Clients

The client is the program in a person's session that turns what the hub publishes into buttons: Open, Connect, Config then Apply, Mount, Connect. It runs on Linux and on Windows.

Seven things to settle first:

• The client is never root. A command run with sudo is refused: "the client runs as a person, never as root".
• macOS is refused by name: "the client does not run on macOS yet".
• Windows runs the client and nothing else. There is no Windows hub and no Windows agent.
• A client publishes nothing and takes no modules. If you want to manage that machine from the hub, it needs an agent, and Devices and remote desktop is the page.
• A client link is not a device link. Each is minted on its own page, and the other program refuses it.
• remove keeps a person's configuration. Only purge takes it.
• EasyTier can never ship in the Windows client, because its Windows build statically imports Npcap's packet.dll.

Windows msi

Download neutrino-client-0.2.0-windows-amd64.msi from Releases and run it.

Expect: the installer runs through and adds a Start menu entry. There is an arm64 msi beside the x64 one.

Windows needs WebView2

The window needs Microsoft's WebView2 runtime. Without it the client refuses with "the window needs {runtime}; install it and try again".

Install the Evergreen WebView2 runtime from Microsoft, then start the client again. Nothing else about the install has to be repeated.

Tray and window

Open the client from the Start menu, or run nclient gui.

Expect: a window titled "Neutrino client", with a Status section above a Services section. Before joining, Services reads "Services appear once you join a hub."

• Closing the window hides it. The client keeps running.
• The tray menu carries "Open" and "Quit". Quit is what stops it.
• nclient gui --hidden starts it in the tray with no window at all.

Linux deb

sudo apt install ./neutrino-client_0.2.0_amd64.deb

Expect: the postinst prints "Neutrino client installed. Open it and join a hub:" followed by the command to run.

nclient gui

Expect: the window opens. No sudo on that line; the client refuses to run as root.

WARNING

The window on Linux needs WebKitGTK. Without it the client says "the window needs WebKitGTK; install it: sudo apt install {packages}".

Install the packages it names, then run nclient gui again.

Paste the link

In the panel, open Clients, press "New client link", name it laptop, and press "Create link".

Expect: a notice reading "Paste this link into the client program for laptop.", with the link and a Copy button. It works for five minutes.

In the client window, paste the link into the field and press "Connect".

Expect: Status turns "Connected" with hub {version} beside it, a "Disconnect" button appears, and five service panels are drawn.

The same from a terminal:

nclient connect 'neutrino://enroll/PLACEHOLDER_LINK'

A device link handed to a client is refused with "that link is for a device agent, not for a client". The Clients page mints client links; the Devices page mints device links.

The Clients table in the panel lists Name, Hostname, Platform, Status, Version and Last seen, and each row can be enabled, disabled or deleted. A client the hub has switched off reads "Switched off by the hub" and every button in its window greys out.

Mount to a drive letter or folder

In the Files panel, press "Config".

Expect: on Linux, "Share username", "Share password" and "Mount path", the path already filled in as <home>/nas/<share>. On Windows, a "Drive" field with a free letter suggested, captioned "Appears as this drive in File Explorer".

Press "Mount".

Expect: the button walks through "waiting for the client…" and "mounting…", then becomes "Unmount".

Refusal	What the client says
bad Linux path	"give a folder under your home, like ~/nas/share"
bad Windows drive	"give an unused drive letter, like N:"
folder occupied	"that folder is not empty"
no polkit answer	"mounting was not authorized on this machine"
no cifs tooling	"the mount tooling is missing on this machine"
login forgotten	"the saved login is gone; enter it again with Config"

The same from a terminal:

nclient service file config 1 --path ~/nas/media --username alex

A port entry forwards to 127.0.0.1:<port> on this machine, and the row shows that address while it is forwarding.

Settings and language

Press "Settings" at the top of the window.

Expect: the "Client settings" dialog, with a Language picker, "Save" and "Cancel".

The language is the client's own, and it does not follow the panel's.

Disconnect and uninstall

Press "Disconnect" in Status, or run:

nclient disconnect

Expect: the window goes back to "Not connected", and Services reads "Services appear once you join a hub."

nclient status says what this person is bound to, and nclient quit stops the resident, answering "the client is not running" when there is nothing to stop.

sudo apt remove neutrino-client

Expect: the residents stop and the installed files go. What the people on the machine kept stays where it is.

sudo apt purge neutrino-client

Expect: the kept configuration goes too.

TIP

remove keeps your configuration; only purge takes it. The maintainer scripts match a resident by its whole command line, so the shell running the install is never the one asked to quit.

A client newer than the hub refuses to work and names the order: "this client ({client_version}) is newer than the hub ({hub_version}); update the hub first". A client the hub no longer knows, or whose hub was reset, reads the cause and then "rejoin by pasting a fresh link from the hub".

That is the whole path: the same window on both machines, joined, mounted and removed.