Running komrad remotely

Keep the panel on your laptop and run the agents on a machine that never sleeps.

Agents on your laptop stop when your laptop sleeps. Komrad can run them on a remote machine instead. The panel stays on your laptop and looks the same. What moves is the engine: the service, the database, and every agent’s terminal.

Komrad’s own repository works this way. Administering the engine covers building that machine. This guide covers using one that exists.

Telling your panel about an engine

An engine is a small config file on your laptop in ~/.config/komrad/engines/, named after the engine. It sets the [connection] table: exec says how to run a command on the engine, and forward says how to carry the engine’s service back to your laptop. Both are usually SSH. For a host your SSH config already knows, a plain ssh destination is enough.

Keep the engine’s SSH host keys in a file of their own. A rebuilt engine answers on the same address with a new key.

Choosing where to open the panel

Once an engine file exists, opening komrad shows a picker listing your laptop and each engine. An engine that cannot be reached, or runs a different build from yours, is greyed out and says why.

The engine picker, with this machine ready, one engine ready, and one greyed out for a build mismatch.

Signing the agent CLI in

Agents on the engine run a CLI that has to be logged in and has to trust the checkout it works in. Do that once on the engine: start the CLI in the checkout, log in, and accept the trust question. If it is never answered, every agent sits waiting at that question. Both answers live on the engine’s data disk.

Keeping the two builds in step

Your komrad and the engine’s have to be the same build. The engine moves when a release is published, so when the two disagree it is usually your laptop that moved on. Install the release the engine runs. komrad doctor checks both and says what to do.

When the engine is off

An engine costs money every hour, so it may be switched off when nobody is using it. Switching off keeps the disk, the database and the address. Every agent stops, and you resume the ones you want once it is back.

Using an engine is one thing. Administering the engine is building one.