Day to day

Check on it

hotline status
systemctl status hotline
journalctl -u hotline

hotline status asks the running desk for its version, uptime, store, teammates and connected models. When the service is down it says so and exits with status 3.

Stop and restart

systemctl restart hotline stops cleanly:

1. New work is refused with Hotline is restarting. Try again in a moment. A schedule that comes due meanwhile runs after the restart.
2. What you said that was still waiting behind a teammate’s turn is kept for the next start.
3. Turns already running get up to 30 seconds to finish.
4. A turn still running after that is stopped, and the conversation says so. It is not run again, because it may already have done part of its work.

On the next start, the kept lines go to their teammates once, in order. A desk killed outright (kill -9, power loss) keeps what was already written and nothing more.

One desk per room

A room has one desk at a time. A second hotline serve, the desktop app or an import on the same room is refused while one runs.

What lives where

Everything is under the room, /var/lib/hotline/room:

Path	What
room.jsonl, transcripts/	The room and every conversation
workspaces/	Each teammate’s own workspace
secrets/	Keys and pairings, one owner-only file each
store.json	Which secret store the room uses
desk.lock	The room’s lock. Never delete it while the desk runs
door.json	How the terminal commands reach the running desk; removed on a clean stop

Back up the whole directory with the desk stopped, and encrypt the backup: it holds your keys.

Update

Replace /usr/local/bin/hotline with the new release’s binary and systemctl restart hotline. Paired phones stay paired.