docs: clarify retained address lifetime

[chet]

A Retained BMC address becomes Static for the lifetime of its machine-interface record. Calling it non-expiring made it sound like the address was saved for reuse after that interface was deleted and re-ingested, which it is not.

So, this updates the nico-admin-cli expected-machine {add,patch} help, the model Rustdoc, and the protobuf comments to name the actual lifetime. The checked-in REST protobuf mirrors are regenerated from the updated source. CLI arguments, protobuf wire values, and allocation behavior all stay the same.

Related issues

• Clarify Retained Allocation Lifetime #4836
• feat: Allow reservation for all interfaces on the underlay #3491

Type of Change

• Add - New feature or capability
• Change - Changes in existing functionality
• Fix - Bug fixes
• Remove - Removed features or deprecated functionality
• Internal - Internal changes (refactoring, tests, docs, etc.)

Breaking Changes

• This PR contains breaking changes

Testing

• Unit tests added/updated

• Integration tests added/updated

• Manual testing performed

• No testing required (docs, internal refactor, etc.)

• cargo test -p nico-admin-cli (427 passed)

• Rendered and inspected nico-admin-cli expected-machine add --help

• Rendered and inspected nico-admin-cli expected-machine patch --help

• Regenerated the REST Core protobuf snapshots and Go bindings, then verified the worktree stayed clean

• cargo make format-nightly

• cargo make clippy

• Cached Carbide-lints workflow

Additional Notes

The generated nico-admin-cli reference under docs/ stays in the separate docs-only #4151 / #4418 so the code and documentation review paths remain independent.

[coderabbitai]

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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 8076fa9 and f491260.

⛔ Files ignored due to path filters (1)

• rest-api/proto/core/gen/v1/nico_nico.pb.go is excluded by !**/*.pb.go, !**/gen/**, !rest-api/**/*.pb.go

📒 Files selected for processing (5)

• crates/admin-cli/src/expected_machines/add/args.rs
• crates/admin-cli/src/expected_machines/patch/args.rs
• crates/api-model/src/expected_machine.rs
• crates/rpc/proto/forge.proto
• rest-api/proto/core/src/v1/nico_nico.proto

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Summary by CodeRabbit

• Documentation
  • Clarified that retained BMC IP addresses remain static for the lifetime of the associated machine-interface record.
  • Updated the relevant CLI help text and API documentation for consistent wording.

Walkthrough

The pull request updates retained BMC IP allocation documentation in the admin CLI, API model, and protobuf definitions. The text now limits address retention to the lifetime of the machine-interface record.

Changes

Retained BMC IP documentation

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Update retained BMC IP descriptions crates/admin-cli/src/expected_machines/..., crates/api-model/src/expected_machine.rs, crates/rpc/proto/forge.proto, rest-api/proto/core/src/v1/nico_nico.proto	The documentation now describes retained BMC addresses as auto-allocated DHCP addresses that remain static for the lifetime of the machine-interface record.

Estimated code review effort: 1 (Trivial) | ~3 minutes

Possibly related issues

• NVIDIA/infra-controller issue 4836 — The changes directly implement its objective to clarify the lifetime of retained BMC IP allocation.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely describes the documentation clarification for retained address lifetime.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description directly explains the documentation changes, rationale, affected areas, and validation performed.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests

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[chet]

@coderabbitai full_review, thanks!

[coderabbitai]

@chet I will perform a complete review of the pull request.

✅ Action performed

Full review finished.

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_{🕐 Last updated: 2026-08-11 21:28:18 UTC | Commit: f491260}