Install BRIDGE

Quick install

Run this on every node you want in the fleet. The installer re-executes itself through sudo when it needs root for system paths. As with any piped installer, review the script first: it is plain POSIX shell, published in the GitHub repository.

What the installer does

1. Detects your OS and CPU architecture and maps them to a release target triple.
2. Resolves the release version (the latest GitHub release, unless pinned).
3. Downloads the release tarball and the published sha256sums.txt into a temporary directory.
4. Verifies the SHA-256 checksum of the tarball: an unverified binary is never installed.
5. Installs the bridge binary to /usr/local/bin (mode 0755).
6. On Linux with root: creates a bridge system user, creates /etc/bridge (0750, root:bridge), and writes a minimal standalone bridge.toml, only if none exists. Your existing config is never overwritten.
7. On systemd systems: writes /etc/systemd/system/bridge.service, runs daemon-reload, and enables and starts the service.
8. Prints a summary with the install location, config path, and next steps.

Requirements

• Linux on x86_64 or aarch64 for a full service install (macOS x86_64/aarch64 binaries are installed for manual runs).
• systemd is optional: without it, the installer prints how to run the daemon manually.
• Root (or sudo) for installing to system paths, creating the service user, binding ports 80/443, and configuring WireGuard. The systemd unit grants CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE and CAP_NET_ADMIN so the daemon does not run as full root.
• curl and tar available on the host.

Installer environment variables

Manual install

If you prefer not to run the script, install from a GitHub release by hand:

# 1. Download the tarball and checksums for your platform
curl -fsSLO https://github.com/bridgemesh/bridge/releases/download/<version>/bridge-<version>-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
curl -fsSLO https://github.com/bridgemesh/bridge/releases/download/<version>/sha256sums.txt

# 2. Verify the checksum (use: shasum -a 256 -c on macOS)
grep x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz sha256sums.txt | sha256sum -c -

# 3. Extract and install the binary
tar -xzf bridge-<version>-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
sudo cp bridge /usr/local/bin/bridge
sudo chmod 0755 /usr/local/bin/bridge

Then create a minimal configuration at /etc/bridge/bridge.toml:

enable_telemetry = false

[proxy]
mode = "Direct"
listeners = ["http"]
http_addr = "0.0.0.0:80"

[dashboard]
enabled = true
listen_addr = "127.0.0.1:9090"

[logger]
level = "INFO"
format = "text"

And start the daemon:

bridge --config /etc/bridge/bridge.toml

Verify it works

Check the daemon over its IPC socket:

bridge status

Then open the embedded operations dashboard at http://127.0.0.1:9090. The dashboard binds to loopback by default, so it is only reachable from the node itself unless you change listen_addr.