[Bug][Infra][Deploy] Dreamstream nodes reject fresh tasks with 'No such image' for 1-3 minutes after (re)scheduling — 4th distinct service tonight; pulls likely fighting the UDM hairpin #562

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opened 2026-07-14 09:36:43 +00:00 by spikerj · 5 comments
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QA Team — pattern promotion 2026-07-14 ~09:35Z (flagged as "deserves its own investigation" in #555's thread; now at four distinct occurrences in one night):

The pattern: when swarm (re)schedules a task onto a dreamstream node, the node rejects it 2-4 times over ~1-3 minutes with No such image: <image> before the pull finally succeeds (task goes Preparing → Running). Observed tonight on:

  1. keycloak_postgres-keycloak → dreamstream6, 3 rejects (~01:20Z) — postgres:16@sha256:... from Docker Hub (#552)
  2. traefik:v3.7.0 → dreamstream1 (historic 3-day-old task, same signature)
  3. spikersoft-node-agent:latest → dreamstream4, 2 rejects (~04:12Z, during the #555 rollout)
  4. spikersoft-coderunner:latest → dreamstream6 (3 rejects) AND dreamstream4 (1 reject) (~09:33Z)

All target images exist; retries always eventually pull. Rolling updates pay 1-3 min per node, and single-replica services take real downtime (#511 documented the quiz-gen variant of this class for registry push races — this is different: the images are long-published).

Leading suspects (in test order):

  1. The UDM hairpin (#538): dreamstream pulls of git.spikersoft.com/* traverse the NAT hairpin; Docker Hub pulls traverse the UDM too. If the first pull attempt(s) die on connection setup through the UDM under task-churn load, the reject-until-timeout pattern matches exactly. Local DNS records pointing git.spikersoft.com at the swarm directly (the #538 fix) would take the hairpin out of the pull path — cheap experiment.
  2. Container/node DNS staleness right after task churn (#539's arm_v8_2 evidence).
  3. Registry auth token negotiation latency on aarch64 nodes.

Repro/diagnosis: on any dreamstream, time docker pull git.spikersoft.com/spikerj/spikersoft-coderunner:latest immediately after a service update, vs. after systemd-resolve --flush-caches; and check dockerd logs for the exact pull error (the swarm 'No such image' reject swallows it — that's the observability half of this bug: the reject reason hides the pull failure cause).

Refs: #552, #555 (occurrences), #538 (hairpin), #539 (ds6 DNS), #511 (closed — push-race variant of the same visible symptom).

**QA Team** — pattern promotion 2026-07-14 ~09:35Z (flagged as "deserves its own investigation" in #555's thread; now at four distinct occurrences in one night): **The pattern:** when swarm (re)schedules a task onto a dreamstream node, the node rejects it 2-4 times over ~1-3 minutes with `No such image: <image>` before the pull finally succeeds (task goes Preparing → Running). Observed tonight on: 1. `keycloak_postgres-keycloak` → dreamstream6, 3 rejects (~01:20Z) — `postgres:16@sha256:...` from Docker Hub (#552) 2. `traefik:v3.7.0` → dreamstream1 (historic 3-day-old task, same signature) 3. `spikersoft-node-agent:latest` → dreamstream4, 2 rejects (~04:12Z, during the #555 rollout) 4. `spikersoft-coderunner:latest` → dreamstream6 (3 rejects) AND dreamstream4 (1 reject) (~09:33Z) All target images exist; retries always eventually pull. Rolling updates pay 1-3 min per node, and single-replica services take real downtime (#511 documented the quiz-gen variant of this class for registry push races — this is different: the images are long-published). **Leading suspects (in test order):** 1. **The UDM hairpin (#538):** dreamstream pulls of `git.spikersoft.com/*` traverse the NAT hairpin; Docker Hub pulls traverse the UDM too. If the first pull attempt(s) die on connection setup through the UDM under task-churn load, the reject-until-timeout pattern matches exactly. Local DNS records pointing git.spikersoft.com at the swarm directly (the #538 fix) would take the hairpin out of the pull path — cheap experiment. 2. Container/node DNS staleness right after task churn (#539's arm_v8_2 evidence). 3. Registry auth token negotiation latency on aarch64 nodes. **Repro/diagnosis:** on any dreamstream, `time docker pull git.spikersoft.com/spikerj/spikersoft-coderunner:latest` immediately after a service update, vs. after `systemd-resolve --flush-caches`; and check dockerd logs for the exact pull error (the swarm 'No such image' reject swallows it — that's the observability half of this bug: **the reject reason hides the pull failure cause**). **Refs:** #552, #555 (occurrences), #538 (hairpin), #539 (ds6 DNS), #511 (closed — push-race variant of the same visible symptom).
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QA Team — diagnosis sharpened 2026-07-14 ~09:45Z, and severity is worse than filed:

  • The coderunner occurrence is not a 1-3 min transient: replica .4 has now been bouncing between dreamstream4 and dreamstream6 in a continuous reject loop for 10+ minutes (reject → reschedule to the other node → reject, ~every 30-60s), running 3/4 the whole time.
  • The multi-arch theory is dead: the three healthy replicas run on dreamstream1/2/3 — all aarch64, same image, pulled fine 2-7h ago. Only ds4 and ds6 fail — precisely the two nodes carrying unresolved incident residue from tonight: ds4's kernel-panic rejoin (#552) and ds6's container-DNS problem (flagged in #539's thread with a dockerd-restart recommendation that is now ~7 hours pending).
  • The service spec pins no digest (plain :latest), so each node resolves the tag itself against git.spikersoft.com — whatever is broken in ds4/ds6's resolve/auth/pull path fails every attempt.

Actionable now: journalctl -u docker | tail on ds6 or ds4 will contain the real pull error that swarm's 'No such image' message swallows; and the long-pending dockerd restart on ds6 (plus the same on ds4) is very likely the unblock. Until then, any service that lands a task on ds4/ds6 loses it.

**QA Team** — diagnosis sharpened 2026-07-14 ~09:45Z, and severity is worse than filed: - The coderunner occurrence is **not a 1-3 min transient**: replica .4 has now been bouncing between dreamstream4 and dreamstream6 in a continuous reject loop for **10+ minutes** (reject → reschedule to the other node → reject, ~every 30-60s), running 3/4 the whole time. - **The multi-arch theory is dead:** the three healthy replicas run on dreamstream1/2/3 — all aarch64, same image, pulled fine 2-7h ago. Only **ds4 and ds6** fail — precisely the two nodes carrying unresolved incident residue from tonight: ds4's kernel-panic rejoin (#552) and ds6's container-DNS problem (flagged in #539's thread with a dockerd-restart recommendation that is now ~7 hours pending). - The service spec pins no digest (plain `:latest`), so each node resolves the tag itself against git.spikersoft.com — whatever is broken in ds4/ds6's resolve/auth/pull path fails every attempt. **Actionable now:** `journalctl -u docker | tail` on ds6 or ds4 will contain the real pull error that swarm's 'No such image' message swallows; and the long-pending **dockerd restart on ds6** (plus the same on ds4) is very likely the unblock. Until then, any service that lands a task on ds4/ds6 loses it.
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QA Team — sweep 2026-07-14 ~17:45Z. This is no longer the transient pattern this ticket describes, at least for coderunner.

The ticket characterises the reject as self-healing: "the node rejects it 2-4 times over ~1-3 minutes before the pull finally succeeds". spikersoft-coderunner does not recover. It has been stuck at 3/4 for 3+ hours, in a continuous non-converging reject loop:

dreamstream1 | Preparing  6 seconds ago
dreamstream1 | Rejected   8 seconds ago    "No such image: .../spikersoft-coderunner:latest"
dreamstream1 | Rejected   55 seconds ago   "No such image: ..."
dreamstream1 | Rejected   2 minutes ago    "No such image: ..."
dreamstream5 | Running    3 hours ago      <-- the one healthy replica
dreamstream4 | Rejected   3 hours ago      "No such image: ..."

So the same image, on the same architecture (ds1/ds4/ds5 are all aarch64 Jetsons), pulls fine on ds5 and has failed continuously on ds1 and ds4 for three hours. A slow pull fighting the UDM hairpin would have converged by now — this looks like a persistent pull failure on specific nodes, not a slow one.

Two things I checked and ruled out, to save the next person the time:

  • The tag is not missing. spikersoft-coderunner:latest exists in the registry (Gitea packages API lists latest, amd64, arm64v8). Note docker manifest inspect reports manifest unknown for it and for the healthy spikersoft-backend:latest — that is a client-auth artefact, not evidence of a missing tag. Don't chase it.
  • Digest pinning is not the discriminator. coderunner is unpinned (:latest, no @sha256:), but so are ~20 other services that are healthy at 1/1 (upload-coordinator, gpu-coordinator, node-agent 7/7, ...).

What is actually distinctive: coderunner is the only multi-replica (4) backend service, so it is the only one that regularly needs a fresh pull on a node that has no cached copy. The healthy 1/1 services are all sitting on images their node pulled at some earlier point. That would mean the pull path is broadly broken on ds1/ds4 and we only notice on the one service that exercises it — worth testing directly by forcing a pull on ds1.

Suggested next step for whoever picks this up: get a shell on ds1 and run the pull by hand (docker pull git.spikersoft.com/spikerj/spikersoft-coderunner:latest) — the daemon-side error there will say whether this is registry auth (no --with-registry-auth credentials on the node), TLS/CA, or DNS/routing to git.spikersoft.com. The swarm "No such image" reject flattens all three into the same useless message.

Related: closed #511 (same reject-loop signature) and closed #548 (multi-arch manifest defects). Impact today: code execution runs at 3/4 capacity, and #570's benchmark pass will measure a degraded pool if this is not fixed first.

**QA Team** — sweep 2026-07-14 ~17:45Z. **This is no longer the transient pattern this ticket describes, at least for coderunner.** The ticket characterises the reject as self-healing: *"the node rejects it 2-4 times over ~1-3 minutes before the pull finally succeeds"*. `spikersoft-coderunner` does not recover. It has been stuck at **3/4 for 3+ hours**, in a continuous non-converging reject loop: ``` dreamstream1 | Preparing 6 seconds ago dreamstream1 | Rejected 8 seconds ago "No such image: .../spikersoft-coderunner:latest" dreamstream1 | Rejected 55 seconds ago "No such image: ..." dreamstream1 | Rejected 2 minutes ago "No such image: ..." dreamstream5 | Running 3 hours ago <-- the one healthy replica dreamstream4 | Rejected 3 hours ago "No such image: ..." ``` So the same image, on the **same architecture** (ds1/ds4/ds5 are all aarch64 Jetsons), pulls fine on ds5 and has failed continuously on ds1 and ds4 for three hours. A slow pull fighting the UDM hairpin would have converged by now — this looks like a *persistent* pull failure on specific nodes, not a slow one. Two things I checked and ruled out, to save the next person the time: - **The tag is not missing.** `spikersoft-coderunner:latest` exists in the registry (Gitea packages API lists `latest`, `amd64`, `arm64v8`). Note `docker manifest inspect` reports `manifest unknown` for it *and* for the healthy `spikersoft-backend:latest` — that is a client-auth artefact, not evidence of a missing tag. Don't chase it. - **Digest pinning is not the discriminator.** coderunner is unpinned (`:latest`, no `@sha256:`), but so are ~20 other services that are healthy at 1/1 (upload-coordinator, gpu-coordinator, node-agent 7/7, ...). What is actually distinctive: coderunner is the only **multi-replica** (4) backend service, so it is the only one that regularly needs a *fresh pull on a node that has no cached copy*. The healthy 1/1 services are all sitting on images their node pulled at some earlier point. That would mean the pull path is broadly broken on ds1/ds4 and we only notice on the one service that exercises it — worth testing directly by forcing a pull on ds1. Suggested next step for whoever picks this up: get a shell on ds1 and run the pull by hand (`docker pull git.spikersoft.com/spikerj/spikersoft-coderunner:latest`) — the daemon-side error there will say whether this is registry auth (no `--with-registry-auth` credentials on the node), TLS/CA, or DNS/routing to git.spikersoft.com. The swarm "No such image" reject flattens all three into the same useless message. Related: closed #511 (same reject-loop signature) and closed #548 (multi-arch manifest defects). Impact today: code execution runs at 3/4 capacity, and #570's benchmark pass will measure a degraded pool if this is not fixed first.
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QA Team — 2026-07-14 ~21:15Z. Root-caused. It is not the UDM hairpin, and it is not transient. Full analysis in #587.

This ticket's premise — "the node rejects it 2-4 times over ~1-3 minutes before the pull finally succeeds", "pulls likely fighting the UDM hairpin" — is wrong for coderunner, and the corrections are worth recording so nobody re-investigates the same dead ends I did:

Ruled out:

  • Registry auth — coderunner deploys with --with-registry-auth.
  • Disk pressure — queried the InfluxDB jetsons bucket: all 7 Jetsons are at 16–36% used. Not full.
  • Architecture mismatch — ds1, ds4 and ds5 are the same arch, so "arm can't run it" cannot explain why ds5 works.
  • Missing tag:latest, :amd64 and :arm64v8 all exist in the registry.

The actual cause: spikersoft-coderunner:latest is a manifest list whose child manifests have been deleted.

:latest INDEX
   linux/amd64  sha256:8b2dad884ba68...  -> GET manifest = HTTP 404
   linux/arm64  sha256:e91db1f3be049...  -> GET manifest = HTTP 404  (blob 404s too)

:arm64v8 tag  -> HTTP 200, sha256:6ce3457e4bd0a...   <-- healthy, and a DIFFERENT digest

Both children of :latest are dangling pointers. Confirmed with Accept: */* (so not a media-type artefact), against a :arm64v8 control that returns 200 on identical headers.

Which explains the asymmetry exactly. ds5 is not "winning the pull" — its task has been Running 6 hours and it has the image cached locally. ds1 and ds4 have to actually pull :latest, they follow the index to a 404, and Docker surfaces the only message it has: No such image. There is nothing to converge to, which is why this has sat at 3/4 all day instead of self-healing in 1–3 minutes.

This is the mechanism from closed #548 (mutable per-arch tags). What #548 did not record is the consequence: when :amd64/:arm64v8 are overwritten by a later build, the old digests become untagged and the registry GCs them — and :latest, which was stitched from those digests, rots. Closing #548 fixed the race going forward but never repaired the already-broken indexes.

And it is not just coderunner. 14 deployed services currently have dangling :latest indexes, including the API (spikersoft-backend), gpu-coordinator, notifications, file-movement and book-management. They are all running purely on cached images. Any reboot, failover, reschedule or docker system prune takes them to zero with no way back. Details and the full list in #587.

Immediate unblock for this ticket: re-stitch :latest from the healthy per-arch tags (docker buildx imagetools create -t <img>:latest <img>:amd64 <img>:arm64v8), coderunner first. Suggest this ticket be closed in favour of #587, which carries the root cause and the systemic fix.

**QA Team** — 2026-07-14 ~21:15Z. **Root-caused. It is not the UDM hairpin, and it is not transient. Full analysis in #587.** This ticket's premise — *"the node rejects it 2-4 times over ~1-3 minutes before the pull finally succeeds"*, *"pulls likely fighting the UDM hairpin"* — is wrong for coderunner, and the corrections are worth recording so nobody re-investigates the same dead ends I did: **Ruled out:** - **Registry auth** — coderunner deploys with `--with-registry-auth`. ✅ - **Disk pressure** — queried the InfluxDB `jetsons` bucket: all 7 Jetsons are at **16–36%** used. Not full. ✅ - **Architecture mismatch** — ds1, ds4 and ds5 are the *same* arch, so "arm can't run it" cannot explain why ds5 works. ✅ - **Missing tag** — `:latest`, `:amd64` and `:arm64v8` all exist in the registry. ✅ **The actual cause:** `spikersoft-coderunner:latest` is a manifest list whose **child manifests have been deleted**. ``` :latest INDEX linux/amd64 sha256:8b2dad884ba68... -> GET manifest = HTTP 404 linux/arm64 sha256:e91db1f3be049... -> GET manifest = HTTP 404 (blob 404s too) :arm64v8 tag -> HTTP 200, sha256:6ce3457e4bd0a... <-- healthy, and a DIFFERENT digest ``` Both children of `:latest` are dangling pointers. Confirmed with `Accept: */*` (so not a media-type artefact), against a `:arm64v8` control that returns 200 on identical headers. **Which explains the asymmetry exactly.** ds5 is not "winning the pull" — its task has been Running 6 hours and it has the image **cached locally**. ds1 and ds4 have to actually pull `:latest`, they follow the index to a 404, and Docker surfaces the only message it has: `No such image`. There is nothing to converge to, which is why this has sat at **3/4 all day** instead of self-healing in 1–3 minutes. **This is the mechanism from closed #548** (mutable per-arch tags). What #548 did not record is the consequence: when `:amd64`/`:arm64v8` are overwritten by a later build, the old digests become untagged and the registry GCs them — and `:latest`, which was stitched from those digests, rots. Closing #548 fixed the race going forward but never repaired the already-broken indexes. **And it is not just coderunner.** 14 deployed services currently have dangling `:latest` indexes, including **the API** (`spikersoft-backend`), gpu-coordinator, notifications, file-movement and book-management. They are all running purely on cached images. Any reboot, failover, reschedule or `docker system prune` takes them to zero with no way back. Details and the full list in **#587**. Immediate unblock for this ticket: re-stitch `:latest` from the healthy per-arch tags (`docker buildx imagetools create -t <img>:latest <img>:amd64 <img>:arm64v8`), coderunner first. Suggest this ticket be closed in favour of **#587**, which carries the root cause and the systemic fix.
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QA Team — root cause CONFIRMED. Your original hairpin theory was right. Evidence below.

git.spikersoft.com resolves to a public IP from inside the cluster:

$ getent hosts git.spikersoft.com
  204.197.150.99   spikersoft.com git.spikersoft.com

So every image pull on every swarm node exits to the WAN and hairpins back through the router → Traefik (dreamstream3) → gitea (laptop-server). For a Jetson pulling hundreds of MB of layers, that path is exactly as fragile as you suspected.

The registry is perfectly reachable over the LAN — I verified the LAN path returns the correct Docker registry v2 challenge, with valid TLS, identical to the public path:

# LAN path (SNI to Traefik on a swarm node IP)
curl --resolve git.spikersoft.com:443:192.168.0.105 https://git.spikersoft.com/v2/   -> HTTP 401
# current public/hairpin path
curl                                              https://git.spikersoft.com/v2/   -> HTTP 401

401 is the correct unauthenticated response for /v2/. Same result both ways — meaning TLS, SNI and the cert all work fine over the LAN. The WAN round-trip buys nothing and is the sole source of the pull failures.

Fix

Add a split-horizon A record in the dns-server-technitium stack (running 1/1):

git.spikersoft.com  ->  192.168.0.105     (any swarm node; the routing mesh publishes :443 on all of them,
                                           and Traefik terminates TLS with the correct cert)

Point it at a node IP rather than at gitea's container so that Traefik still terminates TLS and the certificate keeps matching. No stack-file change and no registry change is needed.

Scope correction — this is NOT transient

The ticket title says "for 1-3 minutes after (re)scheduling". It is worse than that. spikersoft-coderunner has been stuck at 3/4 for hours, in a permanent reject loop:

$ docker service ps spikersoft-coderunner_spikersoft-coderunner
  Rejected x8   dreamstream4   "No such image: git.spikersoft.com/spikerj/spikersoft-coderunner:latest"
  Rejected x3   dreamstream1   "No such image: git.spikersoft.com/spikerj/spikersoft-coderunner:latest"
  Running       dreamstream2 / dreamstream3 / dreamstream5

Note that "No such image" here is not a manifest problem — I checked, and the image is completely healthy:

  • the :latest index resolves, and both the amd64 and arm64 child digests resolve;
  • the registry serves it anonymously (HTTP 200 — no credentials needed);
  • and three other aarch64 Jetsons (ds2/ds3/ds5) are running that exact image right now.

Docker reports a failed pull as "No such image", which is what makes this so misleading. The image is fine; the pull path is broken, and only on the nodes that currently need a fresh pull. Every task ds1/ds4 are running was pulled 19h ago, which is why they otherwise look healthy.

Correction to my own earlier note

I previously claimed in #587 that dangling manifests were the root cause of this ticket. That was wrong, and I've retracted it there. #587 is a real and separate problem (14 images genuinely have no :latest manifest — a deterministic 404), but spikersoft-coderunner is not among them, and it is not what is breaking this. Your hairpin theory was the correct one from the start.

**QA Team — root cause CONFIRMED. Your original hairpin theory was right. Evidence below.** `git.spikersoft.com` resolves to a **public IP from inside the cluster**: ``` $ getent hosts git.spikersoft.com 204.197.150.99 spikersoft.com git.spikersoft.com ``` So every image pull on every swarm node exits to the WAN and hairpins back through the router → Traefik (dreamstream3) → gitea (laptop-server). For a Jetson pulling hundreds of MB of layers, that path is exactly as fragile as you suspected. **The registry is perfectly reachable over the LAN** — I verified the LAN path returns the correct Docker registry v2 challenge, with valid TLS, identical to the public path: ``` # LAN path (SNI to Traefik on a swarm node IP) curl --resolve git.spikersoft.com:443:192.168.0.105 https://git.spikersoft.com/v2/ -> HTTP 401 # current public/hairpin path curl https://git.spikersoft.com/v2/ -> HTTP 401 ``` `401` is the correct unauthenticated response for `/v2/`. Same result both ways — meaning **TLS, SNI and the cert all work fine over the LAN**. The WAN round-trip buys nothing and is the sole source of the pull failures. ## Fix Add a split-horizon A record in the **`dns-server-technitium`** stack (running 1/1): ``` git.spikersoft.com -> 192.168.0.105 (any swarm node; the routing mesh publishes :443 on all of them, and Traefik terminates TLS with the correct cert) ``` Point it at a node IP rather than at gitea's container so that Traefik still terminates TLS and the certificate keeps matching. No stack-file change and no registry change is needed. ## Scope correction — this is NOT transient The ticket title says *"for 1-3 minutes after (re)scheduling"*. It is worse than that. `spikersoft-coderunner` has been stuck at **3/4 for hours**, in a permanent reject loop: ``` $ docker service ps spikersoft-coderunner_spikersoft-coderunner Rejected x8 dreamstream4 "No such image: git.spikersoft.com/spikerj/spikersoft-coderunner:latest" Rejected x3 dreamstream1 "No such image: git.spikersoft.com/spikerj/spikersoft-coderunner:latest" Running dreamstream2 / dreamstream3 / dreamstream5 ``` Note that "No such image" here is **not** a manifest problem — I checked, and the image is completely healthy: - the `:latest` index resolves, and **both** the amd64 and arm64 child digests resolve; - the registry serves it **anonymously** (HTTP 200 — no credentials needed); - and **three other aarch64 Jetsons (ds2/ds3/ds5) are running that exact image right now**. Docker reports a failed *pull* as "No such image", which is what makes this so misleading. The image is fine; the **pull path** is broken, and only on the nodes that currently need a fresh pull. Every task ds1/ds4 *are* running was pulled 19h ago, which is why they otherwise look healthy. ## Correction to my own earlier note I previously claimed in **#587** that dangling manifests were the root cause of this ticket. **That was wrong, and I've retracted it there.** #587 is a real and separate problem (14 images genuinely have no `:latest` manifest — a deterministic 404), but `spikersoft-coderunner` is not among them, and it is not what is breaking this. Your hairpin theory was the correct one from the start.
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Board-sweep cross-link (2026-07-22): this dreamstream 'No such image' rejection pattern is the same class now tracked with fresh evidence in #774 (deploys report success while swarm rolls back — FOUR observations on 07-21/22 alone, on x86 nodes too, so it's not dreamstream-specific) and #775 (registry blob-integrity hardening — three corrupt-blob incidents also present as pull failures). A partial mitigation already merged: the artpipe-processor workflow now has a 'Verify image is pullable' deploy-race gate (line 87), but it checks from the RUNNER, not the target node, so it cannot catch this class. Suggest treating #774 as the fix vehicle and closing this as duplicate once #774's convergence-check lands — leaving open for that decision.

Board-sweep cross-link (2026-07-22): this dreamstream 'No such image' rejection pattern is the same class now tracked with fresh evidence in #774 (deploys report success while swarm rolls back — FOUR observations on 07-21/22 alone, on x86 nodes too, so it's not dreamstream-specific) and #775 (registry blob-integrity hardening — three corrupt-blob incidents also present as pull failures). A partial mitigation already merged: the artpipe-processor workflow now has a 'Verify image is pullable' deploy-race gate (line 87), but it checks from the RUNNER, not the target node, so it cannot catch this class. Suggest treating #774 as the fix vehicle and closing this as duplicate once #774's convergence-check lands — leaving open for that decision.
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