Checking the computer before the update

I have an agent refresh our private kitchen dashboard each morning. It gathers the source information on one computer and sends the summaries to the Mac mini that serves the dashboard. On 18 October, that transfer stopped at the step that checked which computer it had reached.

The error said the destination was unreachable or its identity did not match. The next checks gave a more specific picture: the dashboard's health page responded, and the agent could connect to the Mac mini. The computer was returning a hostname that did not match the name expected by the script.

The agent checked the local computer name and both network addresses on the device. The connection still required its known SSH host key, the machine identity already recorded for that connection. These checks supported that it was the intended Mac mini. The record did not explain why the returned hostname differed from the old expected name.

The repair changed the script to check the machine's LocalHostName setting and both expected network addresses. It retained the strict SSH host-key check. After checking that the edited Python file compiled, the agent ran the transfer again. This time the dashboard refreshed, and its returned failure list was empty.

The transfer script also read the served data back and compared the finance, sales and outreach summaries with what had been sent, including their source-check times. The agent then checked the dashboard page and data endpoint directly from the source computer. Both responded, while the tested private-file and state-directory paths returned not found.

At the end of that morning's run, the update and readback had succeeded. The source-check times still belonged to the individual sources; they did not make every figure a result from that morning. This was a repair to one transfer check, with evidence that this run completed. It did not establish that the dashboard could never lose its connection again.