This tracks the card's full boot and operational lifecycle, from being physically present through loading firmware, initializing, syncing with the chassis, and reaching active service, down to stopped, down, debug, or offline-diagnostic states. An admin watching this during a card boot expects it to progress from present through loading, start, init, sync, syncdone, ready, and active within a bounded time, so a card stuck at loading(2) or init(4) for several minutes signals firmware corruption or a hardware fault rather than a normal slow boot. For example, after re-seating a card, cardState climbs through loading and init within thirty seconds and settles at active(8); if it instead stalls at sync(5) for over a minute, that points to a timing problem blocking it from joining the chassis.