Make iterating on a Firecracker-friendly Void guest practical without replacing the Debian default image path.
Add local Void rootfs build/register/verify plumbing, a language-agnostic dev package baseline, and guest SSH/work-disk hardening so new images use the runtime bundle key, keep a normal root bash environment, and repair stale nested /root layouts on restart.
Replace the guest PING/PONG responder with an HTTP /healthz agent over vsock, rename the runtime bundle and config surface from ping helper to agent while still accepting the legacy keys, and route the post-SSH reminder through the new vm.health path.
Validated with GOCACHE=/tmp/banger-gocache go test ./..., make build, bash -n customize.sh make-rootfs-void.sh, and git diff --check.
Beat VM create wall time without changing VM semantics.
Generate a work-seed ext4 sidecar during image builds and rootfs rebuilds, then clone and resize that seed for each new VM instead of rebuilding /root from scratch. Plumb the new seed artifact through config, runtime metadata, store state, runtime-bundle defaults, doctor checks, and default-image reconciliation so older images still fall back cleanly.
Add a daemon TAP pool to keep idle bridge-attached devices warm, expose stage timing in lifecycle logs, add a create/SSH benchmark script plus Make target, and teach verify.sh that tap-pool-* devices are reusable capacity rather than cleanup leaks.
Validated with go test ./..., make build, ./verify.sh, and make bench-create ARGS="--runs 2".
Remind users when a VM is still running after hanger vm ssh exits instead of silently dropping them back to the host shell.\n\nAttach a Firecracker vsock device to each VM, persist the host vsock path/CID,\nadd a new guest-side banger-vsock-pingd responder to the runtime bundle and both\nimage-build paths, and expose a vm.ping RPC that the CLI and TUI call after SSH\nreturns. Doctor and start/build preflight now validate the helper plus\n/dev/vhost-vsock so the feature fails early and clearly.\n\nValidated with go mod tidy, bash -n customize.sh, git diff --check, make build,\nand GOCACHE=/tmp/banger-gocache go test ./... outside the sandbox because the\ndaemon tests need real Unix/UDP sockets. Rebuild the image/rootfs used for new\nVMs so the guest ping service is present.
Serve daemon-managed .vm names directly from bangerd on 127.0.0.1:42069 instead of shelling out to mapdns. This keeps DNS state tied to VM lifecycle and lets the daemon rebuild records from running VMs after startup or reconcile.
Add a small in-process authoritative DNS server, register and remove records from the VM start/stop/delete paths, and show the listener in daemon status. Remove the mapdns config and preflight surface, stop helper-flow DNS publishing in customize.sh and interactive.sh, drop dns.sh from the runtime bundle, and update docs/tests for the new local-resolver integration model.
Validated with GOCACHE=/tmp/banger-gocache go test ./..., GOCACHE=/tmp/banger-gocache make build, and bash -n customize.sh interactive.sh.
VM start, image build, and network/setup failures were hard to diagnose because bangerd emitted almost no lifecycle logs and the Firecracker SDK logger was discarded. This adds a daemon-wide JSON logger with configurable log level so failures leave breadcrumbs instead of only side effects.
Log the main daemon and VM lifecycle stages, preserve raw Firecracker and image-build helper output in dedicated files, and include those log paths in daemon status and returned errors. Bridge SDK logrus output into the daemon logger at debug level so low-level Firecracker diagnostics are available without making normal info logs unreadable.
Validation: go test ./... and make build. Left unrelated worktree changes out of this commit, including internal/api/types.go, the deleted shell scripts, and my-rootfs.ext4.
Stop assuming one workstation layout for runtime artifacts, mapdns, and host tooling. The daemon and shell helpers now use portable mapdns configuration, and runtime bundles can carry bundle.json metadata for their default kernel, initrd, modules, rootfs, and helper paths.
Load bundle metadata through config with a legacy layout fallback, thread mapdns_bin/mapdns_data_file through the Go and shell paths, and add command-scoped preflight checks for VM start, NAT, image build, work-disk resize, and SSH so missing tools or artifacts fail with actionable errors.
Update the runtime-bundle manifest, docs, and tests to match the new model. Verified with go test ./..., make build, and bash -n customize.sh interactive.sh dns.sh make-rootfs.sh verify.sh.
Fix the misleading make install path where banger and bangerd still depended on a repo checkout for Firecracker, guest artifacts, image builds, and the SSH key.
Replace repo-root inference with an explicit runtime bundle model: resolve a runtime_dir from env/config/install layout, derive concrete artifact paths from it, and update the daemon, CLI, and image-build flow to use those paths. Keep repo_root only as an explicit compatibility alias instead of auto-detecting it.
Teach customize.sh to run from a read-only bundled runtime tree while writing transient state under XDG/BANGER_STATE_DIR, and make make install copy the runtime assets into PREFIX/lib/banger so installed binaries stay usable outside the repo.
Validate with go test ./..., make build, bash -n customize.sh, and make install DESTDIR=/tmp/banger-install PREFIX=/usr. An out-of-repo installed-binary smoke test was attempted, but this sandbox blocked bangerd from binding its Unix socket (setsockopt: operation not permitted).
Replace the shell-only user workflow with `banger` and `bangerd`: Cobra commands, XDG/SQLite-backed state, managed VM and image lifecycle, and a Bubble Tea TUI for browsing and operating VMs.\n\nKeep Firecracker orchestration behind the daemon so VM specs become persistent objects, and add repo entrypoints for building, installing, and documenting the new flow while still delegating rootfs customization to the existing shell tooling.\n\nHarden the control plane around real usage by reclaiming Firecracker API sockets for the user, restarting stale daemons after rebuilds, and returning the correct `vm.create` payload so the CLI and TUI creation flow work reliably.\n\nValidation: `go test ./...`, `make build`, and a host-side smoke test with `./banger vm create --name codex-smoke`.
