Summary

Follow-up to #2422. After the Finc-clamp + short-write fixes deployed, prod TPD's RestartCount dropped from ~556/6h to 2/10min. The two remaining panics are nil-derefs in pkg/cxo/node/head.go:

1. createFiller line 338 — cr.c.String() on nil *Conn

panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference
github.com/skycoin/skywire/pkg/cxo/node.(*Conn).String(0x0)        conn.go:225
github.com/skycoin/skywire/pkg/cxo/node.(*fillHead).createFiller   head.go:338
github.com/skycoin/skywire/pkg/cxo/node.(*fillHead).handleFillingResult head.go:416

handleDelConn (head.go:517) sets f.p.c = nil when the source connection drops. f.p.r remains non-zero, so the f.p == (connRoot{}) zero-value gate at handleFillingResult does not catch the nil-c case, and createFiller(f.p) runs with a nil source — cr.c.String() panics on the first line.

Fix: nil-c short-circuit at the top of createFiller. The fill can't proceed without a source connection — log and return.

2. handleSuccess line 228 (and three parallel sites) — PushBack on nil *list.List

panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference
container/list.(*List).PushBack(...)
github.com/skycoin/skywire/pkg/cxo/node.(*fillHead).handleSuccess  head.go:228

closeFiller (head.go:384) sets f.rqo, f.fc, f.rq = nil, nil, nil. Any in-flight Filler-goroutine messages still draining through f.successq / f.requestq / f.failureq after the close land on a nil list and panic.

Fix: nil-guard each PushBack/PushFront site (4 sites: handleRequest, handleSuccess, handleRequestFailure, handleReceivedRoot's same-Seq branch). Same recovery as #2422's panic→drop pattern: the closed filler's work is no longer relevant.

What this isn't

The "real" fix is to drain or signal-shutdown the channels before nilling state — that's a larger structural change to the fillHead's close protocol. These guards stop the process kill while preserving observability so a follow-up PR can address the underlying race without prod restarting every few minutes.

Test plan

• go build ./... clean.
• go vet ./pkg/cxo/... clean.
• go test ./pkg/cxo/... (including pkg/cxo/node's own 8s suite) all pass.
• gofmt clean.
• Post-deploy: docker logs transport-discovery --since 10m | grep -c panic: reaches 0 and RestartCount stops climbing.

Sequencing

Sits cleanly on top of #2422 (already merged into develop at 80fef7159).