Hosting a Registry

A registry is the server that hosts, indexes, and distributes .s9pk packages and StartOS updates. Anyone can run one. This chapter covers running your own — from installing the packaged service on a StartOS device through day-to-day administration.

StartOS is built around an open registry model: no single entity controls what services are available, and packages can be distributed through any number of independent registries. Running your own makes you a distribution point in that ecosystem — useful for private testing, distributing to a specific audience (friends, customers, an organization), or maintaining packages indefinitely outside Start9’s pipeline. Plenty of packages live this way permanently.

What’s in this chapter

• Setup — install the startos-registry service from the marketplace, walk through first-run setup (registry name, first admin, signing keys), and connect a local start-cli to the registry.
• Administration — day-to-day tasks: managing signers, publishing and removing packages, organizing categories, registering StartOS releases. Links out to the start-cli registry reference for command details.

When you don’t need to host your own

If you’re publishing through the Start9 Community pipeline, you don’t need your own registry to ship — that pipeline runs registries on your behalf. See Publishing. The two paths aren’t exclusive: developers often run a personal registry for alpha builds while a more stable version is promoted through Start9 Community.