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Startup dependency recovery Railspike debug log

2026-10-13 05:29:25 UTC — Step 1

Debug mode: enabled, carried forward from the user's explicit enable request in this continuing dependency-recovery work.

Necessary/useful instructions

  • Source: docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step1_solution_assessment.md, “Structure / Original Query” and “Review and revision.” Contribution: preserving the new request made its interactive-startup preference visible alongside the older checklist's conflicting read-only requirement. The assessment states which boundary changes and remains a proposal awaiting review. Suggestion: retain original-query preservation and explicit revision handling.

  • Source: docs/railspike/RAILSPIKE.md, “Key Rules / normal entry, end-to-end outcome, and required recovery.” Contribution: the recommended option starts at failed startup on the user's known Ubuntu 22.04/PHP 8.1 environment, includes applicable recovery there, and ends with rechecked startup using the original arguments and caller privileges. This addresses the earlier failure of validating only Ubuntu 24.04 installation. Suggestion: retain this rule and require concrete known-user-environment acceptance.

  • Source: docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step1_solution_assessment.md, “Structure / solution options” and “Guardrails.” Contribution: three approaches make the manual-retry versus automatic-continuation decision reviewable without drafting implementation stages. Suggestion: retain concise tradeoff comparison and the Step 2 gate.

Redundant/unnecessary instructions

No supported findings specific to this Step 1 assessment.

Inapplicable instructions

  • Source: docs/railspike/RAILSPIKE.md, “Step 4 commit cadence.” Applicability: this request is a new Step 1 assessment; no branch, stage commit or implementation work is due. Draft files remain uncommitted and the prior implementation history is preserved. Suggestion: retain the phase boundary.

Uncertain assessments

  • Source: docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step1_solution_assessment.md, “Understood Intent.” Uncertainty: the user requested a startup recovery prompt but did not explicitly specify automatic startup continuation afterward. The assessment labels continuation as the recommendation and compares it with manual restart. Suggestion: resolve through review of the options, without presenting the inferred behavior as already approved.

  • Source: docs/railspike/RAILSPIKE.md, “Key Rules / one day or eight stages.” Uncertainty: adapting the existing installer to Ubuntu 22.04 and adding startup continuation has not yet been stage-estimated. Suggestion: validate fit during later planning and surface any necessary rescope before implementation, preserving a concrete outcome on the user's environment.

2026-10-13 05:34:57 UTC — Step 2

Debug mode: enabled, inherited from approved Step 1. User approval: “Approved Step 1.”

Necessary/useful instructions

  • Source: docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step2_feature_description.md, “Completion boundary” and “Success criteria.” Contribution: the document requires the two reported Ubuntu 22.04 failures to reach a usable server, alongside Ubuntu 24.04 regression evidence. Generic recovery text or successful tests on only the other platform cannot satisfy the stated boundary. Suggestion: retain explicit user-journey outcomes and measurable recovery criteria.

  • Source: the same file, “Risks” and “Shared component inventory.” Contribution: the feature makes consent, password-sudo, caller privileges and wrong-runtime repair early validation topics while identifying existing assessment, installer and launcher components to extend. Suggestion: retain these requirements and validate the listed uncertainties before staging implementation.

  • Source: docs/railspike/RAILSPIKE.md, “Plan review” and “Commit discipline.” Contribution: Step 1 approval led only to a separate Step 2 draft; no later deliverables, commits, application edits or package operations were performed. Suggestion: retain this boundary.

Redundant/unnecessary instructions

No supported findings specific to this step.

Uncertain assessments

  • Source: docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step2_feature_description.md, “Risks / earliest validation.” Uncertainty: availability of matching disposable environments and the details of privilege-preserving startup continuation are not newly verified by this planning document. Suggestion: require the identified validation before Step 3 is finalized; do not treat the feature description as execution evidence.

2026-10-13 05:46:04 UTC — Step 3

Debug mode: enabled, inherited from approved Step 2. User approval: “Approved Step 2.”

Necessary/useful instructions

  • Source: docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step3_development_plan_do.md, “Completion Contract” and material-risk dependency gates. Contribution: the plan names both exact user failure states on Ubuntu 22.04 as release gates, alongside Ubuntu 24.04 preservation. Manual guidance must be followed successfully, not merely appear in output. Suggestion: retain concrete ordinary-entry outcomes and evidence gates.

  • Source: the same file, “Key Risks” and “Canonical components/API contracts.” Contribution: inspection found overlapping installer/launcher signal handling and a reusable coordinator; the plan gates startup continuation on caller identity, original arguments, fresh readiness and signal handoff. Suggestion: retain early cross-component boundary review.

  • Source: step3_development_plan_before.md and step3_development_plan_after.md, planning/approval boundaries. Contribution: five implementation stages were planned without modifying application source, committing plans, or installing host packages. Existing staged user work remains intact. Suggestion: retain the separation between validation for planning and authorized implementation.

Redundant/unnecessary instructions

No supported findings specific to this planning step.

Uncertain assessments

  • Source: step3_development_plan_do.md, stage sizing and risk resolution. Uncertainty: the one-hour stage estimates rely on extending existing installer and test machinery. Suggestion: reassess each stage before execution and split oversized work before starting; retain both platforms' completion requirements rather than silently deferring Ubuntu 22.04.

  • Source: step3_development_plan_after.md, one-page and every-stage-field requirements. Uncertainty: rendered page length depends on Markdown layout; the plan keeps all required fields in a compact outline rather than claiming a measured printed-page count. Suggestion: consider an explicit word/line budget if the page limit must be mechanically enforceable.

Planning validation evidence

  • Read-only host APT metadata reports PHP 8.1 CLI/common/SQLite/mbstring/intl candidates 8.1.2-1ubuntu2.26 from Jammy archives, with CLI ownership php8.1-cli: /usr/bin/php8.1. Running PHP without its configuration reports PDO/mbstring absent despite installed packages, confirming why capability absence alone cannot prescribe installation.

  • Downloaded Ubuntu Base 22.04.5 amd64 and verified SHA256 242cd8898b33ea806ef5f13b1076ed7c76f9f989d18384452f7166692438ff1a against the published Ubuntu manifest. A disposable extracted chroot runs Bash and exposes APT/dpkg. Location: /home/wsl/.cache/startup-dependency-recovery-planning/rootfs.

  • Existing /home/wsl/.cache/v3-dependency-install/acceptance-3/rootfs still reports Ubuntu 24.04.3 and PHP 8.3.6. Noninteractive sudo/mount-namespace availability checked. Existing test evidence includes password-sudo install/interruption; these are prior installer results, not evidence of the new startup continuation.

  • No host packages were installed/removed, no application implementation changed, and no new automatic Ubuntu 22.04 transaction was claimed. Actual transaction and continuation verification remain mandatory stage gates.

2026-10-13 06:27:33 UTC — Step 4

Debug mode: enabled, inherited from approved Step 3 and recorded in the implementation summary. User approval: “Approved Step 3.”

Necessary/useful instructions

  • Source: docs/railspike/docs/workflow/step4_implementation_before.md, “Planning Docs Commit Gate,” and RAILSPIKE.md, “Planning Artifacts.” Contribution: the new branch contains an initial plans/log/index-only commit (71b7c8ba); implementation and its summary begin afterward. Explicit path-scoped commits preserved three unrelated staged documents rather than sweeping them into implementation commits. Suggestion: retain the gate and staged-content inspection; examples should explicitly cover a pre-existing index containing unrelated user work.

  • Source: step4_implementation_do.md, “Complete the Step 3 Contract,” and the normal-entry/end-to-end rule in RAILSPIKE.md. Contribution: acceptance used ordinary ./v3 start on both Ubuntu releases, both failure states, and root/password-sudo callers, proving original options/UID, HTTP thread/reply reads/writes and shutdown. Actual emitted manual commands were also followed. This prevented a repeat of the earlier narrower Ubuntu 24.04 component-only completion. Suggestion: retain concrete known-user-environment and manual-recovery outcomes as release gates.

  • Source: step4_implementation_do.md, “Stage Boundary Protocol,” and step4_implementation_after.md, “Final Verification Checklist.” Contribution: five separate stage commits each contain their summary update; final source hashes and evidence counts were checked. Final acceptance exposed a prompt-boundary Bash signal race after ordinary refusal tests had passed; the defect was fixed and exercised with 40 boundary trials plus both full failure matrices before handoff. Suggestion: retain final outcome verification after stage verification, and state that a successful intermediate stage does not waive rerunning checks affected by later fixes.

  • Source: RAILSPIKE.md, “Railspike Debug Mode / completed-step report.” Contribution: enabled state survived organization/resumption; the existing log history remains intact and one completed-Step-4 report is appended after the five stages. Suggestion: retain durable mode state and the log-only final commit allowance.

Redundant/unnecessary instructions

No supported findings. Repeated commit/verification rules have different entry, stage-boundary and final-audit roles in this execution; repetition alone does not establish that they should be removed.

Inapplicable instructions

  • Source: step4_implementation_after.md, documentation-only checks and scoped deployment/external-system/migration verification. Applicability: this is application work with real runtime verification; deployment, schema/migration and external integrations were explicitly excluded. Host package modification was excluded; all package tests used disposable chroots. Suggestion: retain scope-based applicability and explicit environment limits rather than treating unrelated deployment work as required.

Uncertain assessments and execution deviations

  • Source: RAILSPIKE.md, “How to Use This Chain / reprint” and “Key Rules / Reprint the current step/phase instructions.” Observation: conversation phase reprints were condensed instead of reproducing the complete source files verbatim. The phase order was followed, but a condensed reprint should not be represented as exact reproduction. Suggestion: clarify whether full verbatim reproduction is required or a faithful concise restatement is acceptable; until clarified, follow the literal reprint instruction. This is an execution deviation, not evidence that the rule is unnecessary.

  • Source: step4_implementation_do.md, stage verification and the approved environment acceptance gates. Observation: early concurrent chroot assertions inspected the shared host PID view and falsely saw another target's APT process; another process assertion matched its own command. Both harness defects were corrected, earlier attempts retained, and complete corrected matrices rerun. Suggestion: clarify that test isolation must cover process identity as well as filesystems; test-harness failures should be distinguished from application failures and final acceptance should not silently reuse partial runs as complete evidence.

  • Source: step4_implementation_after.md, “Confirm the Contract” and verification in the applicable environment. Uncertainty: Linux chroots share this WSL host's kernel but do not certify the user's WSL terminal/PATH/Windows behavior. Suggestion: retain explicit evidence boundaries; keep the broader WSL and environment exploration checklist open rather than generalizing from these successes.

Handoff audit

  • Planning commit plus five stage commits verified; summary absent from the planning commit and included with every stage.

  • Per release: 9 startup/provisioning result records (including four end-to-end recovery journeys), 37 startup failure/provisioning records, 39 explicit-installer/regression records, 22 manual/provisioning records, and 4 final-source recovery/provisioning records. Records deliberately include provisioning and are not mislabeled as that many independent user journeys.

  • Machine-readable evidence captures environment, base-image checksums, final source hashes, case exit statuses and retained transcript hashes. Final-source continuation and modified-owned-binary refusal passed on both releases.

  • Earlier unrelated staged documents remain staged and unchanged by this feature. No merge, push, deployment or host package installation was performed.