Installing the Daemon

QSCS ships as a static native binary inside a Debian package. The same package runs on any glibc or musl-based 64-bit Linux that systemd manages, Debian, Ubuntu, Alpine with apt compatibility, and most cloud-vendor base images.

Prerequisites

• A 64-bit Linux host you have sudo on.
• One or two free TCP ports (defaults are 8080 for the public listener and 4443 for inter-node traffic).
• Outbound HTTPS to your control plane (default port 443).
• A license key. If you don't have one, see your administrator.

Add the apt repository

sudo install -d -m 755 /etc/apt/keyrings

curl -fsSL https://spooksystems.org/apt/qscs-archive-keyring.asc \
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/qscs-archive-keyring.gpg

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/qscs-archive-keyring.gpg] https://spooksystems.org/apt stable main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/qscs.list

sudo apt-get update

Install the package

sudo apt-get install qscs-bootstrap

The package installs:

• /opt/qscs/bin/qscs, the daemon binary.
• /etc/qscs/qscs.conf, a starter configuration file.
• /etc/systemd/system/qscs.service, a systemd unit.
• /opt/qscs/pages/, built-in static error / probe pages.

Activate the license

sudo qscs license <username>

This binds the node to your control plane and creates a stable UUID under /opt/qscs/spook.identities.db. Keep that file around, it is part of the node's identity and survives upgrades.

Open the ports

If your host has a firewall (cloud security groups, ufw, nftables…) allow inbound TCP 8080 for public traffic and TCP 4443 for cluster traffic. If you change either port in qscs.conf, allow the new value instead.

Next steps

You now have an unsubscribed daemon. Continue to Joining a Cluster to wire it up to a domain.

Upgrading

Subsequent versions are released through the same repository. Upgrade with:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --only-upgrade qscs-bootstrap
sudo systemctl restart qscs

Review the upgrade guidance before changing versions.