Installation

Prerequisites

• SSH access to your target servers
• Docker or Podman on the machine that builds images (your local machine by default, or the configured remote builder)
• sudo privileges on target servers

Install Jiji

curl -fsSL https://get.jiji.run/install.sh | sh

Installs the latest release to ~/.local/bin/jiji for Linux or macOS, x86_64 or arm64 (auto-detected). Pin a specific version:

curl -fsSL https://get.jiji.run/install.sh | VERSION=v1.2.3 sh

On Windows, use WSL2 and the Linux instructions above.

Build from source

For development, or to run an unreleased commit:

git clone https://github.com/acidtib/jiji.git
cd jiji
mise install         # cargo build --release --bin jiji -> ~/.local/bin/jiji

If you don’t use mise , build directly and put the binary on your PATH yourself:

cargo build --release --bin jiji
# binary is at target/release/jiji

Upgrading

jiji update

Downloads the latest release, verifies its checksum, and replaces the installed binary in place. Exits without changing anything if you’re already current.

Pin or roll back to a specific release:

jiji update --release v1.2.3

Check what’s available without installing it:

jiji update --check

jiji update only replaces the local jiji binary. It never touches remote servers, jiji-agent, or jiji-proxy — after updating, run jiji server upgrade -e <environment> for each environment configuration to bring your servers up to date.

Server Requirements

Target Servers need:

• Linux (developed and tested on Ubuntu 24.04; other distributions may work)
• An SSH server
• Docker or Podman (with root access, jiji installs a missing engine and upgrades Podman when the installed version is older than 5.8.4)
• These ports reachable:

On Debian and Ubuntu, jiji installs a pinned mgoltzsche/podman-static 5.8.4 bundle for Podman. This is an unofficial, single-maintainer distribution. Jiji verifies the pinned archive checksum before installing it.

There’s no separate database or gossip port to open; run jiji network plan to see the exact WireGuard port your project will use.

Verify Installation

jiji version

Initialize a Project

cd your-project
jiji init

Creates .jiji/deploy.yml.

Initialize Servers

Before your first deployment:

jiji server setup

This installs the container engine (if needed), the complete private network for this project (WireGuard, a routed container bridge, and the distributed agent for .jiji DNS, catalog, membership, and leases), and provisions the shared jiji-proxy container for HTTP, HTTPS, and configured raw TCP routing.