Files
pulse/docs/release-control
rcourtman 883e951023 fix(agent): refuse to serve an agent binary older than the server
/download/pulse-agent served whatever agent artifact sat on disk with no
relation to the running build. Local agent binaries are build outputs that
nothing refreshes on their own, so they go stale silently: a dev backend was
found serving a four-week-old v6.0.5 agent while reporting 6.2.0-rc.8.

Staleness is not cosmetic. The installer renders its service wrapper from the
server's current template, so an agent predating a flag that template now
passes exits immediately with "flag provided but not defined" and crash-loops
under its watchdog. That is how a real host lost its agent: the version
mismatch was reported only as an installer warning, after download, easy to
read as noise.

Validation already scanned the binary for its report-contract endpoints, so
the version check joins that same single pass and rejects a binary that does
not carry this server's agent version. Refusal is loud where the old warning
was quiet: a dev server answers 404 naming the stale path and the build
command, and a published release falls through to the existing release-asset
proxy and fetches the matching version, which makes production self-healing
rather than silently downgraded.

The expected version resolves through updates.GetCurrentVersion rather than
the compiled-in serverVersion. The first cut of this guard used serverVersion
and was inert on exactly the builds that need it: the enterprise binary
compiles in "dev-pro", no version parser accepts it, and the check disabled
itself. It passed its unit tests and still served the stale binary; only
replaying the real v6.0.5 artifact through the running server exposed it.
"dev-pro" is now pinned in the version table with that reasoning attached.

The shared download-test fixture built a binary carrying the report endpoint
but no version string, which a real agent always has, so it now stamps the
expected version. Verified non-vacuous in both directions: those tests fail
with the guard active and the thin fixture, and pass with a faithful one.

Contract-Neutral: storage-recovery is pulled in only by the broad internal/api/ Extension Points prefix and this change does not move that boundary: it constrains which agent binary /download/pulse-agent serves, touching no storage provider, backup target, recovery repository or protected-workload evidence. The agent-lifecycle, deployment-installability and api-contracts deltas staged here cover every boundary the change actually moves.
2026-08-06 15:27:39 +01:00
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