First boot & install

The ISO boots a live Alpine system — nothing touches the disk until you say so.

1. Log in

At the prompt, log in as root (no password — it's a live image on a machine you're holding).

You'll be greeted by the Junkmesh MOTD with these same instructions.

2. Run the installer

# junkmesh-setup

The installer walks through, in order:

1. Keyboard & network — DHCP on the wired interface by default; setup-interfaces runs if no link is found.
2. Hostname — defaults to junkmesh-<4 random hex>; accept or change.
3. Target disk — pick from a list. The disk is completely and irreversibly erased after an explicit ERASE confirmation.
4. Root password — for the installed system.

5. Node identity — generates the Yggdrasil keypair and shows the node's permanent mesh address:

   Your node's mesh address: 200:6fc8:9be3:71ab:...:41c2
   Back up /etc/yggdrasil/yggdrasil.conf — the private key IS the node.
   

6. Cluster secret — the fork in the road:

   • Starting a new cluster? Choose generate. The installer creates a fresh rpc_secret and prints it once. Store it somewhere safe; you'll feed it to every other node in this cluster.
   • Joining an existing cluster? Choose enter and paste the secret a current member gave you (out-of-band — in person or via something like Signal).

7. Install — Alpine goes onto the disk in sys mode, services (yggdrasil, garage, nftables, sshd) are enabled, the firewall policy is installed, and the machine reboots.

3. After the reboot

Remove the USB stick. The machine comes up as a mesh node:

$ rc-service yggdrasil status && rc-service garage status
 * status: started
 * status: started

$ yggdrasilctl getSelf        # same mesh address as during install
$ garage status               # one lonely node, no layout yet

If another Junkmesh node is on the same LAN they have already peered via multicast — yggdrasilctl getPeers will show it.

The node is installed but not yet doing anything. Next: Join the mesh →