diff --git a/.github/workflows/ci.yml b/.github/workflows/ci.yml
index 390eabd..7ccc0a9 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/ci.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/ci.yml
@@ -915,7 +915,10 @@ jobs:
           # never made.
           published="$(curl -fsS -H "$auth" "$api/releases/$release")"
           for name in $names; do
-            if ! printf '%s' "$published" | grep -qF "\"name\":\"$name\""; then
+            # grep without -q, which has the same exit status and reads to the end of its input. A
+            # reader that stops early under pipefail turns the writer's SIGPIPE into this condition's
+            # answer; see the note in scripts/ci-linux-rpm.sh, where that cost a green build.
+            if ! printf '%s' "$published" | grep -F "\"name\":\"$name\"" >/dev/null; then
               echo "The release was created but $name is not on it:" >&2
               printf '%s\n' "$published" >&2
               exit 1
@@ -1226,7 +1229,10 @@ jobs:
           published="$(curl -fsS -H "$auth" "$api/releases/tags/$TAG")"
 
           for name in releases.win-nightly.json DodoSSH.Desktop.Nightly-win-nightly-Setup.exe; do
-            if ! printf '%s' "$published" | grep -qF "\"name\":\"$name\""; then
+            # grep without -q, which has the same exit status and reads to the end of its input. A
+            # reader that stops early under pipefail turns the writer's SIGPIPE into this condition's
+            # answer; see the note in scripts/ci-linux-rpm.sh, where that cost a green build.
+            if ! printf '%s' "$published" | grep -F "\"name\":\"$name\"" >/dev/null; then
               echo "The release was created but $name is not on it:" >&2
               printf '%s\n' "$published" >&2
               exit 1
@@ -1279,7 +1285,8 @@ jobs:
           # upload it never made.
           withRpm="$(curl -fsS -H "$auth" "$api/releases/$release")"
           for name in $linuxNames; do
-            if ! printf '%s' "$withRpm" | grep -qF "\"name\":\"$name\""; then
+            # grep without -q; see the sibling loops above and scripts/ci-linux-rpm.sh.
+            if ! printf '%s' "$withRpm" | grep -F "\"name\":\"$name\"" >/dev/null; then
               echo "The release was created but $name is not on it:" >&2
               printf '%s\n' "$withRpm" >&2
               exit 1
diff --git a/scripts/ci-linux-rpm.sh b/scripts/ci-linux-rpm.sh
index 15e0d97..f12e98f 100755
--- a/scripts/ci-linux-rpm.sh
+++ b/scripts/ci-linux-rpm.sh
@@ -223,6 +223,25 @@ echo "==> $(basename "$rpm_file"), $(wc -c < "$rpm_file") bytes"
 #
 # Everything above can succeed and still produce something nobody can install, and none of the ways
 # that happens are visible in an exit code. Each check below is one of them.
+#
+# ◆ EVERY READER IN A PIPELINE HERE MUST CONSUME ALL OF ITS INPUT, AND THAT IS NOT A STYLE RULE.
+#
+# `set -o pipefail` at the top of this file means a pipeline's status is the rightmost non-zero one.
+# A reader that stops early — `grep -q`, `head -n` — closes the pipe while the writer is still
+# writing, the writer dies of SIGPIPE with status 141, and pipefail hands that 141 to the `if`. So a
+# check that found what it was looking for reports the opposite, and a diagnostic printed on the way
+# to `exit 1` kills the script under `set -e` before it gets there.
+#
+# It is a threshold rather than a constant, which is what made it look like somebody else's bug: the
+# writer only blocks once it has more than a pipe buffer left to write, about 64 KB on Linux. `$files`
+# is one line per packaged file, so this passed for as long as the published tree was small and then
+# failed on the commit that pushed the path text past 64 KB — reporting `/opt/DodoSSH/DodoSSH` missing
+# from a package that plainly contained it, and exiting 141 rather than the 1 it meant to.
+#
+# Hence `grep pattern >/dev/null` rather than `grep -q pattern`, which has the same exit status and
+# reads to the end; and `awk 'NR<=40'` rather than `head -40`, which prints the same lines and reads
+# to the end. Nothing here is allowed to stop early, and `|| true` is not the fix — it would hide a
+# real failure of the writer alongside the imaginary one.
 
 requires="$(rpm -qp --requires "$rpm_file")"
 provides="$(rpm -qp --provides "$rpm_file")"
@@ -236,7 +255,7 @@ files="$(rpm -qp --list "$rpm_file")"
 carried="$(printf '%s\n' "$files" | sed -n 's|^/opt/.*/\(lib[^/]*\.so[^/]*\)$|\1|p' | sort -u)"
 unsatisfiable=""
 for soname in $carried; do
-    if printf '%s\n' "$requires" | grep -qF "$soname("; then
+    if printf '%s\n' "$requires" | grep -F "$soname(" >/dev/null; then
         unsatisfiable="$unsatisfiable $soname"
     fi
 done
@@ -251,7 +270,7 @@ fi
 # 2. The provides exclusion still doing its job. A package advertising libcoreclr.so to the whole
 #    system is the thing that exclusion exists to prevent, and a future rpm that stopped honouring
 #    the macro would break it silently and in the direction nobody looks.
-if printf '%s\n' "$provides" | grep -qE '^lib.*\.so'; then
+if printf '%s\n' "$provides" | grep -E '^lib.*\.so' >/dev/null; then
     echo "This package advertises bundled libraries to the system:" >&2
     printf '%s\n' "$provides" | grep -E '^lib.*\.so' >&2
     echo "__provides_exclude_from in build/linux/dodossh.spec is meant to stop that." >&2
@@ -262,7 +281,7 @@ fi
 #    without libelf would do exactly that — the package would carry no glibc requirement at all and
 #    would install cheerfully onto a host too old to run it. libc.so.6 is the one dependency a
 #    self-contained .NET tree cannot fail to have.
-if ! printf '%s\n' "$requires" | grep -q '^libc\.so\.6'; then
+if ! printf '%s\n' "$requires" | grep '^libc\.so\.6' >/dev/null; then
     echo "This package does not require libc, which a self-contained .NET tree cannot be true of." >&2
     echo "The automatic ELF scan produced nothing; rpm here is probably built without elfdeps." >&2
     printf '%s\n' "$requires" >&2
@@ -279,9 +298,9 @@ for expected in \
     "/usr/share/icons/hicolor/256x256/apps/$bin.png" \
     "/usr/lib/udev/rules.d/71-dodossh-tpm.rules"
 do
-    if ! printf '%s\n' "$files" | grep -qxF "$expected"; then
+    if ! printf '%s\n' "$files" | grep -xF "$expected" >/dev/null; then
         echo "The package was built and $expected is not in it." >&2
-        printf '%s\n' "$files" | head -40 >&2
+        printf '%s\n' "$files" | awk 'NR<=40' >&2
         exit 1
     fi
 done