ssfuisu/cortex v1.28.0

Cortex Release v1.28.0

on GitHub

Cortex Release v1.28.0

Added

• Users other than root, for the programs. Until now every program was root and stayed root:
  su postgres, runuser and a server that drops to its own user only pretended to, and chown
  did nothing. Now a process that changes its ids is that user for itself and for everything it
  starts (also through env -i), an ordinary user cannot take root back, set-user-ID programs
  (passwd, chsh) run as their owner, and chown gives a file an owner every program sees
  (kept in /var/lib/cortex/owners, gone with the file). Files a user makes are that user's. The
  other end of a Unix socket is the user that process runs as, so peer authentication works.
  PostgreSQL's own cluster now works in normal mode: pg_createcluster, service postgresql start and su postgres -c psql. The kernel still sees one user, the app's: this changes what
  the programs see, not what they may do.
• cortex-api no-fakeroot: a shell (or one command) where programs run as an ordinary user,
  cortex, instead of root, for tools that refuse root such as Claude Code's
  --dangerously-skip-permissions. sudo still works in it, exit goes back, and the session's
  other shells stay root.
• Ports below 1024. Android refuses them to apps, so a server that asks for one gets the port
  8000 above it (80 is 8080, 443 is 8443) and says so once; a connection to the low port on the
  phone itself finds it there, so curl http://localhost reaches nginx on "80".
• Renaming sessions: a long press on a tab, or on a session in the drawer, gives it a name,
  shown instead of its number and kept when the sessions come back.
• Store metadata (fastlane/) for IzzyOnDroid and F-Droid.

Fixed

• 32-bit phones: every stat() through the library answered with nonsense. Ubuntu's armhf
  programs are built with a 64-bit time_t and off_t, so their stat() is __stat64_time64,
  and the library's function of that name passed the call on to the C library's old 32-bit stat,
  whose struct stat is laid out otherwise: a 12345-byte file had a size of 53021371269120. The
  same went for lstat, fstat, fstatat, open (files over 2 GB), truncate, statfs,
  setrlimit, the utime family, sendmsg and recvmsg. Each now goes to the version of its own
  name. A test runs it under qemu-arm.
• Root could not write its own read-only files. Root writes a file whatever its mode, the app
  only one its mode allows, so cp over postgresql-common's 0444 apt configuration failed with
  "Permission denied". A file of the app that its mode closes is opened for root's programs.
• getresuid() and getresgid() answered with the app's real ids instead of the ones the programs
  see.

Downloads

• Cortex-arm64-v8a-signed.apk: 64-bit ARM (almost all current phones)
• Cortex-armeabi-v7a-signed.apk: 32-bit ARM

SHA256SUMS.txt has the checksums. Each APK also has a build attestation: gh attestation verify Cortex-arm64-v8a-signed.apk --repo ssfuisu/cortex shows it was built by this repository's workflow from the tagged source.

How to verify a download: signing/README.md. All versions: CHANGELOG.md.