Guide to Breaches

An important concept on the Arvo network is that of continuity. Continuity refers to how ships remember the order of their own network messages and the network messages of others -- these messages are numbered, starting from zero. A breach is when ships on the network agree to forget about this sequence and treat one or more ships like they are brand new.

There are two kinds of breaches: personal breaches and network breaches.

Personal Breaches

Ships on the Arvo network sometimes need to reset their continuity. A personal breach is when an individual ship announces to the network: "I forgot who I am, let's start over from scratch." That is, it clears its own event log and sends an announcement to the network, asking all ships that have communicated with it to reset its networking information in their state. This makes it as though the ship was just started for the first time again, since everyone has network has forgotten about it.

Personal breaches often fix connectivity issues, but should only be used as a last resort. Before performing a personal breach, look at alternative fixes in the Ship Troubleshooting guide. Also reach out for help in ~dopzod/urbit-help, or, failing that, in the #ship-starting-support channel in our Discord server to see if there is another option.

To perform a personal breach, follow the steps below.

• Go to bridge.urbit.org and log into your identity.
• Go to the Admin section. Then go to Edit Permisions, then Networking Keys.
• Check the Breach Continuity box. Click Reset Networking Keys, and then click Send Transaction.
• Click Download Arvo Keyfile.
• Delete or archive your old pier.
• Create a new pier by booting your ship with your new keyfile.
• Rejoin your favorite chat channels and subscriptions.

Network Breaches

A network breach is an event where all ships on the network are required to update to a new continuity era. Network breaches happen when an Arvo update is released that is too large to release over the air. The current continuity era is given by a value in Ames, our networking vane, that is incremented when a network breaches; only ships with the same such value are able to communicate with one another.

If a network breach is happening, follow the steps below.

• Delete your old Urbit binary.
• Delete or archive your old pier.
• Download the new Urbit binary by following the instructions in the Install page.
• Create a new pier by booting your ship with your key, according to the instructions on the install page. (Note: You do not need to use a new key to boot into a new continuity era.)
• Rejoin your favorite chat channels and subscriptions.