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1---
2navhome: '/docs/'
3next: True
4sort: 3
5title: Administration and Operation
6---
8# Administration
10<div class="row">
11<div class="col-md-8">
12Your Urbit is a persistent Unix process that you mainly control from the
13console. For some things, a browser will also work.
15</div>
16</div>
17## Shutdown
19You can turn your Urbit off with `ctrl-d` from the `:talk` or `:dojo` prompts.
21## Restart
23To restart your Urbit simply pass the name of your pier:
25 $ urbit some-planet
27or
29 $ urbit comet
31## Logging
33To log Urbit's command line output to a file, use `script`:
35 $ script urbit.log urbit your-urbit
37## Moving your pier
39Piers are designed to be portable, but it *must* be done while the Urbit is
40turned off. Urbit networking is stateful, so you can't run two copies of the
41same Urbit in two places.
43To move a pier, simply move the contents of the directory it lives in. To keep
44these files as small as possible we usually use the `--sparse` option in `tar`.
45With a pier `your-urbit/` something like this (from inside `urbit/`) should
46work:
48 tar -Scvzf your-urbit.tar.gz ./your-urbit/
50# Operation
52## Console
54Your Urbit terminal is separated into two parts: the prompt (the bottom line)
55and the record (everything above that). The record is shared; all the output
56from all the apps in your command set appears in it. The prompt is multiplexed.
58In the CLI Urbit apps can process your input before you hit return. To see this
59in action try entering `)` as the first character at the `:dojo` prompt. Since
60there is no dojo command or hoon expression that starts with ')', the dojo
61rejects it.
63`ctrl-x` - Switches the prompt between running console apps
65`ctrl-c` - Crash current event. Processed at the Unix layer and prints a stack
66trace.
68`ctrl-d` - From `:talk` or `:dojo` stops your Urbit process.
70`↑` / `↓` - History navigation
72The following emacs-style key bindings are available:
74 ctrl-a cursor to beginning of the line (Home)
75 ctrl-b cursor one character backward (left-arrow)
76 ctrl-e cursor to the end of the line (End)
77 ctrl-f cursor one character forward (right-arrow)
78 ctrl-g beep; cancel reverse-search
79 ctrl-k kill to end of line
80 ctrl-l clear the screen
81 ctrl-n next line in history (down-arrow)
82 ctrl-p previous line in history (up-arrow)
83 ctrl-r reverse-search
84 ctrl-t transpose characters
85 ctrl-u kill to beginning of line
86 ctrl-y yank from kill buffer
88Full coverage of the Urbit shell, the `:dojo` is covered in the [Shell
89walkthrough](/docs/using/shell).
91## Web
93On startup Urbit tries to bind to `localhost:8080`. If you're already running
94something on `8080` you'll find your Urbit on `8081`, and so on. For planets
95only, we also proxy web domains through Urbit's own servers. Any planet
96`~your-urbit` is also at `your-urbit.urbit.org`.
98Your Urbit serves a simple homepage from `http://localhost:8080` or
99`https://your-urbit.urbit.org` that should be self-explanatory. Since our HTTPS
100isn't audited / battle tested we just call it "secure" HTTPS. You can find that
101on `8443`. Or `8444` (and so on) if you're already running something on `8443`.
103A complete walkthrough of the Urbit web interface is [here](/docs/using/web).
105## Moons
107Urbit namespace is distributed by having parent nodes sign the keys for child
108nodes. If you have a planet, your parent star issued your ticket. As a planet
109you, in turn, can sign the keys for moons. The basic idea is: your planet runs
110permanently in a data center somewhere and moons run on all your devices. Each
111planet can issue ~4 billion (`2^32`) moons.
113To generate a random moon from your planet run:
115 ~your-urbit:dojo> +moon
117You can use the resulting output in the same installation flow from
118[install](/docs/using/install).
120Moons are automatically synced to their parent `%kids` desk, and can control
121applications on their parent planet using `|link`. You can read more about those
122things in the [filesystem](/docs/using/filesystem) and
123[console](/docs/using/shell) walkthroughs.
125## Continuity breaches
127While the Urbit network is in this alpha state we sometimes have to reboot the
128whole network. This happens either when major changes need to be shipped or we
129hit a bug that can't be fixed over the air.
131Because Urbit networking is stateful we call this a 'continuity breach'.
132Everything has to be restarted from scratch. Your pier will continue to function
133after we have breached, but it wont connect to the rest of the Urbit network.
135When this happens, back up any files you'd like to save, shut down your Urbit
136and recreate it (as if you were starting for the first time).