Documentation
Managing devices and their lifecycle
A device is a machine enrolled in a network: there it receives a durable identity, a stable address and an internal name. From the console, you follow its entire life — from enrollment to revocation — through renaming and temporary suspension. This page describes the three ways to enroll a machine, the statuses it can move through, renaming via MagicDNS and what a revocation produces.
Enrolling a machine
Enrolling means attaching a machine to a network and giving it its identity in the mesh. VIGIL-MESH offers three methods depending on the degree of control you want; they are set up in the console and then applied on the machine using the client. The full machine-side procedure is described in /en/docs/demarrer-enrolement.
- 1Pre-authorized keyA key issued in advance, with limited use (a bounded number of enrollments and validity period), convenient for preparing a batch of machines or automating a deployment. The machine that presents it joins the network without additional manual validation.
- 2Short-lived invitationAn invitation link or code with a brief lifetime, meant to bring in a person or a one-off machine. The invitation expires on its own, which avoids forgotten tokens lying around.
- 3Approval queueThe machine asks to join, and an administrator explicitly approves it from the console. This is the most controlled mode: no machine gets in without a human decision traced in the audit.
The lifecycle: device statuses
Once enrolled, a machine carries a status that decides its place in the network. The status is managed from the console and propagates to the other members via the signed network map: changing a status means changing what peers are allowed to do with that machine.
| Status | What it means | Effect on the network |
|---|---|---|
| Active | The machine is enrolled and allowed to participate. | It receives its address, resolves and is resolved by MagicDNS, and communicates according to the access policy. |
| Suspended | A temporary set-aside, without losing its identity or its address. | Its sessions are cut and it can no longer reach the network; it can be reactivated later without re-enrolling. |
| Revoked | A permanent withdrawal of the trust granted to the machine. | Its identity is no longer accepted: it must be re-enrolled to come back, with a new identity. |
| Expired | The authorization attached to the machine has reached its end. | It is treated as unauthorized until renewed; useful for time-bounded access. |
Renaming and MagicDNS
You rarely reach a machine by its address: each one carries a short name resolved locally by MagicDNS, with no DNS query ever leaving the node. From the console, you rename a machine and that name becomes the canonical way to refer to it inside the network.
- Choose meaningful, stable names: they serve as a practical address and show up in the audit as in the topology.
- Renaming changes the internal name, not the machine's cryptographic identity or its stable address.
- A clear name per role and per site (for example the function and the location) avoids confusion as the fleet grows.
How addressing and name resolution work in detail — address ranges, strictly local resolution — is covered in /en/docs/adressage-dns and /en/docs/config-magicdns.
Immediate revocation
When a machine has to go — loss, theft, end of an assignment, suspected compromise — revocation withdraws the trust it was granted. It is an explicit administration action, traced in the audit.
Revocation takes effect immediately: the new signed network map that excludes the machine is distributed to the members, its ongoing sessions are cut and its identity is no longer accepted. To bring it back, it must be re-enrolled, which gives it a new identity — the old one never becomes valid again.