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RTFM

Read The Favourite Manual

The complete Saphira manual: install the system, build its network, balance its load, publish its services, diagnose its problems, and master the everyday tools. Written to be useful whether it is your first day with Linux or your ten-thousandth.

Saphira Linux dragon mascot

How to read this manual

One manual, many readers; enter at whatever depth suits you.

RTFM is Saphira's whole documentation, and, in keeping with the project, free to read with no gates: no advertising, no sign-up, no premium tier holding the good pages hostage. If it is documented, it works; if it works, it is documented here.

Every page is layered. The opening paragraphs speak plainly; what a thing is, why it exists, an analogy that sticks. The middle sections are for the technician: tables of options, configuration blocks you can copy, commands you can run. The ends are for the support engineer at three in the morning: failure modes, exit codes, and the honest limits of each promise. Read as deep as you need; nothing below assumes you read further up than you wanted.

  • Building or fixing a network: start with the networking overview below.
  • Spreading load across servers: the load-balancing group, health checks included.
  • Something is broken: the Diagnose group in the menu is the place to start.

Start here

Short journeys that cover the whole system. The left-hand menu expands the same chapters in place.

Networking overview

The practical guide to putting Saphira, MailDragon and webDragon on a home network, business LAN, remote server, or a connected set of sites.

Saphira network reference

akadata-network, ordered network.d files, Open vSwitch, interface dependencies, and the implementation-backed Saphira contract.

Bootstrap installation

Install Saphira from an existing Linux system, then choose the right staged build and boot path.

Build a kernel

Verify, configure, compile, install, and safely boot a Saphira kernel.

Packages

Browse the Saphira APK package catalogue and repository rather than guessing package names from another distribution.

Load balancing

HAProxy, LVS with ldirectord, and 34 health checks; from a plain TCP knock to DICOM, HL7 and FHIR, each with plain-language and deep-technical halves.

NVIDIA Open modules

The pure-musl host module boundary, the Hatchling test milestone, and the planned glibc nspawn userspace boundary.

Features

Understand the musl, OpenRC, APK, server, developer, and filesystem choices that make Saphira distinct.

Changes

Read the human-oriented release history before you change a live system.

Browse every chapter

The left-hand RTFM menu is deliberately collapsed on long pages. This directory keeps every chapter visible here, grouped in the same order as the navigation.

Deployment

Build the network

Load balance the network

Publish and connect

Diagnose

Everyday tools

AI era