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Priority: P1 — revenue-leak + metering-loss class: all enforcement state is process-memory.

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
go
Domain
backend

Research direction

Start by reading src/merchant/merchant.go, src/valve/valve.go, src/valve/customer_data_tracker.go, and startup in main.go or merchant initialization to trace session grants, metering, and deauthentication. Confirm the persistence and metering-reconciliation design with the maintainer before implementing. Done means the required round-trip and reconciliation tests pass, with restart tests demonstrating paid access is restored or safely deauthorized as specified.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Priority: P1 — revenue-leak + metering-loss class: all enforcement state is process-memory.

Problem

customerSessions, gate deauth time.Timers (openGates), and data baselines are in-memory only. After any restart (crash, upgrade, service restart, power cut):

  • time-metered customers keep access forever (the deauth timer died with the process; NDS still holds them authenticated until its own session timeout),
  • bytes-metered customers keep access unmetered (no session → checkDataUsage skips them; baseline gone),
  • remaining paid allotments are forgotten (customers lose paid value on the "remaining" side while the gate stays open — worst of both).

Why it matters

Every restart converts all active paid sessions into free unlimited access (revenue leak) while erasing what customers paid for (value leak). Routers reboot — power cuts, upgrades, OOM — so this is not hypothetical. Lightning quotes are deliberately persisted (quote_store.go) because payment recognition had to survive restarts; sessions need the same treatment.

Current behavior (source refs)

  • src/merchant/merchant.go:73 (customerSessions map), :1112-1173 (access/restore in-memory only).
  • src/valve/valve.go:82-86 (openGates, pendingUntil maps), :222-249 (in-process deauth timer).
  • src/valve/customer_data_tracker.go:20-24 (in-memory baselines).
  • checkDataUsage (merchant.go:249-304) iterates only in-memory sessions.

Desired invariant

Paid access converges to paid state after restart: unexpired paid sessions are re-armed (gate + metering + deauth deadline), expired/unknown clients are deauthorized, and remaining allotment is preserved or explicitly reconciled.

Proposed scope (design-then-implement; pick with maintainer)

  1. Persist sessions on grant (durable before/at gate-open; fsync'd JSONL or bbolt) — remaining allotment, metric, start, expiry, and bytes-baseline snapshot.
  2. Startup reconciliation: load sessions → re-arm timers/baselines → ndsctl deauth for authenticated clients without a valid session (safe direction: close unknowns).
  3. Metering survival: persist used periodically (debounced) — the debatable part; alternative: on restart, re-baseline from NDS counters and subtract persisted used-at-grant (design doc must choose; RAM/flash tradeoffs on 8 MB devices).
  4. Crash-safe writes: tmp+rename, no per-packet fsync.

Areas / files

src/merchant/merchant.go, src/valve/valve.go, src/valve/customer_data_tracker.go, startup in main.go/merchant init.

Acceptance criteria

  • Restart with active time session (T remaining) → client deauthed within bounded grace at T, not before.
  • Restart with active bytes session (B remaining, N used) → client cut off at approximately N+B total (documented tolerance), not at reboot.
  • Restart with expired/NDS-unknown sessions → deauth attempted, no stale access.

Required tests

  • Unit: persistence round-trip; reconciliation decision table.
  • Integration (cloud-lab / PRTA): restart-mid-session lane for both metrics; NDS-unknown-client deauth lane.

Failure-injection tests

  • SIGKILL + restart at: grant, mid-session, after-expiry.
  • Power-cut simulation (PRTA smart-plug lane) with active sessions.
  • Corrupt sessions file → fail safe (deauth all, log loudly) not fail open.

Compatibility

On-disk addition only; NDS behavior unchanged.

Dependencies

None (independent of wallet work).

Out of scope

  • Cross-reboot usage reporting precision beyond documented tolerance.
Dominant language
Go
Stars
12
Forks
14
Avg merge
1d 6h
Merged PRs (30d)
211

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