Running as a background service

Server and Edge exit cleanly, rather than crashing, when handing off to a self-update. A plain "restart on any exit" policy would race that handoff and fight over the files being swapped in.

install.sh/install.ps1 (see Quick install) configure this correctly for you. To do it by hand:

Windows

cicd/install-windows-service.ps1:

.\install-windows-service.ps1 -ServiceName OrbitMeshServer -BinaryPath "C:\OrbitMesh\server\OrbitMesh.Server.dll" -DisplayName "OrbitMesh Server"

Linux (systemd)

A unit with Restart=on-failure (not always) - it only fires on an actual crash, not the update handoff's clean exit(0). Also set:

• Environment=DOTNET_SYSTEM_GLOBALIZATION_INVARIANT=1 - many minimal Linux images (including a fresh Raspberry Pi OS install) don't ship libicu. This codebase only does ordinal string comparisons, so invariant mode is safe.
• KillMode=process - the default (control-group) would also kill OrbitMesh.Updater, spawned as this process's child during a self-update handoff.
• A sudoers rule letting the service's own user run systemctl start/stop on its own unit without a password - the user running the service isn't root, and the restart step of self-update needs it.

install.sh sets all of this up automatically. See its output for the exact unit/sudoers content if writing them by hand.