Skybian Image

Skybian is a Debian/Armbian-derived ARM image preconfigured to run skywire for the Skyminer.

Supported SBCs:

• Orange Pi Prime (Armbian, arm64)
• Orange Pi 3 (Armbian, arm64)
• Raspberry Pi 3 (Raspberry Pi OS, armhf)
• Raspberry Pi 4 (Raspberry Pi OS, arm64)

ArchLinuxARM variants are available via skyalarm.prime.IMGBUILD (Orange Pi Prime, aarch64) and skyalarm.rpi.IMGBUILD (RPi armv7 and aarch64). They ship the same skymanager autoconfig but install skywire-bin from the AUR on first boot rather than baking it into the image.

Layout

This repo only contains the per-board .IMGBUILD files and the shared *-conf.sh build logic. There is no longer a skybian.deb — its old payload (skymanager, skybian-reset, motd snippets, skyenv defaults) moved into the skyrepo deb in skycoin/apt-repo. Each image build now installs only two debs in chroot:

1. skyrepo — adds deb.skywire.skycoin.com apt source + install-skywire.service + the autoconfig payload (skymanager + skybian-reset + motd + skyenv).
2. skywire-bin — the skywire binaries + systemd units.

Release images: https://deb.skywire.skycoin.com/img/

Build dependencies

Host: Arch Linux, ~15 GB free.

sudo pacman -S --needed arch-install-scripts aria2 dpkg dtrx gnome-disk-utility \
                        qemu-user-static qemu-user-static-binfmt zip

Note: the official qemu-user-static from extra covers all archs in one package — do not install the AUR per-arch qemu-*-static-bin variants; they collide on /usr/bin/qemu-aarch64-static.

Build an image

SKYBIAN=skybian.prime.IMGBUILD ./image.sh            # OPi Prime, no autopeering
ENABLEAUTOPEER="-autopeer" SKYBIAN=skybian.prime.IMGBUILD ./image.sh   # OPi Prime w/ autopeer
SKYBIAN=skybian.opi3.IMGBUILD       ./image.sh       # OPi 3
SKYBIAN=skyraspbian.rpi3.IMGBUILD   ./image.sh       # RPi 3 (armhf)
SKYBIAN=skyraspbian.rpi4.IMGBUILD   ./image.sh       # RPi 4 (arm64)

./image.sh 1 builds without compression (faster, for iterating). ./image.sh zip adds a .zip for the Windows imagers. ./image.sh 0 only refreshes source checksums.

Build all five at once:

./images.sh        # production
./images.sh 0      # refresh checksums only

build.sh provides a dialog-based menu for the same operations.

ArchLinuxARM images

makepkg -fp skyalarm.prime.IMGBUILD          # OPi Prime aarch64 (with skybian autoconfig)
makepkg -fp skyalarm.rpi.IMGBUILD            # RPi (armv7 + aarch64, one PKGBUILD produces both)

For the bare ALARM image (no skywire, no skymanager — useful as a base for operators who want to install skywire themselves, or for QA/repro work):

BASEONLY=1 makepkg -fp skyalarm.prime.IMGBUILD       # → skyalarm-orangepiprime-base-*.img
BASEONLY=1 makepkg -fp skyalarm.rpi.IMGBUILD         # → skyalarm-rpi-base-*-{armv7,aarch64}.img

ALARM IMGBUILDs download skyrepo_*.deb and dpkg-deb -x it to lift the autoconfig files (skymanager + skybian-reset + motd + skyenv) into the ALARM rootfs — no chroot needed because we're not dpkg-installing on Arch. skyalarm.prime.IMGBUILD additionally extracts the sunxi U-Boot SPL+proper blob from an Armbian image on first run and caches it as ../u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin; subsequent builds reuse the cache. The ALARM rootfs itself comes straight from archlinuxarm.org.

On first boot the skyalarm-firstboot.service runs pacman -Syyu && yay-equivalent skywire-bin (precompiled tarball, no Go build on the board) and then enables skymanager. After that, autoconfig behaves identically to the deb-based images: .2 becomes hypervisor, everyone else joins as visors. The first boot consumes one connected-to-internet window on the order of 10–15 minutes; subsequent boots are fast.

Testing repo deployment

TESTDEPLOYMENT=1 causes the chroot config to set VISORISPUBLIC=1 and NOAUTOCONNECT=1 in /etc/profile.d/skyenv.sh. The actual apt-repo URL switching is handled by the skyrepo deb (which ships all three mirror URLs by default).

First-boot auto-config

When the image boots for the first time:

1. install-skywire.service (from skyrepo, Type=oneshot RemainAfterExit=yes) runs apt update && apt reinstall skywire-bin and then self-disables. This guarantees the latest skywire is on the board even if the image is months stale.

2. skymanager.service (also from skyrepo, ordered After=install-skywire.service) writes ENABLEPKENDPOINT=true into /etc/skywire.conf so every subsequent skywire cli config gen flips on the unauthenticated GET /api/pk route in the generated config, then polls <gateway>.2:8000/api/ping every 5s for up to 2 minutes:

   • Nothing there after the full window → sleep a random 0–30s (race-break for the case where all 8 boards reach timeout at once), re-probe one more time, and if still nothing claim .2 as static IP and skywire autoconfig 0 (local hypervisor with UI on :8000 and /api/pk registered). If the final re-probe finds something, fall through to the visor path.
   • Pong → skywire autoconfig 1 first (materializes the visor config + keypair, no remote hypervisor wired yet), then curl -H "SW-Public: <our-pk>" http://<gw>.2:8000/api/pk to discover the hypervisor's pk, then skywire autoconfig <hv-pk> to register it (-r retention keeps our keypair stable across the second regen).

   The polling window accommodates the skyminer power-bus hardware constraint: when the main switch turns on all 8 boards at once, voltage dips can stall the (preboot'd) hypervisor's startup for tens of seconds. A single-shot probe would race ahead and visors would try to claim .2 themselves.

   The /api/pk route landed in skywire develop (#2895, #2896). It's gated on EnablePKEndpoint in HypervisorConfig, off by default. The toggle has to live in the SKYENV file (/etc/skywire.conf) — not OS env, not /etc/profile.d/skyenv.sh — because cmdutil.SkyenvFile.Eval reads only from the parsed env file (no os.Getenv fallback).

3. After successful configuration, skymanager self-disables. On reboot, no further network changes happen unless the operator runs skybian-reset to redo the dance.

User experience target: flash → boot → browse to http://<gw>.2:8000. No SSH, no pre-flash imager, no manual configuration.

The skymanager.sh source of truth lives in apt-repo/script/skymanager.sh (packaged into skyrepo.deb and lifted into ALARM images via dpkg-deb -x at build time).

APT repository

The Skycoin apt repository is at https://deb.skywire.skycoin.com with mirrors at https://deb.theskywirenetwork.net and https://deb.skywire.dev (the latter is the release-candidate channel). Configuration ships in the skyrepo deb — install it on any debian-derived arm/arm64/amd64 system to make apt install skywire-bin work. Testing images live at https://deb.skywire.dev/img/.