ZRS
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Installing ZRS (alpha)

ZRS is currently in alpha. These instructions install pre-release builds from the alpha package channel, so expect rough edges, occasional regressions, and breaking changes between versions.

The alpha channel publishes amd64 and arm64 builds for Debian 13, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, and Rocky Linux 10. Other Debian/Ubuntu and RHEL-family releases will likely work but are not part of the alpha test matrix. ZRS depends on Docker, libvirt/QEMU, and Samba.

Install ZRS #

  1. Add the repository and install

    Install curl and gpg if they are not already present. The default Debian install does not include them.

    sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y curl gpg

    Add the registry signing key and alpha repository

    curl -fsSL https://us-central1-apt.pkg.dev/doc/repo-signing-key.gpg \
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/gar-zrs.gpg
    echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/gar-zrs.gpg] https://us-central1-apt.pkg.dev/projects/zrs-app zrs-deb-alpha main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zrs-alpha.list

    Update the package index and install ZRS. Docker, libvirt, and Samba are pulled in as dependencies.

    sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y zrs

    RHEL-family distros no longer ship a Docker package, so the Docker dependency cannot come from the distro repositories. Add Docker's official repository first.

    sudo dnf -y install dnf-plugins-core
    sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://download.docker.com/linux/rhel/docker-ce.repo

    Add the ZRS alpha registry:

    sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/zrs-alpha.repo << 'EOF'
[zrs-alpha]
name=ZRS Alpha
baseurl=https://us-central1-yum.pkg.dev/projects/zrs-app/zrs-rpm-alpha
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
EOF

    Install ZRS. Docker, libvirt, and Samba are pulled in as dependencies.

    sudo dnf install -y zrs

    The package sets up a zrs systemd service and starts it automatically. You can manage it with systemctl.

  2. Create admin account

    Run the interactive setup as the zrs user. Do not run it as root, because that creates SQLite WAL files owned by root and breaks the service.

    sudo -u zrs zrs setup
  3. Open the firewall port

    If a firewall is running, allow traffic on the configured port (default 9779):

    # replace 192.168.0.0/16 with your internal subnet
sudo ufw allow from 192.168.0.0/16 to any port 9779
    # replace 192.168.0.0/16 with your internal subnet
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-rich-rule='rule family="ipv4" source address="192.168.0.0/16" port port=9779 protocol=tcp accept'
    sudo firewall-cmd --reload
  4. Open ZRS in your browser

    Visit https://<Server IP or DNS>:9779 and log in with the credentials you just created.

Configuration is optional. ZRS starts with defaults, see Configurationto change them.

Updating #

ZRS is instlled and updated through the package manager.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install zrs
sudo dnf upgrade zrs

Uninstalling #

sudo apt remove zrs
sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zrs-alpha.list
sudo dnf remove zrs
sudo rm /etc/yum.repos.d/zrs-alpha.repo

Removing the package leaves the zrs system user and data directory in place. To fully wipe ZRS state.

sudo userdel zrs
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/zrs
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