A server started as `python -c "from ..._web_server import serve; serve(
port=8000)"` ran for five hours after the code beneath it changed, reporting
an 8h gaming budget while the daemon enforced 6h and had already cut gaming
off. Two separate holes let that happen.
The staleness check only ran from cmd_serve, so a server started any other
way never met it. And is_our_server matched argv containing
"steam_backlog_enforcer.main", which a `python -c` process does not have --
so that server could not even be identified as ours: `run.sh serve` would
have refused the port and named it as a stranger rather than replacing it.
_serve_stale puts the check inside the server, where no launch path can skip
it. Every route, static included, returns 503 once any package .py is newer
than this process, because a fresh page fetching stale numbers is the same
lie with extra steps. The answer is memoised for five seconds so it does not
stat the package per request; that bounds the staleness window instead of
leaving it open forever.
Refusing is only half a fix -- a process that 503s forever is honest and
useless -- so a refused request also stands the server down. The new
steam-backlog-enforcer-web.service supplies the other half with
Restart=always: it dies on stale code and returns on current code with
nobody having to remember anything. A user unit, not a system one; it serves
read-only views and needs no privilege. install.sh installs and enables it
rather than printing instructions.
is_our_server now substring-matches the joined argv, so run.sh serve,
python -m ...main serve and a bare python -c are all recognised.
newest_py_since moves into _serve_stale and _serve_guard delegates to it.
Both needed the same scan, and two copies would have been free to disagree
about whether a server is current -- which is the entire failure being fixed.
Verified end to end: healthy 200, touch _budget_view.py, next request 503,
systemd replaces the process, back to 200 reporting 6.0h and blocked=True.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Fcwu78wk17FWMHbbfbyicc
