Can BalenaOS work without internet ?

Product support
1

Hello
We want to develop software in JS capable of working without an internet connection.
After flashing the SD card and starting RPI4 without an internet connection, is BalenaOS still able to start the containers without being connected to the internet?
Is an internet connection required when starting?
If we suddenly have no internet connection at a random time, can the containers continue to work?

2

Hello @Firat

Yes balenaOS should work properly in offline environments. In case you need to perform specific actions you will need to interact with the supervisor locally from your containers.

The Internet connection is required in case you want to update the software or the hostOS. Or in case you want to access remotely to the devices, however there are other ways to access to a device if you are in the same network.

Let me know if you have more questions!

3

Hello

Thank you for your response.
It’s good news for us to hear this.
Is there any configuration required for operation without internet?
Is it balenaOS which takes the initiative to automatically start the containers?

4

Did you read this tutorial for the offline updates @Firat ?

i think it can help you to learn more.

6

Hello @mpous,
Thank you for sharing the link to your documentation :slight_smile:
However, the doc doesn’t answer my questions…

7

You do not need any configuration for operating without Internet. However you need to have the devices online to provision them and deploy the containers. In case that you would like to deploy new releases with offline devices you will need to follow the instructions i shared on the previous message.

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8

Just to add some more colour here Firat, in an offline environment, balena engine will run your application containers whilst the device supervisor will continuously try to establish a connection to the balena API. If there is permanently no internet connection, the device will continue running in this state indefinitely, but it’s the separation of the supervisor and balena-engine that allows containers to continue running even if there’s no network connection.

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11

Hi,

I would like to point out one important bit of configuration when going offline: the ssh keys.
Nothing quite as frustrating as having a malfunctioning device you can’t get into :wink:

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