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fix(windows): conditional DACL re-stamp + damaged-children repair, gated on the adoption-level owner-only predicate - #1684

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fix(windows): conditional DACL re-stamp + damaged-children repair, gated on the adoption-level owner-only predicate#1684
DeusData wants to merge 7 commits into
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fix/windows-acl-repair-v2

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Supersedes #1634 and #1636 (same commits, rebased onto current main, plus the fix their Windows CI failures were pointing at).

The stack (unchanged in intent): re-stamp the runtime DACL only when it is actually wrong (#1634 — stops the daily USN "Security change" storms of #1601 and the MoveFileEx refusal window of #1620), and detect/repair cache children left unusable by the pre-v0.10.3 DACL regime (#1636 — the 0-byte-unreadable-log class behind #1416's diagnosis).

What the old PRs' red CI was: real. On the actual Windows VM the branch failed 59/77 daemon-suite tests (main: 77/77). Root cause, found by instrumenting the VM build: the conditional-re-stamp fast path declared a directory "already correct" using the general secure() predicate — which admits SYSTEM/Administrators ACEs — while lock-directory ADOPTION (private_win_owner_only_dacl) demands the exact protected owner-only single-ACE descriptor the stamp writes. A fresh runtime dir with an inherited DACL skipped the stamp and stranded every subsequent lock adoption. The fast path now applies the consumer's strictest predicate, ported ACE-for-ACE (SE_DACL_PROTECTED, non-inherited single ACE, owner SID, FILE_ALL_ACCESS/GENERIC_ALL), so it skips work only when skipping is safe.

Verification (real arm64 Windows 11 VM): the three canary suites went 18/59-failed → 77/77; full test-par 7346 passed, 0 failed (one grammar_probe_c 900s wall-clock hang, cleared on retry — the known grammar_probe flake family, pre-recorded). macOS + Linux compile the POSIX paths untouched.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_018RiRAw9RQhvCoshqe7eZHV

win_runtime_directory_secure called set_security_info with
PROTECTED_DACL_SECURITY_INFORMATION on every process start, whether or not
anything needed repairing. Line 4126 computes `created`, but it only guards the
ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS check - the re-stamp itself ran unconditionally.

Two costs, both observed rather than theorised:

#1601 counted ELEVEN "Security change" USN records against a single _config.db
in one day. Windows propagates a directory's security descriptor to its
children, so a rewrite that changes nothing still churns every file underneath.

#1620 loses its atomic publish to this. MoveFileEx needs DELETE on the
destination, and a concurrent re-protect of the parent is a window in which it
can be refused - for a state that was about to be correct anyway. That reporter
proved the interaction by running a background icacls loop during indexing and
watching the identical index succeed.

The repair is what matters, not the ritual. When the owner is already the exact
current user AND the DACL already passes the private-directory check, there is
nothing to fix and the right action is to leave it alone. When it IS wrong, the
repair is byte-for-byte what it was before.

This does not fix the underlying ACL damage on already-broken installs - files
created under the pre-v0.10.3 flagless regime still carry empty DACLs and need
a child repair, which is a separate change. It stops us from making it worse and
from creating a failure window on every start.

Costs one extra GetSecurityInfo to avoid a SetSecurityInfo, which is the cheap
direction.

Builds clean; daemon_ipc 48 passed. The changed region is Windows-only, so the
real verification is the Windows CI leg.

Signed-off-by: Martin Vogel <martin.vogel.tech@gmail.com>
The previous commit called win_file_security_secure with five arguments; on this
branch it takes four. That is a compile error on Windows.

It passed the local build because the entire win_* region is Windows-only and
guarded out on macOS, so a clean macOS build says nothing about it. Worth
recording as the trap it is: for Windows-only code, a green host build is not
evidence, and the Windows CI leg is the first thing that can actually reject it.

(The five-argument form belongs to #1623, which threads an ancestor flag through
this function. When that lands, this call becomes the five-argument form again on
rebase.)

Signed-off-by: Martin Vogel <martin.vogel.tech@gmail.com>
…ignature

#1623 landed on main and threads an ancestor flag through
win_file_security_secure. The conditional check added here predates it and still
passed four arguments; both calls now pass ancestor=false, which is correct - the
private runtime directory is never an ancestor and must keep full strictness.

This is the second arity correction on this branch, in opposite directions, and
the reason is worth stating: the win_* region is Windows-only, so a local macOS
build compiles none of it and reports success regardless. Nothing on this machine
can catch a mismatched call here. The Windows CI leg is the only venue that can.

Signed-off-by: Martin Vogel <martin.vogel.tech@gmail.com>
…old DACL regime

Between v0.9.1-rc and v0.10.2 the runtime directory carried a PROTECTED DACL
whose ACE was not inheritable, so Windows gave every file created inside it
either an empty DACL or the token default (SYSTEM + TokenOwner + logon SID).
Under an elevated token TokenOwner is BUILTIN\Administrators, so the interactive
user is left with no durable grant and the file becomes unreadable after the
next logon. #1601: takeown and icacls both fail non-elevated, and the daemon can
no longer open _config.db.

now, so new children are fine. Nothing repaired the children already damaged,
which is why upgrading rescued nobody whose cache was written under the old
regime. Their only route back was a rename-the-parent dance the reporter worked
out themselves.

The repair runs after the directory is confirmed good, and is deliberately
narrow: immediate children only, no recursion, capped at 4096, regular files
only - directories, reparse points and symlinks are skipped rather than
followed. A child is touched ONLY when demonstrably damaged: an empty DACL, or
an owner that is not the current user. Failures are counted and reported, never
fatal, because this runs inside daemon startup.

Empty-DACL detection needs its own test and cannot reuse the validator:
win_file_acl_secure scans ACEs for untrusted mutation grants, and a DACL with
zero ACEs trivially has none - so the damage reads as compliance.

It only ever touches cbm's own runtime/cache directory, which we created and
own; it does not reach into user directories.

Windows-only code. A clean macOS build says nothing about it - the previous
commit on this branch shipped a five-argument call to a four-argument function
and built green here - so the Windows CI leg is the first venue that can
actually reject this.

Signed-off-by: Martin Vogel <martin.vogel.tech@gmail.com>
…-only DACL

The conditional re-stamp skipped set_security_info whenever the runtime
directory passed the general secure() predicate — but that predicate admits
SYSTEM/Administrators ACEs, while lock-directory ADOPTION
(private_win_owner_only_dacl) demands the exact protected owner-only
descriptor the stamp writes. A fresh directory with an inherited DACL
therefore skipped the stamp and stranded every subsequent lock adoption:
59 daemon-suite failures on the real Windows VM, 77/77 green on main.

The fast path now applies the consumer's strictest predicate (ported ACE-for-
ACE from the foundation layer, incl. SE_DACL_PROTECTED and the non-inherited
single-ACE shape), so it only skips work when skipping is actually safe.
Debug instrumentation from the diagnosis is removed.

Signed-off-by: Martin Vogel <martin.vogel.tech@gmail.com>
@DeusData

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Superseded by the DCO-clean single-commit variant with the byte-identical tree (the diagnosis instrumentation commits here lacked sign-offs). Same VM verification applies: canaries 77/77, full test-par 7346/0.

@DeusData DeusData closed this Aug 17, 2026
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