epiphany/crates/epiphany-bundle
Levi Neuwirth 7de9e479c4 Push 5 / P3: fuzz the bundle wire, and find a lenient codec hiding behind a guard
A wire-decode fuzzer over Bundle::open, Manifest::decode, OperationIndex::decode,
decode_block and envelope_offsets. The existing crash-recovery fuzzer corrupts an
image the way a CRASH does -- torn writes at syscall boundaries. This one
corrupts it the way an attacker or a bit-rotted disk does: arbitrary bytes,
anywhere.

It found a real defect. CompressionAlgorithm::None read its parameter byte and
DISCARDED it, while encode writes zero. So [0, 0xFF] and [0, 0] both decoded to
None, and the first re-encoded to the second: a lenient, non-injective codec,
inherited by every structure embedding a ChunkRef.

Whether that was visible depended entirely on the embedder:

  Manifest::decode has a whole-value re-encode guard, and it is TOTAL -- proved
  by exhaustive single-byte perturbation, every one rejected. It caught this.

  OperationIndex::decode has no guard; it validates per-site. It accepted both
  byte strings, while its own doc promised to "reject (never normalizing) any
  non-canonical form". That promise was false.

That is the same two-layer lesson P2 recorded one commit ago, from the other
side: a re-encode guard is complete only where the encoder normalizes, and its
completeness can MASK a lenient sub-codec rather than fix it. Fixed at the
source, not papered over at the index. An exhaustive sweep -- every byte, every
value, plus an 8-byte extreme-integer window -- finds no remaining non-injective
site.

The fix contradicted ratified spec text, which said the byte was "present but
zero, and ignored on read". Escalated rather than fixed unilaterally. The user
ratified strict decode: core spec's clause is superseded, Binary Format gains
req:binfmt:compression-none-parameter and moves 0.7.0 -> 0.8.0. No wire layout
changed, and no conforming writer emits a non-zero byte, so this rejects only
corrupt or adversarial input -- no existing file changes meaning.

Coverage was the harness's problem again. The fuzzer's first run reached the
operation index's accept path ZERO times -- random bytes never decode as an
index -- so every assertion under it was vacuous. It found the bug only once the
index corpus was built from real OperationIndex::build output. The smoke tests
now assert on a WireFuzzCoverage so that cannot silently regress. 1.5M inputs
across five seeds, ~1s each, clean after the fix.

Three regressions, each mutation-verified by restoring the leniency: the codec
itself, the index that exposed it, and the manifest guard's totality -- which is
the asymmetry that hid it.

Gate: fmt clean, clippy 0, 30 targets / 1012 passed / 0 failed, docs 0 under
-D warnings, conformance 8/8, zero golden churn, both spec documents rebuild
with no undefined references.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-09 19:12:34 -04:00
..
examples A B C D F 2026-06-19 12:42:31 -04:00
src Push 5 / P3: fuzz the bundle wire, and find a lenient codec hiding behind a guard 2026-07-09 19:12:34 -04:00
tests A B C D F 2026-06-19 12:42:31 -04:00
Cargo.toml Pushes 1+3: fix the MUST-level violations, wire the types-only machinery 2026-07-02 17:10:50 -04:00
DECISIONS.md Push 5 / P3: fuzz the bundle wire, and find a lenient codec hiding behind a guard 2026-07-09 19:12:34 -04:00
README.md Pushes 1+3: fix the MUST-level violations, wire the types-only machinery 2026-07-02 17:10:50 -04:00

README.md

epiphany-bundle

The Epiphany .musc file format, implementing the normative requirements of Chapter 8 (File Format) of the core specification (spec/core_spec.pdf). This is Agent D's crate per spec/QUICKSTART.md. It depends on epiphany-determinism (Agent A) and on nothing else — not on epiphany-core (Agent B) or epiphany-ops (Agent C):

bundles handle bytes, ops handles semantics. A canonical-base snapshot from the bundle's perspective is opaque bytes plus a frontier DVV; only epiphany-ops interprets it. — QUICKSTART

A bundle is a single file: a fixed 64-byte header at offset 0, two 256-byte superblock slots, then a body of immutable, content-addressed chunks. The superblocks are the only mutable on-disk objects. A commit appends new chunks, writes a new manifest chunk, then flips the active superblock by writing the inactive slot and durably flushing it — that flush is the commit point. Because commits only ever append and touch the inactive slot, a crash can never corrupt the active state.

What's here

Area Items Spec
Prelude FixedHeader (64 B, CRC-32C), Superblock/CommitState (256 B, CRC-32C), select_active Ch. 8 §"The Bundle Layout", §"Superblock Selection"
Atomic commit Bundle::create/open/commit, the 7-step protocol, cold-open path Ch. 8 §"The Atomic Write Protocol", §"Streaming Reads"
Content addressing chunk_content_hash/chunk_id, ChunkRef, ChunkKind, CompressionAlgorithm, domain separation Ch. 8 §"Content Hashing", §"Chunks"
Manifest Manifest (canonical_base ≠ acceleration_snapshots), SnapshotRef, BlobRef, ProfileDeclaration, ExtensionDeclaration Ch. 8 §"The Manifest"
Retention RetentionPolicy (first-class), ProfileConstraints Ch. 8 §"Garbage Collection and Retention"
Op blocks pack_operation_blocks (1 MiB soft target), encode_block/decode_block Ch. 8 §"Operation Envelope Blocks"
Storage BlockStore, MemStore, FileStore (real fsync), FaultStore (crash sim) Ch. 8 §"Durable Writes"
Gates fuzz::run_crash_recovery_fuzz, fuzz::exhaustive_crash_check, fuzz::run_manifest_selection_harness QUICKSTART acceptance

The crash-recovery contract (the acceptance gate)

Kill the process between any two syscalls in the commit protocol; reopen; the bundle must be valid in 100% of runs, and must recover to the previous generation when the crash precedes the durable flush. This is the most important single test in the entire prototype. — QUICKSTART, Agent D

Killing a real process between syscalls cannot be made deterministic, so the fuzzer drives the commit against a FaultStore that distinguishes live (page-cache) bytes from durable (survives-a-crash) bytes and can crash after any chosen syscall — optionally tearing the in-flight superblock write, the case the slot CRC must catch. After every simulated crash the bundle is reopened from the durable image and must:

  1. open successfully (never corrupt);
  2. be at the previous generation or the new one, never anything else;
  3. if the commit returned Ok, be at the new generation; and if the crash was clean (the in-flight flush persisted nothing) and the commit did not complete, be at the previous generation — the exact "recover to the previous generation when the crash precedes the durable flush" property. (A torn final flush may at a full prefix legitimately persist the whole superblock — the genuine post-commit case — so the torn branch admits either generation.)
  4. report no integrity anomaly;
  5. have every canonical chunk present and hash-intact.

Two drivers exercise this: a randomized 10,000-iteration sweep, and an exhaustive per-commit sweep that tests every syscall boundary crossed with every tear point (clean, and torn at prefixes around the 252-byte CRC offset and the 256-byte slot size). The second leaves no step of the protocol untested.

The companion manifest_selection gate asserts the Chapter 8 superblock- selection rule across every corruption scenario the QUICKSTART enumerates: slot A corrupt + B valid (and vice versa), both valid at generation+1, both valid at the same generation (equivalent, and divergent), a generation gap > 1, a non-committed slot, a manifest-hash mismatch, and neither valid.

Building and testing

cargo test -p epiphany-bundle                              # unit + the two gates
cargo clippy -p epiphany-bundle --all-targets -- -D warnings
cargo run --release --example fuzz_crash -- 1000000        # extended crash soak

Hand-off criteria (QUICKSTART, Agent D)

  • cargo test clean.
  • Crash-recovery fuzzer passes 10,000 iterations (crash_recovery_fuzz_ten_thousand_iterations, two seeds; extended soak via the example binary; exhaustive per-syscall sweep in exhaustive_sweep_across_base_states_and_commit_shapes).
  • Manifest-selection harness handles every corruption scenario (every_selection_scenario_holds).
  • Real-filesystem fsync round-trip (file_store_real_fsync_round_trip).

Scope boundaries (per QUICKSTART "Don't do these")

v0 writes only uncompressed chunks (compression on the write path is deferred), but reading zstd-compressed chunks and blobs is supported, per the spec's §Compression MUST (the manifest is mandatory-uncompressed regardless, and a compressed manifest is rejected). It carries the text-projection root but does not implement the s-expression projection content, and it preserves extension declarations and chunks but does not evaluate edit barriers — barrier operands (OperationKindTag, ObjectKind, EditBarrier) are owned by Agents C and E. Operation envelopes, snapshots, and causal frontiers are opaque bytes here.

See DECISIONS.md for the prototype byte-layout choices that anticipate the deferred Binary Format companion, and the batched Pass 11 candidates.