Host on Railway

Railway is a cloud service. GhostLink creates the server on your own account, by itself: no VPS, no router ports to open, no computer left on.

What you need

• A Railway account. To keep the server online all month, use the Hobby plan (US$ 5 a month, with US$ 5 of usage included). The Free and trial plans stop when the credit runs out, and the app warns you before creating.
• GhostLink 0.2.0 or newer.

Step by step

1. In the app, click the + in the left bar and choose Create a server → In the cloud (Railway).
2. Click Open the tokens page, sign in to Railway and create a token. Under "Workspace", leave No workspace (or pick the workspace where the server will live).
3. Paste the token in the app and click Connect.
4. Choose the server name and the region. For Brazil, US East (Virginia) usually has the lowest latency.
5. Click Create server and follow the steps. The slowest one is "Publishing the server" (1 to 3 minutes). You can close the window: the app keeps going.
6. At the end the app joins the server as its owner. Create an invite from the server menu and send it to your group.

If a step fails, the app shows why and two buttons: Try again continues from where it stopped, and Delete what was created deletes the project on Railway.

What the app creates on your account

Item	For
A ghostlink-<name> project	Keeps the server apart from your other projects. The app touches nothing else on the account.
A service with the image ghcr.io/gestao-in7eligente/ghostlink-server:<version>	The GhostLink server, at the same version as your app.
A volume at /data	Holds the server identity (its certificate), the messages and the settings.
A TCP proxy	The public address, shaped like name.proxy.rlwy.net:port. It is the one in your invites.

The token

• The token is stored encrypted on your computer and only sent to Railway's API. It never goes to any GhostLink server.
• To make the app forget it, use Disconnect on the creation screen. Servers already created keep running.
• To cancel the token for good, delete it on Railway's tokens page.

Voice on Railway

Railway offers one TCP port per service and no UDP. So the server runs in proxy mode: the same port carries text and voice, and all voice goes over TCP.

• For talking, it works well.
• On connections with packet loss, voice may stutter more than on a server with UDP.
• For camera and screen sharing (in future versions) and for large groups, prefer hosting in the app or on a VPS.

Limits of proxy mode

Behind the proxy, every connection reaches the server with the proxy's address, not each person's. So:

• the abuse limits apply to the whole server, not per IP;
• banning by IP has no effect. Banning the person (by identity) works as usual.

Costs

The cost goes to your Railway account. A small server uses little memory and CPU and usually fits in the Hobby plan's US$ 5 of usage. Voice uses outbound traffic: a group of 5 people talking 3 hours a day is close to US$ 1 a month.

Updating

A server the app created follows the version of the owner's app (GhostLink 0.2.2 or newer). While the app is open and Railway is connected, it checks the server's version right after updating itself and every 30 minutes. If the server runs an older version, the app switches the service's image to its own version and deploys again:

• only when nobody is in a voice channel. If no such moment comes within 24 hours, it updates anyway. People in the chat reconnect by themselves;
• the service's volume and settings stay.

While the server waits, the owner sees at the top of the chat: "This server runs 0.2.0. It will be updated to 0.2.2 when nobody is in a call." Update now does not wait: anyone in a call drops for a few seconds. If the Railway token was disconnected, the app asks you to connect it again.

Docker and servers created by hand

The app only updates the servers it created. On a server in Docker, or one created by hand on Railway, use the image ghcr.io/gestao-in7eligente/ghostlink-server:latest: the latest tag always points to the newest version (the same signed image as the numbered tag).

• By hand: pull the image again and recreate the container (on Railway, deploy the service again). The volume at /data keeps the data.
• By itself, with Watchtower: it pulls the new image and recreates the container. It does not know whether anyone is in a call, so pick a quiet time. For example, every day at 5 AM, for the ghostlink container:

docker run -d --name watchtower --restart unless-stopped   -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock   containrrr/watchtower --schedule "0 0 5 * * *" ghostlink   # checks every day at 5 AM

Ghost DJ and the YouTube block

The image already has ffmpeg: with voice on, the Ghost DJ (the music bot, /play) works without any setup. YouTube often blocks cloud IPs such as Railway's ("Sign in to confirm you're not a bot"), and /play says so when it happens. To fix it, export the YouTube cookies of a logged-in browser in Netscape format (cookies.txt), preferably from a separate account, and upload the file from the app: click the Ghost DJ in the BOTS section and, under YouTube cookies, click Upload file (only the server owner sees it, since 0.5.2). No restart needed.

Restarting and deleting

On Railway's dashboard:

• Restart: use "Restart" on the service.
• Delete: delete the project. The data goes with it (Railway lets you restore it for 48 hours).

The address is the one in your invites

Do not delete or recreate the service's TCP proxy: Railway picks another address and the old invites stop working.