vanlink/TODO.md

TODO — robustness backlog for the van router (wayback)

Candidate improvements toward a robust unattended mobile router, tiered by value-for-effort. Generated 2026-06-29 from a robustness review of the live box.

Already in place (for reference — don't redo)

• Multi-WAN failover (wifi → Starlink → 4G) — van-failover
• Thermal monitoring + alerts + history — van-thermal
• Battery low-charge Pushover alerts + safe auto-shutdown — van-battery
• Mains ↔ battery transition alerts
• Cockpit dashboard (AP, temps, battery, failover, WAN)
• Never-sleep / lid-closed operation
• unattended-upgrades enabled
• smartd active (SMART being read) — but see Tier 2 (alerts go nowhere)
• Time sync healthy (NTP synced)
• journald within sane ZFS limits

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Tier 1 — high value, pieces already on hand

• systemd hardware watchdog — DONE. power/10-vanlink-watchdog.conf drop-in sets RuntimeWatchdogSec=20s + RebootWatchdogSec=5min; PID1 pets intel_oc_wdt, chip hard-resets the box if systemd hangs >20s. Deployed via daemon-reexec.
• Auto power-on when mains returns — RESOLVED as "document only". Not OS-controllable on this ZenBook: /proc/acpi/wakeup is wake-from-suspend (S3/S4) only, and "restore on AC loss" is a BIOS/firmware feature this laptop likely doesn't expose. The 10% auto-shutdown is therefore a one-way trip until manual power-on. Action: check BIOS setup for an "AC power-on / restore on AC loss" option and enable it if present (documented in README §3, Battery monitor).
• Heartbeat / dead-man's switch — DONE. hbc (heartbeat client, from git.wrede.ca/andreas/heartbeat) installed to ~/venvs/hbd + ~/bin/hbc; hbc.service reports to hbd.wrede.pvt (UDP 50003) every 15s as user andreas, shipping cpu/mem/ disk/network/zfs metrics. Config /etc/hbc.yaml, vendored in heartbeat/.
• Connectivity alerts → Pushover — van-failover already knows when it fails over or when ALL WANs are down; it just logs it. Pipe those events to the Pushover plumbing so internet loss is alerted, not just battery.

Tier 2 — worth doing soon

• smartd → Pushover — smartd alerts default to emailing root (a black hole on a headless box). Wire -M exec to a Pushover script so NVMe SMART/wear warnings (reallocated sectors, wear-leveling) actually reach a phone.
• ZFS hygiene (root is zroot) — schedule a periodic scrub (with zfs-zed alerting), and auto-snapshot before deploy.sh for one-command rollback. Cap ARC if RAM ever gets tight.
• Security hardening:
  • Cockpit binds *:9090 (all interfaces incl. WANs unless nftables drops inbound — confirm). Restrict to LAN/ZeroTier.
  • Add fail2ban for Cockpit/SSH.
  • WPA3-transition on the AP.
  • Guest SSID isolated from trusted devices.
• Cellular data-cap tracking — vnstat or nftables counters on the gsm iface + a Pushover alert near the monthly cap, to avoid bill shock when parked on 4G.

Tier 3 — situational

• Captive-portal handling for public-WiFi WANs (campsites / neighbour APs) — detection at minimum, auto-auth for frequently-used ones.
• GPS — location logging / geofencing / offline time source.
• Secrets backup — git covers configs, but /etc/van-battery/pushover.json and other secrets are intentionally out of git. Document a restore path so a disk swap doesn't lose them.

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Suggested next: Tier 1. The watchdog and connectivity-alerts are quick and reuse existing plumbing; the AC-restore BIOS setting is what makes the battery auto-shutdown genuinely safe rather than a trap.