branderson ca41c94ebd Let the upgrade tool find its own checks, and tell "cannot" from "failed"
Both fixes come from the sister project, where they were found on a real
runner: `sudo ./bin/dejima-ci-upgrade mark-node 2` answered "cannot check -
dejima-ci-upgrade check-lan is not installed here". The same two bugs were
latent here, since every verify-node command names a sibling in bin/.

VERIFY COMMANDS ARE NOW LOOKED UP ON $PATH FIRST, THEN BESIDE THIS PROGRAM.
The notes tell an operator to run from a checkout on a box where nothing is
installed yet, and a PATH-only lookup fails there on the very program doing
the looking. $PATH still wins where both exist, because the installed copy is
what the machine runs.

AND EXIT 2 NOW MEANS "COULD NOT DETERMINE" RATHER THAN "NOT IN FORCE".
Collapsing the two would have mark-node tell an operator their console work
is missing on the strength of a check that never ran - wrong in the alarming
direction, about the one thing they cannot see for themselves. reach and
drift return 2 on INDETERMINATE to honour it, which is a contract rather than
a detail and is now written down in three places.

status also stops reporting console work as outstanding when the upgrade
declares a check and that check passes. A snapshot restore takes the record
and leaves the rules on the node, and reporting that as work to do sends an
operator to redo something already done.

One test had to change rather than being fixed: "a missing verify command is
not reported as a failed check" relied on dejima-devbox-audit being
unfindable, which the sibling fallback now makes false. It runs from a lonely
copy instead, which is the condition it was always trying to describe.

`bats test/` 155 passing, 4 new.
2026-08-27 21:57:50 -07:00
2026-08-10 18:33:38 -07:00

 

 dejima


 

Devbox Hardener

Bounds what a compromised development VM can reach on your network, and tells you what that bound actually is.

A devbox is a long-lived VM that runs dejima sessions. Unlike a CI runner it holds uncommitted work, so it cannot be rolled back on a schedule — and rollback is the whole containment story of the sister project, dejima-ci-hardener. What replaces it is the hypervisor firewall, plus knowing precisely what sits inside it.

It does not prevent root on the devbox. Nothing here tries to. It makes root reach less, and makes that reach something you can check rather than assume.

proxmox/README.md Start here. The node side: create the VM, apply the firewall. Everything in the web console
docs/building-a-devbox.md The guest side: install, bootstrap, verify. The same on any hypervisor
docs/threat-model.md What each layer grants, what was rejected and why, and what is not bounded

Do the node side first, through the end of its §3.

Developed in dejima


Before you use it

Early development. Not ready to be depended on. Nothing here has been through outside review, an external audit, or adversarial testing by anyone but the person who wrote it. Every security property this describes is a claim awaiting scrutiny, not one that has survived it. Do not put this anywhere that being wrong about it would matter.

One maintainer, no support. Nothing about this is promised: not a reply, not a fix, not a release. SECURITY.md has the detail, and is where to report a vulnerability rather than in a public issue.

One person's work per devbox. A condition of the tool rather than an observation about how devboxes get used: the blast radius here is stated in terms of what is on the box, so a machine holding several people's work is out of spec and the reasoning does not hold for it. If you need separation between people, use a devbox each.

Container escape is deliberately deprioritised. An escape gains root, which is more than the container has — and root on this VM is already a row in the blast radius table, bounded by the same hypervisor firewall however it was reached. So patching is what is left worth doing, and separating escape from root inside the guest is not.

Use

sudo ./bin/dejima-devbox-bootstrap    # once, in the guest
cd ~/dejima && ./install.sh           # dejima's own step, as your own account

sudo dejima-devbox-audit              # all three
sudo dejima-devbox-audit reach        # containment only, what the timer runs
sudo dejima-devbox-audit radius       # what root here would get
sudo dejima-devbox-audit drift        # what changed since you last said it was clean

./bin/dejima-devbox-upgrade status    # what this box is missing, from a checkout

Bootstrap installs what dejima needs from the host - Docker with the compose v2 plugin, python3, jq - and clones dejima to ~/dejima. It stops there. Installing dejima is dejima's step: install.sh writes into your ~/.claude, ~/.local/bin and ~/.config/dejima, and what it does there is that project's to define and to change. A copy of that contract kept here would go stale without anything noticing.

The harness is a step before that one, and neither this tool nor install.sh arranges it: whichever harness dejima will run for you, it is installed on this box as the account that will run dejima, and signed in, before the first session. The credential proxy runs on this side and reads that account's copy, and the container's mounts are that account's directories. docs/building-a-devbox.md §5 has what each half breaks if it is missing.

The audit needs root. The config is 0640 root, and the radius report stats files in the home of the account that runs dejima, which it reads from the config rather than from $HOME - under sudo and under the timer that is root's, whose home on a devbox holds nothing.

How it fails

The firewall is on the hypervisor, so the guest cannot verify it by reading it. That is what makes it worth having and what makes checking it awkward. The audit tests behaviour instead, by probing the default gateway: already in the routing table so it reveals nothing, guaranteed alive where an arbitrary address is not, and inside the ranges the firewall drops.

A timeout has two causes, and telling them apart is the whole design:

PASS Nothing answered and the network demonstrably works
FAIL Something answered. Rules missing, or an exception above them
INDETERMINATE Nothing answered, including things that should. Not a pass.

A check that reports success when it does not know is worse than no check, because it gets believed.

The IPv6 half has the same three states for different reasons. It asks the segment who is there over IPv6 and counts the answers, and there a silence is unambiguous: the node dropped the family, or the guest never had it, and both are the outcome wanted. So silence is a plain PASS with no positive control. INDETERMINATE is reserved for the probe not running at all, which is still not a pass. It is a separate check because the node's other rules name IPv4 ranges and match none of that traffic - see the LAN boundary is two boundaries.

A rule that REJECTs rather than DROPs reports FAIL even though it is working. bash's /dev/tcp cannot tell a rejection from a live host refusing. That is the safe direction to be wrong in, and it is why the template specifies DROP.

Nothing is stored about what this VM must not reach. Such a list would be a map of valuable targets, kept on the machine this project assumes will be owned. The audit derives its targets from the routing table and its controls from your forge, so there is nothing to type and nothing to leak.

Versions, and the boxes already out there

VERSION is what this checkout ships; /etc/dejima-devbox/state is what a given devbox is at. Two numbers, because the guest half is installed from a checkout and the node half is typed into a console, and only one of them is knowable from inside the VM.

dejima needs none of this — short-lived containers, tip of main only, git pull closes any gap. A devbox is pinned to the day it was built, and a snapshot restore can move it backwards without anyone deciding to. docs/upgrading.md is the process; upgrades/ is one note per version, written for someone at a console who has not read the diff.

./bin/dejima-devbox-upgrade status    # run from a checkout, not the installed copy

Tests

bats test/

test/devbox.bats asserts against a real devbox and skips everywhere else. It is gated on DEJIMA_DEVBOX=1 rather than on detecting a devbox, because a detector that guesses wrong skips silently, and a suite that passes by asserting nothing is worse than one that fails.

Further reading

docs/ Index of everything below
docs/threat-model.md What each layer grants, why escape is deprioritised, what was rejected
docs/reference.md The three verdicts, the three addressing modes, the one config key
SECURITY.md What this claims, and where to report a vulnerability
dejima-ci-hardener The sister project, for hosts that can be rolled back

License

GPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE.

The dejima wordmark and logo are not code and are not covered by that licence. They are trademarks; who holds them and what may be done with them is stated once for the organisation, at dejima's ATTRIBUTION.md.

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Hardens a development VM, bounds what it can reach on your network if compromised, and tells you what that bound actually is
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