An unrelated Microsoft repository returned 403 during fresh-index admission and stopped a browser shard before any test could run. Load the hosted runner's existing Ubuntu Deb822 definition for browser packages, preserving its mirrors and signature policy. Fail when that definition is missing, unreadable or empty and keep strict index and archive hash checks.
Exercise the real apt parser, exclusion of unrelated feeds, missing definitions and incomplete index failures in private acquisition directories. Register the package helper and policy with their exact verification routes, and update the fixture helper's governance assertion to its scoped proof contract.
The retained PR2697 shard waited on apt indexes for the whole one-hour job without starting a test. Bound HTTP/HTTPS acquisition and retries, reject incomplete indexes, and cap only the browser setup phase at ten minutes in all three hosted journeys. Preserve the existing repositories, authentication, browser selections and test/verdict gates.
Contract-Neutral: Hosted CI dependency acquisition only; no product runtime, installer, release contract or browser-source change.
Change-source: pulse-maintainer
rcourtman