fix(image): keep the Tor onion reachable on RTC-less boards

An RTC-less Pi boots at 1970; Tor then rejects the consensus and the unlock
onion never publishes. Bake a clock floor (build epoch) into the initramfs and
jump the clock forward to it before Tor starts, and pass a numeric tor_ntp= in
the cmdline so busybox ntpd syncs without DNS. Proven on hardware: the onion
unlock succeeded on a Pi 3 after this.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>

lim/configuration/initramfs-tools/tor_hook

@@ -25,6 +25,8 @@ for bb in /bin/busybox /usr/bin/busybox; do
     [ -x "$bb" ] && { copy_exec "$bb" /usr/local/bin/busybox; break; }
 done
 
+date -u +%s > "${DESTDIR}/etc/tor-clock-floor"
+
 # Onion keys + torrc, staged on the system by lim.
 mkdir -p "${DESTDIR}/etc/tor/onion"
 for key in hostname hs_ed25519_public_key hs_ed25519_secret_key; do

lim/configuration/initramfs-tools/tor_premount

@@ -34,8 +34,12 @@ if [ ! -s /etc/resolv.conf ]; then
     done
 fi
 
-# RTC-less boards boot at 1970; Tor rejects the consensus otherwise. Bounded so
+floor=$(cat /etc/tor-clock-floor 2>/dev/null || echo 0)
-# a failed sync never blocks boot.
+if [ "$(date +%s)" -lt "$floor" ]; then
+    /usr/local/bin/busybox date -s "@$floor" >/dev/null 2>&1 \
+        || date -s "@$floor" >/dev/null 2>&1 || true
+fi
+
 if [ -x /usr/local/bin/busybox ]; then
     /usr/local/bin/busybox timeout 30 \
         /usr/local/bin/busybox ntpd -n -q -p "${tor_ntp:-pool.ntp.org}" \

lim/image/initramfs/initramfs_tools.py

@@ -20,6 +20,9 @@ from lim.image.initramfs.base import InitramfsBackend
 from lim.image.plan import ImagePlan
 from lim.image.session import ImageSession, chroot_bash, install_packages
 
+# Numeric IP, not a hostname: the initramfs has no DNS resolver.
+_DEFAULT_NTP = "162.159.200.123"
+
 
 class InitramfsToolsBackend(InitramfsBackend):
     def luks_package_collection(self) -> str:
@@ -91,12 +94,7 @@ class InitramfsToolsBackend(InitramfsBackend):
             "update-initramfs -c -k all 2>/dev/null || update-initramfs -u -k all",
         )
 
-    def configure_bootloader(
+    def configure_bootloader(self, plan: ImagePlan, session: ImageSession, root: Path) -> None:
-        self,
-        plan: ImagePlan,  # noqa: ARG002
-        session: ImageSession,
-        root: Path,
-    ) -> None:
         hostname = (root / "etc/hostname").read_text().strip()
         boot = session.boot_mount_path
 
@@ -113,5 +111,7 @@ class InitramfsToolsBackend(InitramfsBackend):
             text = f"{text} ip=::::{hostname}:eth0:dhcp"
         if "net.ifnames=0" not in text:
             text = f"{text} net.ifnames=0"
+        if plan.tor_unlock and "tor_ntp=" not in text:
+            text = f"{text} tor_ntp={_DEFAULT_NTP}"
         cmdline_txt.write_text(text + "\n")
         ui.info(f"Content of {cmdline_txt}:{cmdline_txt.read_text()}")

tests/unit/test_tor.py

@@ -174,6 +174,7 @@ class TestInitramfsToolsBackend:
         assert "root=/dev/mapper/cryptroot" in cmdline
         assert "root=PARTUUID=abcd-02" not in cmdline
         assert "ip=::::pi:eth0:dhcp" in cmdline
+        assert "tor_ntp=" in cmdline
         assert cmdline.count("\n") == 1  # cmdline must stay a single line
         assert "auto_initramfs=1" in (session.boot_mount_path / "config.txt").read_text()
 
@@ -209,3 +210,11 @@ class TestInitramfsToolsHookHardening:
         premount = self._read("tor_premount")
         assert '. "$conf"' not in premount
         assert "sed -n 's/^IPV4DNS" in premount
+
+    def test_hook_stamps_a_clock_floor(self):
+        assert "/etc/tor-clock-floor" in self._read("tor_hook")
+
+    def test_premount_raises_clock_to_floor_before_ntp(self):
+        premount = self._read("tor_premount")
+        assert "/etc/tor-clock-floor" in premount
+        assert premount.index("tor-clock-floor") < premount.index("ntpd")