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Priority: P2 — flash durability & corruption-recovery audit for wallet.db and new durable stores (G06/G09 add writes; this issue bounds the write cost and the blast radius).

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@Amperstrand is already working on this.

Since Oct 8, 2026.

  • #743 by @Amperstrand — open

Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
28/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
go
Domain
databases, tooling

Research direction

Start by reading gonuts storage/bolt.go and its bbolt version and open options; then inspect src/cmd/tollgate-cli/ and the named persistent stores. The work also depends on G06/G09 landing before their stores can be included. Done means the audit table, measured write-amplification figures, recovery runbook, wallet check tests, and power-loss campaign report meet the listed acceptance criteria.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Priority: P2 — flash durability & corruption-recovery audit for wallet.db and new durable stores (G06/G09 add writes; this issue bounds the write cost and the blast radius).

Problem

The wallet (bbolt), the drain journal, and (if G06/G09 land) session/payment stores all write to router flash. Unknown/uncontrolled today: fsync semantics of bbolt on OpenWrt kernels (default NoSync=false? options at open), write amplification of bbolt B+tree rewrites vs the flash budget (8 MB flash routers have limited erase cycles), power-loss behavior of each file (bbolt is designed for crash safety with fsync — verify our open flags don't disable it), and corruption detection/repair (bbolt ships bolt check — not exposed anywhere).

Why it matters

Fund-relevant state on cheap NAND with power cuts is the environment; "it worked in Docker" is not evidence. A torn bbolt after power loss = potentially the whole wallet (counter lineage + proofs). Also SD-card-class storage (some deployments) silently corrupts; detection tooling is the difference between scheduled recovery and surprise loss.

Current behavior (source refs)

  • gonuts wallet/storage/bolt.go — bolt.Open(filepath.Join(path, "wallet.db"), 0600, nil) — default options (fsync on commit — verify against bbolt version vendored); no NoGrowSync/NoSync — good if defaults hold; prove it.
  • Drain journal (#433): fsync'd append — good precedent.
  • No bolt check/repair tooling exposed; no backup guidance beyond MIGRATION docs.

Desired invariant

Every fund-relevant file either survives power loss with its guarantees intact (fsync'd writes, atomic renames) or is reconstructable (journaled + documented repair path); steady-state write amplification fits the flash budget of supported devices (measured, not assumed).

Proposed scope

  1. Audit write paths + flags for every persistent store (bbolt open flags per cgo-free bbolt fork vendored in gonuts; sessions JSON tmp+rename; drain journal; G09 store).
  2. Measure: bytes-written per payment/payout/session-update on lab hardware (/proc/<pid>/io deltas over N ops) for both metrics; publish numbers; set budgets.
  3. Corruption tooling: tollgate-cli wallet check wrapping bbolt consistency check; documented recovery runbook (backup, check, export tokens, re-init) — links to the migration tooling.
  4. Power-loss campaign (PRTA smart-plug or QEMU quit): N=100 cut-during-write cycles on wallet.db → zero silent corruption (post-boot check + balance assertion).

Areas / files

gonuts storage/bolt.go, TollGate src/cmd/tollgate-cli/, src/valve/src/merchant stores (if G06/G09 landed), PRTA lanes, docs (runbook).

Acceptance criteria

  • Audit table (file, write path, fsync, atomicity, repair) merged.
  • Write-amplification numbers published; power-loss campaign report with zero silent corruptions (or found issues fixed and re-run).

Required tests

  • The campaign IS the test; plus wallet check unit on seeded corrupt DBs.

Failure-injection tests

  • Power-cut distribution across commit/compact/rename points (automated).

Compatibility

None (additive tooling + docs).

Dependencies

G06/G09 land first for their stores to be included; wallet.db audit independent.

Out of scope

  • Switching storage engine.
Dominant language
Go
Stars
12
Forks
14
Avg merge
1d 6h
Merged PRs (30d)
217

Getting set up

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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