tloncorp/vere repository overview

⁠Official Urbit Docker Image

This is the official Docker image for Urbit⁠.

Urbit is a clean-slate OS and network for the 21st century.

⁠Using

To use this image, you should mount a volume with a keyfile, comet file, or existing pier at /urbit, and map ports as described below.

⁠Volume Mount

This image expects a volume mounted at /urbit. This volume should initially contain one of:

• A keyfile <shipname>.key for a galaxy, star, planet, or moon. See the setup instructions for information on obtaining a keyfile⁠.
  • e.g. sampel-palnet.key for the planet ~sampel-palnet.
• An empty file with the extension .comet. This will cause Urbit to boot a comet in a pier named for the .comet file (less the extension).
  • e.g. starting with an empty file my-urbit-bot.comet will result in Urbit booting a comet into the pier my-urbit-bot under your volume.
• An existing pier as a directory <shipname>. You can migrate an existing ship to a new docker container in this way by placing its pier under the volume.
  • e.g. if your ship is sampel-palnet then you likely have a directory sampel-palnet whose path you pass to ./urbit when starting. Move your pier⁠ directory to the volume and then start the container.

The first two options result in Urbit attempting to boot either the ship named by the keyfile, or a comet. In both cases, after that boot is successful, the .key or .comet file will be removed from the volume and the pier will take its place.

Therefore, it is safe to remove the Docker container and start a new container which mounts the same volume (e.g. to upgrade the version of the Urbit binary by running a newer image). It is also possible to stop the container and then move the pier out of the Docker volume (e.g. to run it using an Urbit binary directly). If you do this, make sure to delete the Docker volume after you move your pier; if you launch a container using this same pier after moving it and launching it elsewhere, you will likely need to perform a breach⁠.

⁠Ports

The image includes EXPOSE directives for TCP port 80 and UDP port 34343. Port 80 is used for Urbit's HTTP interface for both Landscape and for API calls⁠ to the ship. Port 34343 is set by default to be used by Ames⁠ for ship-to-ship communication.

You can either pass the -P flag to docker to map ports directly to the corresponding ports on the host, or map them individually with -p flags. For local testing the latter is often convenient, for instance to remap port 80 to an unprivileged port.

For best performance, you must map the Ames UDP port to the same port on the host. If you map to a different port Ames will not be able to make direct connections and your network performance may suffer somewhat. Note that using the same port is required for direct connections but is not by itself sufficient for them. If you are behind a NAT router or the host is not on a public IP address (or you are firewalled), you may not achieve direct connections regardless.

For this reason, you can force Ames to use a custom port. /bin/start-urbit --port=$AMES_PORT can be passed as an argument to the docker start command. Passing /bin/start-urbit --port=13436 for example, would use port 13436. Note that you must pass the full script command /bin/start-urbit in order to also pass arguments. If the script is omitted, your container will not start.

You can also set the http port using --http-port=$HTTP_PORT. Passing /bin/start-urbit --http-port=8085 for example, would use port 8085. The default http port is 8080.

⁠Variable Loom Size

You can also set a variable loom size (Urbit memory size) using --loom=$LOOM_SIZE. Passing /bin/start-urbit --loom=32 for example, would set up a 4GiB loom (2^32 bytes = 4GiB). The default loom size is 31 (2GiB).

⁠Examples

Creating a volume for ~sampel-palnet:

docker volume create sampel-palnet

Copying key to ~sampel-palnet's volume (assumes default Docker location):

sudo cp ~/sampel-palnet.key /var/lib/docker/volumes/sampel-palnet/_data/sampel-palnet.key

Using that volume and launching ~sampel-palnet on host port 8080 with Ames talking on the default host port 34343:

docker run -d -p 8080:80 -p 34343:34343/udp --name sampel-palnet \
    --mount type=volume,source=sampel-palnet,destination=/urbit \
    tloncorp/vere

Using host port 8088 with Ames talking on host port 23232:

docker run -d -p 8088:80 -p 23232:23232/udp --name sampel-palnet \
    --mount type=volume,source=sampel-palnet,destination=/urbit \
    tloncorp/vere /bin/start-urbit --port=23232

⁠Getting and resetting the Landscape +code

This docker image includes tools for retrieving and resetting the Landscape login code belonging to a ship, for programmatic use so the container does not need a tty. These scripts can be called using docker container exec.

Getting the code:

$ docker container exec sampel-palnet /bin/get-urbit-code
sampel-sampel-sampel-sampel

Resetting the code:

$ docker container exec sampel-palnet /bin/reset-urbit-code
OK

⁠Extending

You likely do not want to extend this image. External applications which interact with Urbit do so primarily via an HTTP API, which should be exposed as described above. For containerized applications using Urbit, it is more appropriate to use a container orchestration service such as Docker Compose or Kubernetes to run Urbit alongside other containers which will interface with its API.