Files
orca/src/main/daemon
Brennan Benson 8dc1ca4920 fix(daemon): retire macOS daemons whose login session died (#7936) (#9826)
* fix(daemon): retire macOS daemons whose login session died (#7936)

A daemon that survives a full macOS logout is unsalvageable: its PAM
context can no longer host login(1) spawns (every new PTY becomes a
'Login incorrect' prompt zombie) and its Mach bootstrap namespace has
lost the system DNS resolver, so terminals it hosts have no egress.
Today it also keeps the #9301 preflight's cached 'accepted' verdict, so
it keeps wrapping spawns in login(1) forever; only a manual daemon
restart recovers.

GUI-spawned daemons now watch for login-session death from the inside:
a fresh cache-bypassing PAM probe (triggered by PTY-exit bursts, fresh
client hellos, and a slow periodic timer) must conclusively reject
three consecutive times AND the in-process system resolver must be
degraded; then the daemon exits crash-style so session meta stays
unclean and the replacement daemon cold-restores scrollback. A
conclusive rejection also flips the spawn-wrapper cache off
immediately.

Headless serve/SSH daemons never get the watch (they must survive their
spawning session ending), and a session that never conclusively
accepted login(1) never arms it — a PAM anomaly alone can't kill a
healthy daemon (fast user switching keeps accepting, so switched-away
sessions are preserved).

* test(daemon): e2e seam to drive login-session death oracles from a verdict file

A dead macOS login session cannot be fabricated without root (PAM owns
audit-session teardown), so live lifecycle QA drives the death watch's
probe and resolver oracles from ORCA_E2E_LOGIN_SESSION_PROBE_FILE:
'alive' → accepted/healthy, 'dead' → rejected/unhealthy, anything else
inconclusive — with compressed watch timing. Mirrors the existing
ORCA_E2E_DAEMON_INIT_DELAY_MS seam; inert unless the env var is set.

* fix(daemon): close the hang-shaped gap in login-session death detection

The conclusive-PAM-verdict trigger had one blind failure shape: login(1)
hanging at the prompt past the probe bound (killed → inconclusive
forever → the watch never fires). Three changes close it:

- The death-watch probe gets its own 4s bound (the 500ms preflight bound
  exists for spawn-path latency, which doesn't apply off-path), so a
  slow-but-answering PAM stack isn't misread as a hang.
- An inconclusive pipe probe escalates to a PTY-hosted probe via
  script(1) — a dead session's PAM stack may only misbehave under a real
  tty (the pipe-vs-PTY fidelity limit the preflight documents).
- A streak of timeout-killed probes (which a live session never
  produces) is a second retirement trigger, at a higher threshold (5)
  and still gated on the degraded resolver, logged with a distinct
  cause so field logs discriminate the two paths.

Every dead-session behavior — fast reject, prompt-then-EOF, or hang —
now fires retirement; all inconclusive states still fail toward
preserving the daemon.

* fix(daemon): keep login-session retirement conclusive

* fix(daemon): stop login watch before clean shutdown

* fix(daemon): make login-session PTY probe reliable

* fix(daemon): close login-session watch races

* fix(daemon): ignore health probes for login watch activity
2026-07-22 14:45:03 -07:00
..