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Requirements

System requirements and supported platforms for running Rediacc.

Requirements

Before deploying with Rediacc, make sure your workstation and remote servers meet the following requirements.

Workstation (Control Plane)

The rdc CLI runs on your workstation and orchestrates remote servers over SSH.

PlatformMinimum VersionNotes
macOS12 (Monterey)+Intel and Apple Silicon supported
Linux (x86_64)Any modern distributionglibc 2.31+ (Ubuntu 20.04+, Debian 11+, Fedora 34+)
Windows10+Native support via PowerShell installer

Additional requirements:

  • An SSH key pair (e.g., ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 or ~/.ssh/id_rsa)
  • Network access to your remote servers on the SSH port (default: 22)

Remote Server (Data Plane)

The renet binary runs on remote servers with root privileges. It manages encrypted disk images, isolated Docker daemons, and service orchestration.

If you are unsure which binary to use, see rdc vs renet. In short: use rdc for normal operations, and use direct renet only for advanced remote-side tasks.

Supported Operating Systems

Remote servers run the renet binary and host the encrypted, per-repo Docker daemons. The following five distributions are exercised by the Bridge Workers matrix in CI on every pull request, and are the only ones officially supported:

OSVersionDefault KernelNotes
Ubuntu24.04 LTS6.8Recommended. AppArmor enabled by default.
Debian13 (Trixie)6.12Debian 12 also works (kernel 6.1 minimum).
Fedora436.12SELinux enforcing by default.
openSUSE Leap16.06.4+AppArmor enabled by default.
Oracle Linux10UEK 7+Uses UEK, which retains the btrfs module. SELinux enforcing by default. See “Why UEK?” below.

All rows are x86_64. arm64 is built but not continuously tested for every server OS; open an issue if you need it on a specific distro. Other Linux distributions with systemd, Docker support, and cryptsetup may work but are not officially supported and may break on upgrades without notice.

Why UEK? (and why Rocky 10 / stock RHEL 10 is not supported)

Rediacc’s encrypted storage backend requires the in-tree btrfs kernel module. RHEL 10’s stock kernel ships without it: modprobe btrfs fails with “Module btrfs not found” and dnf search btrfs returns nothing. Rocky Linux 10 and AlmaLinux 10 inherit the same kernel and therefore cannot run as Rediacc servers.

Oracle Linux 10 uses the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) by default, which keeps btrfs built in. That is the only RHEL-compatible target on the supported list. If you must run a RHEL-family server, use Oracle Linux 10 with UEK. (The ground truth for this decision lives in .github/workflows/ct-tests.yml as the CI Bridge Workers matrix.)

Workstation-only (CLI install targets)

The rdc CLI additionally installs cleanly on Alpine 3.19+ (APK with the gcompat compatibility layer, installed automatically) and Arch Linux (rolling, via pacman). These are client-side install paths only (see Installation) and are not supported as renet server targets.

Security Policies by OS

The per-repo Docker daemon and the repo containers themselves run with default container labels on every supported OS. rdc config machine setup does not install custom SELinux policies or AppArmor profiles. Behavior by OS:

  • Ubuntu 24.04, openSUSE Leap 16.0: AppArmor is enabled by default. The default docker-container profile applies; no extra setup required.
  • Fedora 43, Oracle Linux 10: SELinux runs enforcing. The per-repo daemon labels containers with the standard container_t context. No custom SELinux policy is needed.
  • CRIU (checkpoint/restore) is the one case that bypasses the AppArmor profile with apparmor=unconfined, since upstream CRIU’s AppArmor support is not yet stable. See the CRIU notes in Rules of Rediacc.

If a setup step fails with SELinux AVC denials or AppArmor rejections, see Troubleshooting → Distribution-Specific Setup Issues.

Server Prerequisites

  • A user account with sudo privileges (passwordless sudo recommended)
  • Your SSH public key added to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
  • At least 20 GB of free disk space (more depending on your workloads)
  • Internet access for pulling Docker images (or a private registry)

Installed Automatically

The rdc config machine setup command installs the following on the remote server:

  • Docker and containerd (container runtime)
  • cryptsetup (LUKS disk encryption)
  • renet binary (uploaded via SFTP)

You do not need to install these manually.

Local Virtual Machines (Optional)

If you want to test deployments locally using rdc ops, your workstation needs virtualization support: KVM on Linux or QEMU on macOS. See the Experimental VMs guide for setup steps and platform details.