i am totally new to balenaOS - and just want to take some simple steps after seeing the MING presentation.
so i just want to drop balenaOS on a spare Dell notebook i have sitting on a nearby desk.
i set up an account, made a Fleet, made a device, provided the wifi ssid and password, burned the USB stick, booted from it, and then it just did its thing for a while.
powered off, removed, USB, powered up, it boots (says booting on screen) then i see the balena green dice thing on a sceen, and…that’s about it.
should that device show up in my fleet UI?
can i do anything on the notebook to know that certain parts of that process actually worked like it should?
is it probably the wifi initial connection (i did provide the proper info).
any help appreciated! i REALLY like what i see, hope to get it working.
it was actually the wifi.
i connected an ethernet cable, restarted the notebook, and it then did show as a connected device in my fleet.
i see the wifi radio indicator lit up / enabled on the notebook, so assuming it is on and working.
would like to figure that piece out someday - i recall doing similar things on raspberry pis so they can boot onto a wifi network. but i also recall that being a fairly precise config.
yes, that looks like a super helpful doc.
it also looks like a lite intro into some behind-the-scenes operations, which will also prove helpful along the way.
i did deploy the MING application directly from @mpous 's repo - that’s a very impressive and painless deployment mechanism.
since i already had the device configured and online, it deployed immediately to it.
i now see it is up, but seems to have ‘wifi-connect’ errors when i look at the logs and terminal in the application summary page.
that stands to reason as it was originally configured for wifi and all i did to proceed was to connect an active network cable.
i’ll troubleshoot that wifi setup first and see if i can make that work - and that should allow the app(s) to start, i’d think.
oh, man, that video is a precise segue right to how to get into my issue directly! thank you so much for getting that for me. dovetails nicely with @alanb128 's reference.
i have a pretty extensive monitoring background, so the TIG stack is very familiar to me.
the node-red piece is where things get really interesting though, in several different contexts.
i’m still in pure discovery mode - so before i get too specific about objectives, i’d like to get more familiar with all the pieces.
to say that i am blown away by the completeness of the balenaOS platform, conceptually, would be an understatement. i’ve spent maybe a total of 2 hours from initial introduction (after watching the MING youtube) and have a functional (even with errors it is ‘functional’ in a sense) multi-service PLATFORM to perform a (practically) unlimited suite of monitoring functions. that is impressive.
i undoubtedly will have more questions as i proceed - so stay tuned. thanks again for the awesome reference.
when looking at the SSID names using nmcli scan, i saw my SSID was all caps, but i entered it in the original setup as lowercase.
i did change that in the /system-connnections file to upper case, restarted, and it reconnected!
that was great - to simply address that basic connection issue in that easy-to-understand way.
but, most of the services have errors, and now that i look at what i’ve deployed from that repo, it’s obvious that i’m running a configuration that wasn’t even intended for the 86_64 platform.
so now that i have a better idea of how the apps get assembled from existing targeted images, i’ll take step back and try to build up a multi-service system with proper images.
this all seems pretty straightforward. reminds me a lot of portainer actually, but with many other platform services.
thanks, @mpous.
i’m trying now to sort of pull back just a bit, and try not to deep-dive with a specific multi-container deployment, but just understand the minimal configuration and the pieces required for what might be considered a bare-bones deployment, to a spare notebook laying around the office.
think ‘hello-world’ repo / project.
i’ve read through a LOT of the documentation, the architecture, file layouts of balenaOS, etc. but i’m still struggling with what are the pieces in a minimally, but fully functioning deployed platform, structured as a project/repo.
but i am still working through the abundant docs - so i may still run across some of the more fundamental concepts and tutorials.
