BalenaOS in Container on Google Compute Engine Help

Product support balenaOS
1

Hi, I’m trying to run balenaos-in-container on Google Compute Engine. I have installed docker on an Ubuntu 20 VM and it is showing as active, but when I run the balenaos-in-container script I just get this:

ERROR: Docker needs to be running on your host machine.

I’m not really familiar with actually running docker myself, I’m just used to writing dockerfiles/compose files and using balena or cloud build which obviously does all of the other stuff for me.

Has anyone got any recommendations or has successfully run on compute engine and also has recommendation of what vm image and what resinos image and device config to use?

3

Alternatively, is it possible to run balenaos-in-container in a container e.g. using docker in docker? That way I could create a Dockerfile in the local clone of the balenaos-in-container repo with my config and submit to google cloud build to create an image that will install and run balenaos-in-container that I can then use to run a container optimised vm using the built image from google container registry.

4

Hey Paul,

Since balenaOS is currently experimental, it’s best to use the provided script to run it. Would you be able please to run docker info on the VM and report back here the output?

Thanks!

5

So, facepalm me, it appears I had done everything perfectly already, I just needed to run with sudo. :sweat_smile:

6

Having said that. do you have a recommended resinos image and device config for running on an Ubuntu VM? I’m not using it for testing any specific device logic, purely taking advantage of Balena Cloud as a nice interface to monitor and access multiple services (nodejs apps) running in a single VM.

7

If your application is covered by the intel nuc image, it’s better since it’s more lightweight (smaller number of available drivers that possibly are irrelevant to your application. You can try to use the dev image and leverage the functionality of livepush and local-development. Please be advised that balenaOS in container is experimental and it should not be used for a production system.

Thank you for being part of our community! :muscle:

9

Using it as an experiment for running multiple Discord.js bots in a single free N1 f1-micro compute engine instance, using Balena to have a nice interface for viewing logs and also the ease of pushing updates.