Running `skywire visor`¶

skywire visor hosts apps and is an applications gateway to the Skywire network. It requires a valid configuration to be provided.

Note: Root permissions or special capabilities are required for VPN client and VPN server apps — see permissions.md.

Run the visor:

skywire visor -c skywire-config.json

If the default skywire-config.json exists in the current dir, this can be shortened to:

skywire visor

When running VPN applications, ensure proper permissions are configured:

# With setcap configured (recommended):
skywire visor

# Or with sudo if setcap is not configured:
sudo skywire visor

skywire visor can be run on Windows. The setup requires additional setup steps specified in the Windows setup docs if not using the windows .msi installer.

Process control¶

In the instance that the visor shuts down or stops, it is desirable to restart it automatically. This may be accomplished in a few different ways.

The visor may be run as a systemd service - on linux. The skywire.service does just that, and is provided by the linux packages. skywire.service is configured to run as root.

The visor may be run directly in a (bash / zsh / git-bash) terminal using a while loop with a short timeout between restarts. If one is using the default config path for package-based installation (i.e. starting the visor with the -p flag) it will be required to run the visor as root. If not, omit the -p flag and skip becoming root.

On windows it may be required to start the git-bash terminal as admin or superuser to obtain elevated privileges.

To become root on linux:

su - root

Start the Visor in a while loop

while true ; do skywire visor -pl debug ; sleep 5 ; done

or

while true ; do go run github.com/skycoin/skywire@develop visor -pl debug ; sleep 5 ; done

A few observations when running the visor in the latter way:

the config is not updated when the binary is updated
the binary executed by the visor to start the apps is not the same one as is being go run

To address these two things, it's recommended to first create the human-editable skywire.conf file. This may be done with any path, but for this example, the default path referenced by the autoconfig script included with the linux packages is used.

go run github.com/skycoin/skywire@develop cli config gen -q | sudo tee /etc/skywire.conf

Now, edit /etc/skywire.conf as desired. Remember to uncomment: * PKGENV=true * BESTPROTO=true

Save the file. Now config gen can be added to the while loop

while true ; do SKYENV=/etc/skywire.conf go run github.com/skycoin/skywire@develop cli config gen -r && go run github.com/skycoin/skywire@develop visor -pl debug ; sleep 5 ; done

To update the binary included with the linux packages so that the visor apps will also be running on the latest commits, it's recommended to go install github.com/skycoin/skywire@develop and then replace the binary provided by the package with that one. The complete command becomes:

while true ; do go install github.com/skycoin/skywire@develop && mv $GOPATH/bin/skywire /opt/skywire/bin/skywire && SKYENV=/etc/skywire.conf skywire cli config gen -r && skywire visor -pl debug ; sleep 5 ; done

Note that the binary at: /opt/skywire/bin/skywire is already symlinked to /usr/bin/skywire by installing the package.

Transport setup¶

Note: transports should be set up automatically when starting an app in most cases. The user should not need to do this manually.

A Transport represents a bidirectional line of communication between two Skywire Visors — see the Transports wiki page.

Transports are automatically established when a client application connects to a server application. Their creation is attempted in the following order: - stcpr - sudph - dmsg

Transports can be manually created. Existing suitable transports will be automatically used by client applications when they are started.

To create a transport, first copy the public key of an online visor from the uptime tracker:

skywire cli ut -o

or service discovery:

skywire cli vpn list #list vpn server keys
skywire cli proxy list #list proxy server keys

Add the transport:

skywire cli visor tp add -t <transport-type> <public-key>

View established transports:

skywire cli visor tp ls

Remove a transport:

skywire cli visor tp rm -i <transport-id>

Files and folders created by skywire at runtime¶

Note: not all of these files will be created by default.

├──skywire-config.json
└─┬local
  ├── apps-pid.txt
  ├── node-info.json
  ├── node-info.sha
  ├── reward.txt
  ├── skychat
  ├── skychat_log.db
  ├── skysocks
  ├── skysocks-client
  ├── skysocks-client_log.db
  ├── skysocks_log.db
  └── transport_logs
      ├── 2023-03-06.csv
      ├── 2023-03-07.csv
      ├── 2023-03-08.csv
      ├── 2023-03-09.csv
      └── 2023-03-10.csv

Some of these files are served via the dmsghttp logserver.

Running skywire visor¶

Process control¶

Transport setup¶

Files and folders created by skywire at runtime¶

Running `skywire visor`¶