The root helper gains one read-only action, `drives`: it finds the drives
itself (smartctl --scan-open), reads each as JSON, and writes a summary the
agent carries on every sample (agent 1.20.0). Steward judges the figures in
drives.py (failing / worn / watch / ok / no SMART / unreadable), records them
per drive and as host roll-ups for covering rules, keeps the newest report on
the registration and lists it on the host page.
install-deps.sh installs smartmontools with apt, dnf, yum, zypper, pacman or
apk, run by install.sh and every agent playbook; one it can't install is
reported, never fatal.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
#5766 "A root helper the agent can start, for a fixed set of maintenance
actions and nothing else", milestone 514.
The agent runs unprivileged under NoNewPrivileges, so it can't update or
reboot its host. It now leaves a request in /var/lib/steward-agent/requests,
the one path its unit lets it write; steward-maint.path starts maint.py as
root, which reads it without following links, accepts only update, reboot,
drain or undrain, deletes it, and writes the outcome to
/var/lib/steward-maint/results. The agent (1.17.0) reports each new result
state once as a `maintenance` event, re-checks pending updates when an update
finishes, and says in its metadata whether the helper is installed.
The units and the helper are served from one copy at
/plugins/host_agent/files/<name> (a fixed list), and install.sh plus the
install, provision and update playbooks all fetch them, replacing three
inline copies of the unit. Update agent installs the helper on existing
hosts; the Agent panel says under Manage agent whether it is there.
Steward handing out jobs is #5767; the cadence is #5768.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>