Skyimager User Guide
The Skyimager enables users to prepare Skybian images designed for the official Skyminer running the Skywire Mainnet. It can generate an arbitrary number of images ready to be flashed. Users have the option of:
- running the manager UI (hypervisor) locally on your own machine
- running it on the manager board
This guide will outline the general usage of the Skyimager as well as the update procedure to register your new public keys in the Skywire Whitelisting System to continue receiving rewards for your Skyminer.
To install Skyimager, go to the Skybian release page. On the release page you can download a binary for one of the three major operating systems by clicking on the link corresponding to your operating system. MacOS users should click on the link which contains the word "darwin". After downloading the archive, depending on your operating system, you can unzip the archive by:
- MacOS: double clicking on it
- Linux: unxz $PATH_TO_BINARY ;tar -xf $PATH_TO_BINARY
- Windows: using an unzipping tool such as 7zip
After unpacking, open the ./fyne-cross/bin/.../skyimager-gui binary. Now a Graphic User Interface should be opened automatically. If you do not see any UI, open http://127.0.0.1:8080/ within your browser.
For MacUsers, the system may display a security warning. If that is the case, open your system settings and go to security. There you should find the option to open the binary.
The UI will display a brief overview over the image generation process. Proceed by clicking Next.
The next window will allow you to configure the image boot parameters. Start by chosing the latest stable base image for Skybian available. Skyminer users only need to decide whether they want to run the Manager UI and the hypervisor on their own machine or on one of the boards within the Skywire. The Manager UI and the hypervisor are tools that allow you to manage and monitor your nodes.
Running the hypervisor and manager UI on your own machine will allow you to control your nodes remotely from your own machine anywhere. On the other side it requires you to setup Golang and Git on your machine. If you do not want to run the hypervisor and Manager on your own machine, you can still manage and monitor your nodes, but you will only be able to do so from within the local network that the Skyminer is in.
If you do want to run the Manager UI and hypervisor on your own machine, untoggle the Generate Hypervisor Image button. Increase the number of visor images to 8.
If you do not want to run the hypervisor yourself, just click Continue.
If a popup appears that states that the target directory exists already, click Yes:
The next page of the GUI will show you all the parameters for the amount of images you are about to generate. Click Download and Build to start generating the images.
Once the images have been generated you will need to flash the images to the Skyminer SD cards. If you do not have a tool for flashing SD cards installed, you can use for instance Balena Etcher for free. Download and install Etcher and start the programm.
Upon startup of Etcher, click the Select Image button and select the first image from the directory that you generated the images in. Then hit the Select Target button and select the SD card that you want to flash with the image.
After pressing Flash the programm will flash the image onto the SD card.
Proceed in the same fashion for all generated images. You can click on the Flash another button to get back to the initial window.
After you have flashed the images, proceed by plugging the flashed cards into the Skyminer nodes and start your nodes.
Close the Skyimager and Etcher.
Continue with the guide to run your hypervisorUI.
Updating the registered public keys in the Skywire Whitelisting System can be achieved very easily. You can either:
- preferred option: take the public keys from the hypervisorUI.
- copy the public keys displayed in the Skyimager on Step 3
Editing your registered public keys is explained in this section of the Skywire Whitelisting System User Guide
The hypervisorUI includes a list of all connected visors. You can use this list to copy each individual public key and update your registered public keys in the Skywire Whitelisting System.
The visor list might look as follows whereby the number of visible visors differs dependent on the number of visors you generated to be connected to the hypervisor:
By clicking on a visor you'll get to the visor overview page. On this this page you're able to copy the public key into your clipboard with one click:
Make sure to perform the steps for all of your public keys to ensure that the registered public keys are up to date.
During Step 3 of the Skyimager 'Generating Images' procedure you'll see a list of the details of the to-be-generated images. You may use this list to obtain the public keys of your nodes to update the registered public keys in the Skywire Whitelisting System. Make sure to use the keys listed under "local_pk:
Make sure to perform the steps for all of your public keys to ensure that the registered public keys are up to date