smoke: the published stage's console survives both of its exits - a bad() exit leaves the lap dir in place and skips the tail's copy, the clean end deletes the dir itself, and the sweep's epilogue copy never runs because this stage returns before it; ci's readers (ci.yml's install and hibernate jobs, published.yml's three) tail vm-smoke/console-published.log, which nothing ever wrote, so every red published lap shipped without its console (2026-10-10's nightly hibernate red: the tail read No such file or directory and the upload warned). The copy now happens in the stage's own tail before the rm, and after a bad() exit the caller copies whatever the lap left, with the stale-copy hygiene the sweep keeps.

Author: Letdown2491

scripts/smoke.sh

@@ -2682,6 +2682,14 @@ smoke_published() {
     kill $qemu 2>/dev/null || true
     wait $qemu 2>/dev/null || true
     trap - EXIT
+    # The console outlives its directory (issue #34's shape): the rm
+    # below is the sweep's cleanup arriving early, and the sweep's
+    # epilogue copy never runs on this stage -- it returns here. Copy
+    # what the lap left before deleting it; the caller's copy after a
+    # bad() exit covers the path that skips this one.
+    if [ -f "$log" ]; then
+        cp "$log" "vm-smoke/console-$name.log"
+    fi
     [ $KEEP -eq 1 ] || sudo rm -rf "$dir"
 }
 
@@ -3650,11 +3658,21 @@ fi
 
 if [ -n "$PUBLISHED" ]; then
     note "published: $PUBLISHED"
+    # A stale surviving copy must not impersonate this run's evidence
+    # (the same hygiene the example sweep keeps), and after a bad() exit
+    # this copy is the only one made: bad() leaves the lap dir in place
+    # and skips the copy in smoke_published's own tail, and this stage
+    # exits before the sweep's epilogue. ci's readers (ci.yml,
+    # published.yml) tail the copy, not the dir.
+    rm -f "vm-smoke/console-published.log"
     if (smoke_published "$PUBLISHED" published "$port"); then
         PASS+=("published")
     else
         FAIL+=("published")
     fi
+    if [ -f "vm-smoke/published/console.log" ]; then
+        cp "vm-smoke/published/console.log" "vm-smoke/console-published.log"
+    fi
     note "summary"
     [ ${#PASS[@]} -gt 0 ] && printf '   pass: %s\n' "${PASS[*]}"
     show_warnings