Probing the live collector to settle the delete-sequence question turned up
something else: usage.picpeak.app answers a valid usage.v2 registration with
INVALID_PACKET while the identical v1 flow is accepted. It does not speak v2
yet — which the deployment notes already require, but the consequence of
getting that order wrong was worse than "reports do not send".
Opting in to v2 against a v1-only collector left the installation stuck.
Registration was refused, so nothing existed at the collector at all; the row
sat in activation_pending, disable moved it to deletion_pending, retry was
futile forever, and enable refused because the row was not `disabled`. The
abandon hatch added earlier did not apply: it was gated on
SIGNING_KEY_UNREADABLE. So the most harmless possible failure — nothing
registered anywhere — was the one an operator could not clear.
The gate is now the property that actually matters: a participation the
collector has provably never accepted (sequence 0, no receipt) with a failing
delivery can be discarded, from activation_pending as well as
deletion_pending. Its receipt records `never-registered` rather than an
unconfirmed deletion, because nothing remote exists to be unsure about. A
participation the collector *did* accept keeps the old narrow gate and its
explicit warning — clearing local state while the collector still holds
reports must stay a deliberate, warned-about act.
A collector that rejects a registration or a deletion outright now reports
SCHEMA_NOT_ACCEPTED instead of DELIVERY_FAILED, and the settings page says the
collector does not accept this report version yet. Retrying cannot fix that,
and sending the operator to look for a network fault they do not have was
wrong.
Verified end to end against the live collector: v2 opt-in reports
SCHEMA_NOT_ACCEPTED, the exit is offered immediately, the receipt says
never-registered, and joining again on v1 registers, reports and withdraws
with a collector-confirmed deletion.
Paul Nothaft
e40bc474bc