Production telemetry (7d, 2026-07-17) shows a persistent tail of live
installs on 6.0.0-rc.x and 6.0.3/6.0.4 while 6.0.5 has been stable since
2026-07-09. Root cause for the reachable stranding class: release
selection trusted GitHub's created_at ordering, and this repo interleaves
v5-line maintenance releases with v6 releases (v5.1.36 was created the
day before v6.0.5). Whenever a v5.1.x release is the most recently
created stable:
- stable channel (getLatestReleaseForChannel) returned the first
non-prerelease in list order -> "no update" for every v6 install
until the next v6 release ships
- the RSS rate-limit fallback returned the first feed entry matching the
channel, same failure, both channels
- the unattended updater trusted /releases/latest, which GitHub defines
as most-recently-created stable -> timer no-ops in the same window
All three now select the highest eligible version: the API path tracks
newest stable + newest prerelease in one pass (prerelease = GitHub flag
OR tag shape), the feed fallback picks the max matching the channel, and
pulse-auto-update.sh scans /releases pairing each tag with its own
draft/prerelease flags before the fail-closed shape filter, keeping
/releases/latest as fallback. helm-chart-* tags fail semver parsing and
are dropped everywhere.
Verified not broken (pinned by new tests): rc-channel installs are
offered the newer stable (6.0.0-rc.6 -> 6.0.5) and move onto the next rc
line when one opens (-> 6.1.0-rc.2); the auto-update prerelease filter
(fail-closed is_prerelease_tag, metadata-flag refusal) still refuses
prerelease targets on stable. Go tests fail on the pre-fix code
(returned 5.1.37 / "no update").
Contract: deployment-installability now pins version-max release
selection with proofs in manager_stranded_upgrade_test.go and
pulse_auto_update_test.go.
Back-port the pulse-auto-update.sh half of v5 fix 0f2982ce3 to v6. After a
verified update, if Pulse was running beforehand, wait_for_service_active
polls up to 20s, tries one explicit start, and if it still does not come
back up restores the backup binary/VERSION, restarts, and returns failure
instead of leaving Pulse stopped (common on unprivileged LXC where the
installer's restart silently fails). Adds a BASH_SOURCE guard so the
script can be sourced, plus scripts/tests/test-pulse-auto-update.sh.
Note: the install.sh start_pulse STOPPED_PULSE_SERVICE guard (interactive
installer path) still needs the stop-tracking infrastructure wired into
v6's update flow; tracked as a follow-up.
rcourtman