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Reaching the box

Everything on a LosOS box is a web page on one address. There are two ways to write that address, and they are not equally reliable.

By IP address (always works)​

The banner on the box's screen shows http://192.168.x.y (whatever address your router gave it). Every page answers on it: the admin pages at /, LosOS cloud at /nextcloud, LosOS Git at /forgejo/, this handbook at /handbook/. The banner redraws by itself when the address changes.

If the box has no screen attached, your router's device list shows the box under the name you gave it (or losos before setup).

By name (works on most computers)​

The box announces <name>.local over mDNS. Windows, macOS, iPhones, Android phones and most Linux desktops resolve it, so http://<name>.local opens the same pages. Two kinds of computer do not:

  • the host of a virtual machine on a NAT network (libvirt, VirtualBox), which never sees the guest's announcements;
  • a computer on a different network, or behind a router that filters multicast.

The admin pages' About pane shows the address your browser is using right now, and the .local name on its own row, so you can see which one you have. Links the apps hand out (share links, clone URLs) use the name, because that is the one that stays the same when the router hands out a new address.

Over HTTPS​

The box serves https:// on port 443 with its own certificate, valid for two years, for <name>.local. After you install that certificate (first run, step 1), https://<name>.local shows no warning. The IP address is not in the certificate, so https://<address> always warns; use plain http://<address> instead, or the name.

"Find my box"​

If reading a screen and typing an address is the scary part, open losos-edge.dasmat.us/find in Chrome (version 142 or newer) and press Find my box. Chrome asks once whether the page may look for devices on your local network; say yes, and the page finds the box by its name and links you to it. The lookup runs inside your browser and nothing about your network leaves your computer. Firefox and Safari have no such permission and show the typed-address instructions instead.

From outside your network​

By default, nowhere. A box is reachable from the local network only. The official edge setup gives it a public address through a tunnel, and even then the admin pages stay LAN-only: only LosOS cloud and LosOS Git are published.