Give mosquitto's bind-mounted dirs to uid 1883, not root

The broker crash-looped on every deploy: "Unable to load server certificate
/mosquitto/certs/mqtt.crt ... Permission denied". The cert-sync script wrote
600 root:root into a 0700 root:root directory, on the assumption that
mosquitto runs as root inside its container. It does not — the stock
eclipse-mosquitto entrypoint drops privileges to the in-image mosquitto
user, confirmed on the server as uid=1883(mosquitto) gid=1883(mosquitto),
and the broker's own log says so on every start.

Certs dir is now root:1883 0750 with the cert 0644 and the key 0640, and
the data dir is 1883:1883 recursively — recursively because mosquitto
WRITES dynamic-security.json there, and a root-owned file left by an
earlier deploy would still be unwritable after a directory-only chown.

Also drops the "unverified Caddy cert path" note: a real issuance confirmed
the path, producing CN=mqtt.drb.cusano.net signed by Let's Encrypt.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

infra/ansible/roles/deploy/tasks/main.yml

@@ -72,26 +72,36 @@
 # read Caddy's own cert storage, so a systemd path unit + oneshot service
 # copies a readable copy out and SIGHUPs the broker on every change.
 
+# root:1883 0750, not root:root 0700. The stock eclipse-mosquitto entrypoint
+# drops privileges to the in-image `mosquitto` user (uid/gid 1883), so a
+# root-only directory makes the broker fail to read its own cert and
+# crash-loop: "Unable to load server certificate ... Permission denied".
+# The host has no `mosquitto` user, hence the numeric gid.
 - name: Create mosquitto certs directory
   file:
     path: /opt/drb/mosquitto-certs
     state: directory
     owner: root
-    group: root
+    group: "1883"
-    mode: "0700"
+    mode: "0750"
 
 # dynamic-security.json (node credentials — see app/internal/dynsec.py)
-# lives here. Root-owned is fine: the mosquitto container itself runs as
+# lives here, and mosquitto WRITES it, so this must be owned by the uid the
-# root (no `user` directive in mosquitto.conf, matching the pre-existing
+# broker actually runs as (1883), not root. The earlier assumption that the
-# setup this project already ran before the dynsec change), so it can
+# container runs as root was wrong — the image's entrypoint drops privileges
-# read/write this directory directly without any host-side chown dance.
+# to the `mosquitto` user, which a real deploy proved by failing to read a
+# root-owned cert. Same numeric-gid reasoning as the certs directory above.
 - name: Create mosquitto data directory
   file:
     path: /opt/drb/mosquitto-data
     state: directory
-    owner: root
+    owner: "1883"
-    group: root
+    group: "1883"
     mode: "0700"
+    # recurse so an existing root-owned dynamic-security.json / mosquitto.db
+    # left behind by the earlier root-owned deploy gets fixed too — chowning
+    # only the directory would leave the broker unable to rewrite them.
+    recurse: true
 
 - name: Deploy MQTT cert-sync script
   template:

infra/ansible/roles/deploy/templates/sync-mqtt-cert.sh.j2

@@ -10,12 +10,9 @@
 # source cert file for changes — a path unit rather than cron so this fires
 # on the actual write instead of racing a polling interval.
 #
-# UNVERIFIED: the exact source path below assumes Caddy's default file
+# CONFIRMED 2026-08-16 against a real issuance on drb-server: this path is
-# storage layout and Let's Encrypt's production ACME directory name. This
+# correct, and the copied cert came out as CN=mqtt.drb.cusano.net issued by
-# has not been confirmed against a real Caddy cert issuance for this
+# Let's Encrypt. Was previously flagged unverified.
-# project — check `caddy storage` / find the actual path under
-# /var/lib/caddy the first time this runs, and correct CADDY_CERT_DIR below
-# if it doesn't match.
 #
 # UNVERIFIED: mosquitto 2.x reloading TLS certs on SIGHUP without dropping
 # connections is documented upstream but untested here. If listener 8883
@@ -43,8 +40,16 @@ mkdir -p "$DEST_DIR"
 # user) needs its own readable copy, not a pointer to an unreadable file.
 cp "$SRC_CERT" "$DEST_DIR/mqtt.crt"
 cp "$SRC_KEY"  "$DEST_DIR/mqtt.key"
-chmod 600 "$DEST_DIR/mqtt.crt" "$DEST_DIR/mqtt.key"
+# Ownership matters: the stock eclipse-mosquitto entrypoint drops privileges
-chown root:root "$DEST_DIR/mqtt.crt" "$DEST_DIR/mqtt.key"
+# to the in-image `mosquitto` user (uid/gid 1883) — the broker does NOT run
+# as root, despite what an earlier note in DEFERRED.md claimed. Proof from a
+# real deploy: "running mosquitto as user: mosquitto", immediately followed
+# by "Unable to load server certificate ... Permission denied" on a
+# 600 root:root cert. The host has no such user, so use the numeric gid.
+# The cert is public material (0644); the key is group-read only (0640).
+chown root:1883 "$DEST_DIR/mqtt.crt" "$DEST_DIR/mqtt.key"
+chmod 644 "$DEST_DIR/mqtt.crt"
+chmod 640 "$DEST_DIR/mqtt.key"
 
 cd "$APP_DIR"
 docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml kill -s HUP mosquitto