ETK v0.2.0 — Nightly Rider: GT5 leak-fixed RPCS3, Stage III stability harness

[0.2.0] - 2026-06-11

Back to the bleeding edge — ETK re-pins to ROCKNIX nightly 20260610 to ship the upstream Gran Turismo 5 memory-leak fix, and adds the Stage III stability harness (Mesa cache-cap lift + silent-crash core capture). Operator-validated on-rig the same day: GT5P racing at full 720p, RAM peaks down ~1.5 GB, and the formerly dominant "silent crash" class absent from the ledger.

Added

• Stage III stability harness (new install step 7, STAGE3 HARNESS). Two rig-side primitives from the Stage III forensics sprint (dossiers/Stage3CustomRigDossier.md):
  • profile.d/098-etk-stage3 — sets MESA_SHADER_CACHE_MAX_SIZE=10G. Mesa's disk cache silently caps at 1 GB with LRU eviction; the ETK vault crosses 1 GB on a saturated GT suite, meaning the vault could evict its own oldest shaders and quietly un-saturate between sessions. Also raises the core-size ulimit for emulator processes.
  • 02-etk-coredump.sh + etk-stage3.service (oneshot) — Rocknix ships kernel.core_pattern = |/bin/false (crash cores are discarded) and the sysctl resets every boot. The unit re-arms capture to /storage/cores/ (keeps newest 2) on every boot. Silent-class crashes — process death with no RPCS3 log signature and no dmesg trace — are undiagnosable without a core; this is the forensic capture path that finally gives Rocknix parity with Android's crash-dropbox.
  • uninstall.sh fully reverts all three artifacts and restores the stock core_pattern.
• README: verify step added to the GRUB-disable Power Pro Tip (a silently failed remount,rw previously made the seds no-op), plus a note that OS updates revert the tweak.

Changed

• OS pin: ROCKNIX nightly 20260610 (was official release 20260601). The pin is evidence-driven, not novelty-driven: nightly-20260610 ships RPCS3 0.0.41-19444, the first build containing the upstream GT5 memory-leak fix (RPCS3 #18819 / PR #18844, merged 2026-06-05 — ~300 MB leaked per car model viewed, lethal on an 8 GB handheld and matching ETK's dominant silent-crash signature), plus Mesa Turnip 26.1.2 (driver parity with the Android/aPS3e comparison rig) and kernel 7.0.11. The official 20260601 release predates the fix by four days. README System Requirements / Getting Started / Windows flash guide, scripts/profiles/SM8250.sh, and AI_MANIFEST.md all re-pinned. Migration note: the Turnip 26.1.0→26.1.2 bump invalidates the existing Mesa-side shader vault (driver hash keys the cache) — a fresh harvest cycle follows the update; with the new 10G cap it will never self-evict.
• Per-title tunes: GT5P + GT HD Concept switched Shader Mode from Async Recompiler with Shader Interpreter to Async Recompiler (multi-threaded) (matching the shipped template default). The interpreter hybrid does not avoid compile stalls — it adds a heavy GPU über-shader pass exactly during compile bursts, a credible amplifier of the Adreno fence-timeout crash class on a 7 W GPU (the same interpreter path is currently crashing the AMD Mesa driver upstream, RPCS3 #18838). Expect brief first-encounter pop-in instead of approximated rendering; the change is A/B-logged in config_changes.tsv.

Verified

• Live race validation on nightly-20260610 (SM8250, 2026-06-11): GT5P career sessions at full 720p with sessions 2–3× longer than the official-build era (366–519 s), RAM peaks 5.0–6.1 GB (vs 6.7–7.5 GB pre-fix), zero silent-class crashes on the boot's ledger, and the operator's verdict — comparable stability/feel to the patched Android build at higher fidelity, credits ground, car purchased. Known watch item: 3 thermal-failsafe activations during load/contact-heavy racing (longer sessions = more sustained heat); thermal ceiling behavior unchanged, monitoring continues.

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Includes everything from the never-shipped 0.1.5 candidate set: the PKG-installer truncation fix (games no longer install incomplete — the bug behind the "card #2 kills games" saga) and the HUD QoL pair (vault size in GB, VAULT:ERROR → VAULT:LOADING during startup).

Upgrade path: update Rocknix to nightly-20260610 (Start → Updates & Downloads, nightly channel), re-run ./install.sh, expect a fresh shader-harvest cycle (the Turnip 26.1.2 bump invalidates prior vaults — by design, and the new 10G cache cap means the rebuilt vault never self-evicts).