Managing models¶

Where models come from¶

Dragomand installs the models Mozilla publishes for Firefox Translations, fetched from the same distribution channel Firefox itself uses. That means the exact models your Firefox would install, for every language pair Mozilla releases, kept current as Mozilla ships new versions.

Every download is verified: each file's size and sha256 checksum are checked against the provider's records before the model is installed, and installation is atomic, so an interrupted download never leaves a broken model behind.

The models are data, licensed by Mozilla under MPL-2.0. Each installed model carries a manifest recording its provider, pair, version, architecture, per-file checksums, license and source URL, so the daemon needs no network to know exactly what it has.

The stores¶

Models live in one user store and any number of read-only system stores.

When a pair exists in several places, the newest version the engine supports wins; on a tie, the system copy is preferred. Removing a pair with dragomanctl remove only affects the user store; packaged models are removed with the package manager.

Offline behavior¶

The rule is simple: when a usable model is installed, the network is never touched. Only two things go online, and both are explicit:

• installing a pair that is not on disk (including install on demand), and
• update checks (dragomanctl update, the optional timer, or a client calling CheckForUpdates).

Setting network = false in the configuration disables even those, turning Dragomand into a strictly offline service that uses only what is already installed.

Updates¶

Nothing updates behind your back. The choices, from manual to automatic:

dragomanctl update --check                            # report only
dragomanctl update                                    # install updates now
systemctl --user enable --now dragomand-update.timer  # weekly, in the background

During an upgrade the previous version stays on disk until no loaded engine uses it, then it is removed.

Pre-release models exist in Mozilla's channel but are skipped by default; opt in with allow_prerelease = true in the configuration if you want to test them.

Pivoting¶

When you request a pair with no direct model, for example Bulgarian to German, the daemon translates through English using two models. This works transparently, but it adds latency and compounds translation errors, so the daemon always reports when it happened: dragomanctl prints a notice on standard error, and D-Bus clients receive the pivot language in the result. Pass --no-pivot (or the allow_pivot = false option over D-Bus) to fail instead.

Inspecting and repairing¶

dragomanctl pairs                # what is installed and what is available
dragomanctl store list           # every model in every store, with origin
dragomanctl store verify         # re-check all files against the manifests

If verification reports a damaged pair, reinstall it:

dragomanctl remove bg-en
dragomanctl install bg-en

The store subcommands work without the daemon and without a session bus, which makes them suitable for scripts, containers and package build roots. See the command line reference.