---
title: Operator machine
date: 2025-08-03
series:
  - Wild Cloud Setup
series_order: 4
---

(This page assumes you already have your hardware ready to set up. If you don't, read [Setting Up Your Hardware](../hardware/)).

## Your operator machine

Your operator machine is your main workspace (I think of it more as play, actually) for managing your wild cloud. You will install the Wild Cloud software on your operator machine and use it to setup and manage everything related to your wild cloud.

## Download the Wild Cloud software onto your operator machine

Your operator machine should be a [Linux](/learning/linux/) machine on your LAN. It's helpful if it has a nice big hard drive you can use for backing up your cloud data.

{{< gitea server="https://git.civilsociety.dev" repo="CSTF/wild-cloud" showThumbnail=true >}}

```bash
git clone https://git.civilsociety.dev/CSTF/wild-cloud.git
```

Add the `bin` directory to your path.
```bash
export PATH=$PATH:~/wild-cloud/bin
```

Install dependencies:

```bash
scripts/setup-utils.sh
```