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Bare-metal systemd deployment

Axon runs as a native binary under a systemd unit. This is the same model the Incus deployment uses internally (see deploy/incus/bootstrap.sh, which writes an equivalent axon-native.service inside the Incus container), lifted onto a bare host: the same /usr/local/bin/axon serve process, just without the Incus wrapper.

axon serve hosts the HTTP API (/v1/*), MCP-over-HTTP (/mcp), the web control panel, and the in-process worker runtime in a single process. Detached jobs (source, extract, watch ticks, retries) advance as long as axon serve is running.

Prerequisites

  • A Linux host with systemd.
  • The axon binary. Install it via the one-line installer (curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dinglebear-ai/axon/main/install.sh | sh) on the host, or copy a release binary from GitHub Releases.
  • A reachable Qdrant, Hugging Face TEI (with Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B), and Chrome/CDP. These typically run as containers (use the infra portions of docker-compose.prod.yaml for the canonical image versions and ports) or on external hosts. Axon reaches them by URL — no local process ownership required.
  • An NVIDIA GPU + NVIDIA driver on the host that runs TEI (for embedding throughput). Axon itself is CPU-only.

Install

As root:

# 1. Dedicated service user and data directory.
useradd --system --home /var/lib/axon --shell /usr/sbin/nologin axon
install -d -o axon -g axon /var/lib/axon

# 2. Install the binary.
install -m 0755 axon /usr/local/bin/axon

# 3. Environment file: service URLs, secrets, auth. Copy .env.example as a
#    starting point and fill in QDRANT_URL, TEI_URL, AXON_CHROME_REMOTE_URL,
#    AXON_HTTP_TOKEN, and any adapter credentials you need.
install -d /etc/axon
install -m 0600 your.env /etc/axon/axon.env
chown root:axon /etc/axon/axon.env

# 4. Install the unit and bring it up.
install -m 0644 deploy/systemd/axon.service /etc/systemd/system/axon.service
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable --now axon

The unit reads /etc/axon/axon.env for all runtime configuration and forces AXON_HOME/AXON_DATA_DIR to /var/lib/axon so jobs.db, logs, artifacts, and output all live there. By default axon serve binds 127.0.0.1:8001; to expose it, put a reverse proxy (nginx, Caddy, Tailscale Funnel, SWAG, etc.) in front, or set AXON_HTTP_HOST=0.0.0.0 in /etc/axon/axon.env if you have your own network boundary.

Operating

systemctl status axon
systemctl restart axon
journalctl -u axon -f              # live logs (tracing + progress)
journalctl -u axon --since today

# Axon's own self-checks (run as the axon user, or via the HTTP API):
sudo -u axon env AXON_DATA_DIR=/var/lib/axon AXON_ENV_FILE=/etc/axon/axon.env axon doctor
sudo -u axon env AXON_DATA_DIR=/var/lib/axon AXON_ENV_FILE=/etc/axon/axon.env axon preflight
sudo -u axon env AXON_DATA_DIR=/var/lib/axon AXON_ENV_FILE=/etc/axon/axon.env axon status

axon setup init can populate /var/lib/axon/config.toml and /var/lib/axon/.env with sensible defaults if you'd rather generate config than hand-write it; run it as the axon user with AXON_DATA_DIR=/var/lib/axon set. After setup, securely copy the generated /var/lib/axon/.env to /etc/axon/axon.env (root:axon, mode 0640), which is the environment file consumed by the service. AXON_HOME alone controls Compose mounts and does not select the CLI data directory.

Updating

install -m 0755 new-axon /usr/local/bin/axon
systemctl restart axon

Or use axon update (it pulls the latest GitHub Release binary in place).

Infrastructure (Qdrant / TEI / Chrome)

Axon treats these as external providers located by URL. The canonical image versions and port mappings live in docker-compose.prod.yaml:

Service Image Default port
Qdrant qdrant/qdrant:v1.18.2 53333 (HTTP), 53334 (gRPC)
TEI ghcr.io/huggingface/text-embeddings-inference:89-1.9 52000, GPU
Chrome/CDP built from config/chrome/Dockerfile 6000 (mgmt), 9222 (CDP)

You can run them as containers on the same host, on another host, or under any process supervisor — Axon only needs QDRANT_URL, TEI_URL, and AXON_CHROME_REMOTE_URL to reach them. Point those at wherever your infra lives in /etc/axon/axon.env.

Relationship to the Incus deployment

deploy/incus/ is the preferred path: it bundles the whole stack (axon native under systemd + Qdrant/TEI/Chrome as nested containers) into one Incus system container with GPU passthrough, profile management, and an idempotent bootstrap. This bare-metal path is for hosts where you already run the infra yourself, or where Incus isn't available. Both paths run the identical axon serve binary under systemd — only the wrapper differs.