moonlock/DECISIONS.md

Decisions

Architectural and design decisions for Moonlock, in reverse chronological order.

2026-04-09 – Monitor hotplug via connect_monitor signal

• Who: Nyx, Dom
• Why: moonlock crashed with segfault in libgtk-4.so after suspend/resume — HDMI monitor disconnect/reconnect invalidated GDK monitor objects, and the statically created windows referenced destroyed surfaces. Crash at consistent GTK4 offset (0x278 NULL dereference), 3x reproduced.
• Tradeoffs: Wallpaper texture now loaded before lock() instead of after (connect_monitor fires during lock() and needs the texture). Local JPEG loading is fast enough that the delay is negligible. Shared state moved to Rc's for the signal closure — slightly more indirection but necessary for dynamic window creation.
• How: (1) Bump gtk4-session-lock feature from v1_1 to v1_2 to enable Instance::connect_monitor. (2) Replace manual monitor iteration with lock.connect_monitor() signal handler that creates windows on demand. (3) Signal fires once per existing monitor at lock() and again on hotplug. (4) Windows auto-unmap when their monitor disappears (ext-session-lock-v1 guarantee). (5) Fingerprint listener published to shared Rc so hotplugged monitors get FP labels.

2026-03-31 – Fourth audit: peek icon, blur limit, GResource compression, sync markers

• Who: Ragnar, Dom
• Why: Fourth triple audit found blur limit inconsistency (moonlock 0–100 vs moongreet/moonset 0–200), missing GResource compression, peek icon inconsistency, and duplicated code without sync markers.
• Tradeoffs: Peek icon enabled in lockscreen — user decision favoring UX consistency over shoulder-surfing protection. Acceptable for single-user desktop. Blur limit raised to 200 for ecosystem consistency.
• How: (1) show_peek_icon(true) in lockscreen password entry. (2) clamp(0.0, 200.0) for blur in config.rs. (3) compressed="true" on CSS/SVG GResource entries. (4) SYNC comments on duplicated blur/background functions pointing to moongreet and moonset.

2026-03-30 – Third audit: blur offset, lock-before-IO, FP signal lifecycle, TOCTOU

• Who: Nyx, Dom
• Why: Third triple audit (quality, performance, security) found: blur padding offset rendering texture at (0,0) instead of (-pad,-pad) causing edge darkening on left/top (BUG), wallpaper disk I/O blocking before lock() extending the unsecured window (PERF/SEC), signal handler duplication on resume_async (SEC), failed_attempts not reset on FP resume (SEC), unknown VerifyStatus with done=false hanging FP listener (SEC), TOCTOU in is_file+is_symlink checks (SEC), dead code in faillock_warning (QUALITY), unbounded blur sigma (SEC).
• Tradeoffs: Wallpaper loads after lock() — screen briefly shows without wallpaper until texture is ready. Acceptable: security > aesthetics. Blur sigma clamped to [0.0, 100.0] — arbitrary upper bound but prevents GPU memory exhaustion.
• How: (1) Texture offset to (-pad, -pad) in render_blurred_texture. (2) lock.lock() before resolve_background_path. (3) begin_verification disconnects old signal_id before registering new. (4) resume_async resets failed_attempts. (5) Unknown VerifyStatus with done=true triggers restart. (6) symlink_metadata() for atomic file+symlink check. (7) faillock_warning dead code removed, saturating_sub. (8) background_blur clamped. (9) Redundant Zeroizing<Vec> removed. (10) Default impl for FingerprintListener. (11) on_verify_status restricted to pub(crate). (12) Warn logging for non-UTF-8 GECOS and avatar paths.

2026-03-30 – Second audit: zeroize CString, FP account check, PAM timeout, blur downscale

• Who: Nyx, Dom
• Why: Second triple audit (quality, performance, security) found: CString password copy not zeroized (HIGH), fingerprint unlock bypassing pam_acct_mgmt (MEDIUM), no PAM timeout leaving user locked out on hanging modules (MEDIUM), GPU blur on full wallpaper resolution (MEDIUM), no-monitor edge case doing return instead of exit(1) (MEDIUM).
• Tradeoffs: PAM timeout (30s) uses a generation counter to avoid stale result interference — adds complexity but prevents parallel PAM sessions. FP restart after failed account check re-claims the device, adding a D-Bus round-trip, but prevents permanent FP death on transient failures. Blur downscale to 1920px cap trades negligible quality for ~4x less GPU work on 4K wallpapers.
• How: (1) Zeroizing<CString> wraps password in auth.rs, zeroize/std feature enabled. (2) check_account() calls pam_acct_mgmt after FP match; resume_async() restarts FP on transient failure. (3) auth_generation counter invalidates stale PAM results; 30s timeout re-enables UI. (4) MAX_BLUR_DIMENSION caps blur input at 1920px, sigma scaled proportionally. (5) exit(1) on no-monitor after lock.lock().

2026-03-28 – Remove embedded wallpaper from binary

• Who: Nyx, Dom
• Why: Wallpaper is installed by moonarch to /usr/share/moonarch/wallpaper.jpg. Embedding a 374K JPEG in the binary is redundant. GTK background color (Catppuccin Mocha base) is a clean fallback.
• Tradeoffs: Without moonarch installed AND without config, lockscreen shows plain dark background instead of wallpaper. Acceptable — that's the expected minimal state.
• How: Remove wallpaper.jpg from GResources, return None from resolve_background_path when no file found, skip background picture creation when no texture available.

2026-03-28 – Audit-driven security and lifecycle fixes (v0.6.0)

• Who: Nyx, Dom
• Why: Triple audit (quality, performance, security) revealed a critical D-Bus signal spoofing vector, fingerprint lifecycle bugs, and multi-monitor performance issues.
• Tradeoffs: cleanup_dbus() extraction adds a method but clarifies the stop/match ownership; running_flag: Rc<Cell<bool>> adds a field but prevents race between async restart and stop; sender validation adds a check per signal but closes the only known auth bypass.
• How: (1) Validate D-Bus VerifyStatus sender against fprintd's unique bus name. (2) Extract cleanup_dbus() from stop(), call it on verify-match. (3) Rc<Cell<bool>> running flag checked after await in restart_verify_async. (4) Consistent 3s D-Bus timeouts. (5) Panic hook before logging. (6) Blur and avatar caches shared across monitors. (7) Peek icon disabled. (8) Symlink rejection for background_path. (9) TOML parse errors logged.

2026-03-28 – GPU blur via GskBlurNode replaces CPU blur

• Who: Nyx, Dom
• Why: CPU-side Gaussian blur (image crate) blocked the GTK main thread for 500ms–2s on 4K wallpapers at cold cache. Disk cache mitigated repeat starts but added ~100 lines of complexity.
• Tradeoffs: GPU blur quality is slightly different (box-blur approximation vs true Gaussian), acceptable for wallpaper. Removes image and dirs dependencies entirely. No disk cache needed.
• How: Snapshot::push_blur() + GskRenderer::render_texture() on connect_realize. Blur happens once on the GPU when the widget gets its renderer, producing a concrete gdk::Texture. Zero startup latency.

2026-03-28 – Optional background blur via image crate (superseded)

• Who: Nyx, Dom
• Why: Consistent with moonset/moongreet — blurred wallpaper as lockscreen background is a common UX pattern
• Tradeoffs: Adds image crate dependency (~15 transitive crates); CPU-side Gaussian blur at load time adds startup latency proportional to image size and sigma. Acceptable because blur runs once and the texture is shared across monitors.
• How: load_background_texture(bg_path, blur_radius) loads texture, optionally applies imageops::blur(), returns gdk::Texture. Config option background_blur: Option<f32> in TOML.

2026-03-28 – Shared wallpaper texture pattern (aligned with moonset/moongreet)

• Who: Nyx, Dom
• Why: Previously loaded wallpaper per-window via Picture::for_filename(). Multi-monitor setups decoded the JPEG redundantly. Blur feature requires texture pixel access anyway.
• Tradeoffs: Slightly more code in main.rs (texture loaded before window creation), but avoids redundant decoding and enables the blur feature.
• How: load_background_texture() in lockscreen.rs decodes once, create_background_picture() wraps shared gdk::Texture in gtk::Picture. Same pattern as moonset/moongreet.