A primary never learns of a follower's higher term via AppendEntries-reject
responses: ha_raft_on_repl_ack only routes AE replies through
raft_on_append_entries_reply for success=1 ACKs, and that function itself
drops any reply whose term != s->term (raft.c stale-term drop) before it
could adopt a higher term anyway. Net effect: once a follower outpaces a
stale primary's term, every AppendEntries the primary sends is rejected
forever and it can never regain write-quorum — a permanent election livelock
(surfaced as "no primary elected at term>8" in HA soak testing).
Adds two fallback term-discovery vectors that fire regardless of AE-reject
outcome:
- StateReport heartbeat-reply now carries the standby's current term
(controller.capnp, typemap.h) so the primary learns a higher term on every
convergence cycle.
- New raft_on_higher_term_observed() mirrors the UpdateTerm step (strictly
greater-than only; touches term/voted_for/role; persists before notifying
on_become_follower) and is wired into both the heartbeat state-report path
and the WAL-NACK path in repl_ack_decode_and_dispatch.
Validated: 265 controller + 287 lib unit tests pass; 10-round sequential and
chaotic HA soaks both PASS with zero job loss and full leadership coverage.
Rongsong Shen
327dbb9bb3