TETHERD(8)

📦 version 0.2.37, in nixpkgs unstable

✨ TETHERD(8) ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the tetherd man page — section 8, system administration, the whole vibe 💅 this is the background daemon page, and we're gonna get you comfy with it, iykyk 🦋

🌸 NAME 🌸

tetherd — Tether background daemon for iOS/Wayland integration. It's literally the glue between your Linux Wayland compositor and your iOS device, no cap 💖

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

no args, no flags, just run it. periodt ✨

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

okay so tetherd is a background daemon that manages the connection between a Linux Wayland compositor and an iOS device running the Tether app. It handles clipboard synchronization, file transfers, and device pairing using TLS with pinned certificates. the security? immaculate. obsessed 🔥

The daemon advertises its presence on the local network using mDNS (Bonjour) and listens for incoming connections on TCP port 5134 by default. It also provides a UNIX domain socket at $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/tether/tetherd.sock for local communication with the tether(1) CLI and tether-gtk(1) GUI. two ways to slide into its DMs — network vibes and local socket vibes 💫

🔥 FIREWALL 🔥

bestie, listen up, this part matters 😭 Inbound 5134/tcp must be reachable for the iPhone to connect, and 5353/udp for mDNS discovery, which avahi-daemon(8) owns. A default-deny firewall commonly passes mDNS while dropping 5134, so the phone discovers this machine and then cannot reach it. it's giving "so close yet so far" and honestly it's tragic 💀

Profiles for ufw(8) and firewalld(1) are installed but never applied; run ufw allow Tether or firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=tether to use them. A source install writes each profile only if that tool's directory already exists; packages always carry both. slay, but also read the fine print 🫶

🐚 FILES 🐚

  • /etc/ufw/applications.d/tether — ufw application profile. Inert until allowed. like, it's just sitting there waiting for its main character moment 🎀
  • /usr/lib/firewalld/services/tether.xml — firewalld service definition. Inert until added to a zone. same energy, different tool 💅
  • $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/tether/tetherd.sock — The UNIX domain socket used for local communication. your lil hotline to the daemon 💖
  • $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/tether/tetherd.lock — Advisory lock file to ensure only one instance of the daemon is running. no duplicate daemons allowed, periodt 🔒
  • ~/.config/tether/ — Directory containing the TLS certificate (cert.pem), private key (key.pem), and pinned device fingerprints (known_hosts.json). keep this safe bestie, it's literally the vault 🔐

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

tether(1), tether-gtk(1)

and that's the page, babes 🧚 this one's from Tether 0.2.37, dated January 1980 — historical icon behavior, we love to see it 🎀 mwah 💋

📦 where this page comes from