Urbit

Urbit is a clean-slate system software stack defined as a deterministic computer. An encrypted P2P network, %ames, runs on a functional operating system, Arvo, written in a strict, typed functional language, Hoon, which compiles itself to a combinator interpreter, Nock, whose spec gzips to 340 bytes.

What is this for? Most directly, Urbit is designed as a personal cloud server for self-hosted web apps. It also uses HTTP APIs to manage data stuck in traditional web applications.

More broadly, Urbit's network tackles identity and security problems which the Internet can't easily address. Programming for a deterministic single-level store is also a different experience from Unix programming, regardless of language.

Getting involved

If you're interested in following Urbit, you can:

• Read our documentation at urbit.org
• Subscribe to our newsletter at urbit.org.
• Check out the urbit-dev mailing list.
• Follow @urbit_ on Twitter.
• Email us: urbit@urbit.org. We're happy to answer questions and chat.

Code of conduct

Everyone involved in the Urbit project needs to understand and respect our code of conduct, which is: "don't be rude."

Install

Urbit can be installed on most Unix systems. There is no Windows port. Windows is a wonderful OS, we just haven't gotten to it yet. Use a VM.

Configure swap if needed

Urbit wants to map 2GB of memory when it boots up. We won't necessarily use all this memory, we just want to see it. On a normal modern PC or Mac, this is not an issue. On some small cloud virtual machines (Amazon or Digital Ocean), the default memory configuration is smaller than this, and you need to manually configure a swapfile.

To add swap to a DO droplet, read this. To add swap on an Amazon instance, read this

Don't spend a lot of time tweaking these settings; the simplest thing is fine.

Install as a package

Ubuntu or Debian

Third-party packages are available, at:

https://github.com/yebyen/urbit-deb

Urbit is only supported on Jessie onward (but outbound HTTPS requests only work on Stretch; I wish we knew why; help us!)

Hand-build from source

First, install all external dependencies. Then, make.

Dependencies

urbit depends on:

gcc (or clang)
gmp
libsigsegv
openssl
automake
autoconf
ragel
cmake
re2c
libtool
libssl-dev (Linux only)
ncurses (Linux only)

Ubuntu or Debian

sudo apt-get install libgmp3-dev libsigsegv-dev openssl libssl-dev libncurses5-dev git make exuberant-ctags automake autoconf libtool g++ ragel cmake re2c

Fedora

sudo dnf install gcc gcc-c++ git gmp-devel openssl-devel openssl ncurses-devel libsigsegv-devel ctags automake autoconf libtool ragel cmake re2c

AWS

sudo yum --enablerepo epel install gcc gcc-c++ git gmp-devel openssl-devel ncurses-devel libsigsegv-devel ctags automake autoconf libtool cmake re2c

OS X - Homebrew

brew install git gmp libsigsegv openssl libtool autoconf automake cmake

OS X - Macports

sudo port install git gmp libsigsegv openssl autoconf automake cmake

Although automake/autoconf/libtool are generally installed by default, some have reported needing to uninstall and reinstall those three packages, at least with Homebrew. Your mileage may vary.

FreeBSD

pkg install git gmake gmp libsigsegv openssl automake autoconf ragel cmake re2c libtool

Download and make

Clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/urbit/urbit.git

cd to the directory you just created:

cd urbit

Run make:

make

(On FreeBSD, use gmake instead.)

The executable is bin/urbit.

Fetch the latest bootstrapping pill:

curl -o urbit.pill http://bootstrap.urbit.org/latest.pill

You can use your preferred way to fetch things from the web here. Urbit looks for a pill named urbit.pill in the current directory by default, so if you have anything different, you'll need to tell Urbit where it is (on first launch only) with the -B command-line option.

Start

An urbit is a persistent server on the %ames P2P network. You'll create one of these servers now.

If you have an invitation, it's a planet like ~fintud-macrep and a ticket like ~fortyv-tombyt-tabsen-sonres. Run

urbit -w fintud-macrep -t fortyv-tombyt-tabsen-sonres

(You can leave the ~ on, but it annoys some Unix shells.)

If you don't have an invitation, pick a nickname for your comet, like mycomet. Urbit will randomly generate a 128-bit plot:

urbit -c mycomet

Either way, creating your urbit will take some time. Some of this time involves creating keys; some of it involves downloading code over Urbit itself. Go get a cup of coffee. Or a beer.

Wait until you see a prompt, something like

  ~fintud-macrep:dojo>

Your urbit is launched! Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space.

In either case you'll notice that we created a directory in unix called either mycomet or fintud-macrep. All of your state (a log and checkpoint) lives in that directory. You can move it around, but don't delete it!

Restarting

If you want to shut your Urbit down you can ^d from the dojo> prompt. To use Urbit normally after creating your planet or comet there's no need for the -w -t or -c options.

Instead:

urbit fintud-macrep

or

urbit mycomet

Continuity breaches / network reboots

Urbit is still young, and we reboot the network from time to time. Urbit can upgrade itself over the air, but at this stage it's easier to bring in breaking api changes this way. Since our crypto is stateful we call this a 'continuity breach'.

If you have files in your Urbit you'd like to backup first make a copy of your pier. Then you'll need to shut down your urbit (with ^d) and:

git pull origin master
make clean; make
curl -o urbit.pill http://bootstrap.urbit.org/latest.pill

Then start over at the top of this section.

Talk

We use Urbit to talk to each other and coordinate about building the system. To join the main Urbit talk station use ^x to switch to the talk() prompt, then run:

;join ~doznec/urbit-meta

Learn more

Urbit's own official planet ~winsen-pagdel hosts the public docs here. The docs also live in their own repo, urbit/docs.

If this is your first time using Urbit, we'd recommend starting here.

Contributing

The first step in contributing to urbit is to come and join us on :talk.

For more detailed instructions check out CONTRIBUTING.md.