploy/stack/deploy-stack.sh; anything else is compose. The workflows never need to know which mode a host runs.

	compose (beta, LAN dev)	Swarm (prod)
File	infra/docker-compose.yml	infra/deploy/stack/thermograph-stack.yml
Services	db, backend, lake, daemon, frontend	db, web, worker, lake, daemon, frontend, autoscaler, autoscaler-lake
Rolling	up -d --no-deps <targets>	start-first, health-gated, auto-rollback
Tag file	deploy/.image-tags.env	deploy/.stack-image-tags.env

Note prod splits backend into web and worker (the THERMOGRAPH_ROLE split from 04); compose runs one backend service in role all.

STACK_TEST=1 rehearses the entire Swarm deploy under stack name thermograph-test on throwaway volumes and ports 18137/18080. Leftover thermograph-test_* containers in logs are rehearsal residue — ignore them.

The volume/project-name coupling

Compose creates thermograph_pgdata / _appdata / _applogs; the Swarm stack declares those exact names as external: true at the same mount paths. That coupling is why name: thermograph is pinned in the compose file — running compose from infra/ without it derives project infra, silently creating a whole new stack with empty volumes beside the running one. deploy-dev.sh exports COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME=thermograph-dev (env wins over the file key) to keep LAN dev separate on purpose. Keep both halves.

deploy/deploy.sh — read this before you touch a deploy

Single entry point for beta and prod. Contract:

SERVICE=backend  BACKEND_IMAGE_TAG=sha-<12hex>  /opt/thermograph/infra/deploy/deploy.sh
SERVICE=frontend FRONTEND_IMAGE_TAG=sha-<12hex> /opt/thermograph/infra/deploy/deploy.sh
SERVICE=all BACKEND_IMAGE_TAG=sha-<a> FRONTEND_IMAGE_TAG=sha-<b> …/deploy.sh

What it does, in order, and why each step is the way it is:

1. flock on deploy/.deploy.lock, with a self re-exec so the lock spans the whole run. Backend and frontend deploys can fire for the same push seconds apart and both SSH into one checkout; concurrent runs race the git reset, the compose project and the tag file. -w 600 bounds the wait.
2. Render secrets from the SOPS vault into /etc/thermograph.env, then source it, so a by-hand run interpolates the same as the systemd unit does. Guarded on the helper's existence so the very deploy that introduces render-secrets.sh is safe.
3. git reset --hard origin/$BRANCH on the checkout root (BRANCH defaults to main). ⚠️ Uncommitted edits in /opt/thermograph evaporate here. The one exception is deploy/.image-tags.env, untracked on purpose.
4. Read .image-tags.env so a single-service roll re-renders compose with both services' real tags and never accidentally recreates or downgrades the sibling.
5. Registry login only if REGISTRY_TOKEN is set. The CI paths don't pass one — the host is already docker logined — and an unconditional login with an empty token would abort under set -e.
6. Pull, with a bounded ~5-minute retry. build-push.yml is a separate workflow triggered by the same push, and Forgejo's needs: only orders jobs within one file. A deploy racing ahead of its build and failing "not found" is confirmed-live behaviour; the retry covers a normal build and still fails loudly on a genuine problem.
7. Daemon capability probe. Infra tracks main while image tags are env-staged, so a host can legitimately be asked to roll a backend image older than the compose file — one built before the daemon binary existed. The script docker runs the image to test for /usr/local/bin/thermograph-daemon and drops daemon from this run if it's absent, rather than leaving a container crash-looping on a missing binary.
8. Roll. TARGETS are backend → (backend, lake, daemon), frontend → (frontend), all → everything. daemon and lake ride with backend and are never targets on their own — all three run the same image at the same tag, and rolling one without the others is exactly the version skew the /internal/* contract has no negotiation for. Single-service rolls use --no-deps; a full all uses --remove-orphans (a renamed-away service's old container would otherwise squat its port — confirmed live).
9. Write .image-tags.env after up, so a failed pull never records a tag that isn't running.
10. Health check (backend 8137, frontend 8080), then detached city warming.

Rollback

Rollback is redeploying the previous image tag. But do not treat image retention as a rollback guarantee: both deploy.sh and deploy-stack.sh end by deleting images outside the running pair. On beta that succeeds, so beta typically holds no local rollback target at all; on prod it usually fails only because Swarm's stopped task containers still hold references, which is why prod keeps a handful. Verify the target tag is actually present before promising a rollback — Centralis's rollback_to(dry_run: true) checks both host and registry.

docker system prune -a on a live box is forbidden for the same reason. docker image prune -f (dangling only) is the safe form.

Secrets — the SOPS + age vault

The single source of truth is infra/deploy/secrets/*.yaml, committed encrypted (values only — keys stay readable so diffs mean something) and rendered into /etc/thermograph.env at deploy time by deploy/render-secrets.sh.

Cycling a key is: edit → commit → deploy. No SSH, no hand-edited root file, no per-host duplication.

File	Holds
common.yaml	the 16 values identical on prod and beta — VAPID keypair, metrics token, IndexNow key, REGISTRY_TOKEN, S3 endpoint/bucket and both S3 keypairs, plus shared non-secret config
prod.yaml	prod's own — the three held-back credentials, sizing, THERMOGRAPH_BASE_URL, Discord + mail credentials that exist nowhere else
beta.yaml	beta's own — the three held-back credentials, sizing, base URL
dev.yaml	the LAN box's own, self-contained, 12 values, no production credential
centralis.prod.yaml	Centralis's nine variables → /etc/centralis.env, its own renderer
example.yaml	format reference / CI fixture (fake values)
../../.sops.yaml	which age recipients files encrypt to (plaintext config)

The renderer concatenates common.yaml then <env>.yaml, so a host value wins (last occurrence of a duplicate key). <env> comes from /etc/thermograph/secrets-env on the box.

Two design decisions worth understanding

Three credentials are deliberately not in common.yaml — POSTGRES_PASSWORD, THERMOGRAPH_AUTH_SECRET, THERMOGRAPH_DATABASE_URL. They hold identical values on prod and beta today, so by the mechanical rule they belong there. They're kept per-host anyway because these are the credentials that let one environment act as another: with them, a foothold on beta (the more exposed box — public Forgejo and Grafana) is a foothold on prod's database and prod's session signing. They match because beta was seeded from prod, not because the two are meant to be one system. Keeping them per-host costs one extra line and buys the ability to diverge.

dev renders dev.yaml alone — deploy-dev.sh exports THERMOGRAPH_SECRETS_SKIP_COMMON=1. Eleven of common.yaml's sixteen values are live production credentials, including a read-write object-storage keypair on the bucket that also holds prod's database backups, and the VAPID private key that signs push to real subscribers. The render is plaintext concatenation, so layering it would put all of those into every container in the dev stack — on the operator's desktop, which is also the CI runner whose docker-labelled jobs get the host socket, running unreviewed dev code. An override in dev.yaml wouldn't help: last-wins governs consumers, but the production value is still physically a line in the file.

Dev works fine without them: no S3 keys means the lake service answers 503 and history falls through to the Open-Meteo archive (an accelerator, never a dependency); VAPID and IndexNow both self-generate and persist to the appdata volume; with no metrics token /api/v2/metrics is direct-loopback-only, which is right on a LAN box. One common.yaml value is simply wrong for dev — THERMOGRAPH_COOKIE_SECURE=1 silently breaks login over plain HTTP.

Working with the vault

sops edit infra/deploy/secrets/beta.yaml     # never a plain editor
infra/deploy/secrets/dry-run-render.sh       # preview a render

• Never hand-edit /etc/thermograph.env — it's a rendered artifact, overwritten on the next deploy.
• Never paste a plaintext secret onto a box.
• secrets-guard CI rejects a plaintext commit; the repo's secrets-guard.sh hook blocks a direct Write/Edit to those files locally.
• deploy/secrets/seed-from-live.sh reads production secrets and is not for an agent to run.
• The key-gaps skill audits which keys are missing or drifting across environments. It reads key names only, never values.

There's a cautionary tale in deploy/secrets/README.md worth reading: Centralis was hand-configured until a hand-edit wrote CENTRALIS_TOKENS as bare JSON into a file that gets sourced, bash stripped the quotes, and Centralis — correctly failing closed on malformed JSON — dropped to a single identity. Nothing logged an error. It looked exactly like the file had never been written. That's why centralis.prod.yaml exists: the only durable fix was a human stops writing the file.

Terraform

infra/terraform/ provisions and configures hosts, SSH-driven.

Never run terraform apply casually. No tfstate is persisted anywhere, so an apply would attempt full re-provisioning of live hosts. Terraform here is executable documentation until state is bootstrapped.

Ops query tooling

Read-only, uniform across environments:

infra/ops/dbq.sh dev  "select count(*) from climate_history"
infra/ops/dbq.sh prod -tA -c "select max(date) from climate_history"
infra/ops/iceberg.sh prod -c "select count(*) from era5_daily"

Both exec into the container. No database is exposed over TCP — each listens only on its private docker network, and prod's is a Swarm overlay the prod host itself cannot route to, so ssh -L works for beta and is impossible for prod. Exec works identically everywhere with no ports, no tunnels, no infra changes. The prod container name is a Swarm task name that changes on every redeploy, so it's resolved at call time via docker ps --filter name=, never hardcoded.

Queries connect as thermograph_ro — NOSUPERUSER, granted only pg_read_all_data. Read-only is enforced by Postgres, not by convention:

$ infra/ops/dbq.sh prod -c "create table t(i int)"
ERROR:  permission denied for schema public

Centralis's sql_query does the same thing with the same role. write: true escalates to the app's superuser and takes effect immediately with no confirmation — on prod, know what you are doing.

Backups

The nightly ops-cron.yml pg_dump into agent@prod:~/thermograph-backups/ is it. Known gaps, stated plainly: a single copy on the same box as the database, no offsite yet, and restores must handle TimescaleDB's continuous_agg circular-FK warning (--disable-triggers). The backups/ prefix in the object-storage bucket belongs to those jobs — don't write outside the lake's own prefix.

Next: Observability.