fix(daemon): no terminal on the install container, and SteamCMD is why

[aaldersondev]

The report

A Garry's Mod install, twice, ending on:

Connecting anonymously to Steam Public...OK
Waiting for client config...OK
Waiting for user info...OK
ERROR! Failed to install app '4020' (Missing configuration)
[Hopper] Installation failed (code 8).

What it is

The tty the daemon gives the install container.

Measured on one machine, interleaved so that neither time nor a Steam outage can explain it:

Container	Result
with -t	Missing configuration, 7 runs out of 7
without -t	downloads all 6.87 GB, 3 runs out of 3

TERM is not the variable — TERM=xterm without a tty downloads, an empty TERM with one fails. Nothing a script can do escapes it either: stdin from /dev/null, stdout down a pipe, and setsid to drop the controlling terminal were all still refused. Ruled out along the way: the node's own configuration (allowedOrigins, MTU, enable_icc), the capability set, the memory and pid limits, and disk space — 1.9 GB for a 6.87 GB depot gives state is 0x202, which is a different message.

This is not one game. 104 of the 274 published eggs read for this catalogue install from SteamCMD. A tty was a wall in front of every one of them, with a message that names neither the panel nor the terminal.

What changes

Tty: false on the install container.

The cost is the attach stream, which is then multiplexed rather than plain: eight bytes of header before each piece of output, frames that straddle socket reads, stdout and stderr interleaved. DockerFrameReader reads it back into the one text stream a tty used to give. It decodes through a StringDecoder, which also closes a seam that was already there — chunk.toString('utf8') split a multi-byte character into two replacement characters at every chunk boundary.

Its fallback is narrow and deliberate: a header that makes no sense turns the rest of the stream into text. It should never happen, since the daemon creates the containers it attaches to — but an install console filling with control characters is the worst failure available on the screen somebody is watching to find out why their install is stuck.

The installer's tests now emit framed output, so they exercise the path that runs rather than that fallback. Verified by mutation: making the reader pass bytes through fails eight unit tests and one installer test.

And a retry, which is a different question

6.87 GB is a long time for a connection to stay up, and Steam resumes from what it has staged under steamapps/downloading. So the Source install makes three attempts, then names which of three things happened:

SteamCMD says	What it means
Missing configuration	The install container had a terminal — this node's daemon is older than the panel that sent the script. Update it.
state is 0x202	Out of room; the install wants about twice the finished size free.
No subscription	The app id is not anonymously installable.

That first row is the version-skew case this fix creates: the panel sends the script, the daemon creates the container, and a node that has not been updated still has the tty.

Replaces #122

That PR blamed a passing Steam mood, on a comparison with an uncontrolled variable — the two containers differed by a tty, not only by ten minutes. Closed with the measurements.

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