Managing greffers
A greffer is a worker the Manager talks to. Here's how registration works, what the states mean, and how to run several at once.
Register & accept
When you install a greffer, it registers itself with your Manager. You then accept it once from the dashboard — the Manager issues a TLS certificate, the greffer installs it, and it comes online. Accepting is a deliberate step so an unknown machine can’t join on its own.
States a greffer can be in
- pending — registered, waiting for you to accept.
- online — accepted, certificate installed, ready to run greffons.
- offline — the Manager can’t reach it (stopped, network, or host down).
Networking
Greffers connect in one of two modes, chosen at install time. Tunnel mode is the default (greffer up --id <id>): the greffer dials out to the Manager and serves its greffons over that connection — no public address, nothing to expose or port-forward. This works behind a home router or CGNAT.
If the host already has a public address and you want to serve greffons directly from it, install with --mode proxy --address <host>, where <host> is the public hostname or IP the Manager routes traffic to. Proxy is opt-in; without it, the greffer stays on the default tunnel.
Running several
One Manager can drive many greffers — a VPS, a Raspberry Pi, and an old laptop, all at once. Each greffon runs on the greffer you choose when you graft it.
On the host itself, greffer status reports the worker’s current state and greffer doctor runs a read-only preflight check.