ADR-016: Passphrase and readiness follow Holo’s module

• Status: Accepted
• Date: 2026-08-28
• Source: #15, issue description, section “6. Decisions (ADR amendments, effective now)”; summarised in #1 under “Amendments from the research record”

Context

From #15, section 5:

Holo-Host/holo-host nix/modules/nixos/holochain/default.nix (pushed 2026-07-03): options under holo.holochain, default package holonix 0.5 (behind), passphraseFile generated with pwgen in preStart, holochain --piped --config-path … < passphrase, Type = "notify" (the conductor does sd_notify), StateDirectory mode 0700, Restart = always. A sibling hc-http-gw/ module exists next to it. This is the closest prior art and the reference for our passphrase and readiness handling.

Decision

Slice 2 generates the lair passphrase in preStart into $STATE_DIRECTORY (mode 0600, pwgen or openssl rand), feeds it with holochain --piped < file, uses Type = "notify" (verify the conductor’s sd_notify in the VM; fall back to the port poll only if it does not fire), StateDirectory 0700. Credit Holo-Host/holo-host in docs/architecture.md.

Consequences

From #15, section 7, for slice 2 (#3): “passphrase per ADR-016”.

Later record

• #16 reports Type = "notify" proven in the VM (systemd prints Started Holochain conductor. only after the conductor’s readiness signal), so the port-poll fallback was not needed. On main, modules/holochain-edgenode.nix runs the conductor as Type = "notify" by default through the useSystemdNotify option, with Type = "simple" when it is set to false.
• The credit is in docs/architecture.md § The lair passphrase and readiness.