Manef Shell OS

Install it on your own server

A browser terminal, file manager, live system metrics and a bring-your-own-key AI assistant for one Linux server you control. Open source, self-hosted, no account and no database. This page needs no login — the install does.

Public Alpha. MSO is a normal non-root Node process on top of Linux. It is not an operating system, a distribution, or a hardened multi-tenant platform. One owner, one server.

Before you start

A Linux server you own
A $5 VPS is enough. Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora and Arch are covered by the installer.
Node 20.9 or newer
The installer adds it via NodeSource if it is missing.
A normal, non-root user
MSO runs as that user and can do whatever that user can do. Never install it as root.
About 2 GB free disk
Mostly the build. The app itself is small; there is no database.

Four steps

  1. Run the installer

    As your normal user, not root. It installs prerequisites, clones the repo, builds, generates a login password and session secret, and sets up the systemd unit.

    curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rahmanef63/mso/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

    Note: It prints your login password once. Save it — it is written only to .env.local on the server.

  2. Put it behind something

    MSO listens on :4005. An authenticated session can read allowed files and run commands as the process user, so treat the port like SSH: do not expose it raw to the internet. Tailscale or a VPN is the easy answer; a TLS reverse proxy with an allowlist also works.

    sudo ufw deny 4005

  3. Pair your first device

    Open the app and enter the password. Your browser lands in a PENDING state and shows a device id — correct password alone is not enough. Approve it from a shell on the server:

    mso device pending
mso device approve <deviceId> "my laptop"

    Note: Device approval is a browser allowlist, not standards-based 2FA. Approve only devices you own.

  4. Reload and sign in

    That device can now log in with the password. Approve later devices the same way, or from Settings → Devices once you are in.

Drive it from a shell

The installer also puts mso on your PATH. It reaches the same API the browser does — files, host shell, metrics, managed apps, devices — so nothing is UI-only. Start with mso doctor.

mso doctor