Accounts
To claim ownership of your Cardinal Home Server, simply log in with a Cardinal account.
Your Cardinal Home Server supports two types of user accounts: Cardinal accounts and local accounts.
Your Home Server comes with one local account, and using a Cardinal account is entirely optional.
Cardinal account
You can create a Cardinal account for free and log into your Home Server with it. These accounts are also called "cloud accounts" because they are managed by Cardinal's cloud services.
The first Cardinal account that you log into your Home Server with will be made the server owner. Connecting your Home Server to a Cardinal account comes with a few benefits:
- Access to Cardinal's online services.
- The ability to disable local accounts, securing your media behind authentication with your cloud account.
Once your Home Server has been claimed by a Cardinal Account, it can only be unclaimed by performing a factory reset.
In the event of a server outage
The Home Server is fundamentally an offline-first application, and it is designed to be resilient against server outages. If Cardinal's cloud services are offline, you will still be able to use your Home Server locally.
Local account
Your Home Server also supports local accounts, and comes with one called the Offline Account. This account is enabled by default, making your Home Server publicly accessible on your home network without a password.
Using both
You can seamlessly switch between using your Cardinal account and offline account at any time.