# Device Type Not Recognized - Fleet Creation Fails on internet isolated Host

**URL:** <https://forums.balena.io/t/device-type-not-recognized-fleet-creation-fails-on-internet-isolated-host/375258>\
**Category:** openBalena\
**Created:** [December 16, 2025, 5:27pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/device-type-not-recognized-fleet-creation-fails-on-internet-isolated-host/375258 "2025-12-16T17:27:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andrea](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/andrea/32/10162_2.png) [@andrea](https://forums.balena.io/u/andrea)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2025, 5:27pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/device-type-not-recognized-fleet-creation-fails-on-internet-isolated-host/375258/1 "2025-12-16T17:27:16Z")

</div>

Hi everybody,

I have successfully installed (i hope) open-balena and the balena-cli on the same machine, which is completely isolated from the internet.

When I run the command:

> balena fleet create my-fleet-8aio --type revpi-connect-4

return

> Device type slug not recognized. Perhaps misspelled?  
> Check available device types with “balena device-type list”

**tl;dr;**

_Premise:_  
I installed open-balena successfully in an air-gapped environment. I installed all necessary `.deb` packages and loaded the open-balena images built on an online machine.

_Initial Issue & Resolution:_  
The stack initially failed because I had forgotten to disable `cgroup v2` (which is no longer mentioned in the manual, but was necessary for the version I was using). After disabling cgroup v2 and rebooting the system, all containers started correctly (except for the `open-balena-haproxy-sidecar-1` container, which occasionally restarts, but this doesn’t seem to be the primary blocker).

_Current Container Status (`docker ps` output):_

```auto
lcladm@ansrvgem05:~$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
317dcea880dc balena/open-balena-vpn:11.33.8 "/usr/bin/entry.sh" 2 hours ago Up About an hour (healthy) 80/tcp, 443/tcp, 3128/tcp open-balena-vpn-1
6b078f4367c0 balena/open-balena-api:43.0.16 "/etc/s6-overlay/scr…" 2 hours ago Up About an hour (healthy) 80/tcp open-balena-api-1
2eb8def76b01 balena/open-balena-registry:2.42.0 "/usr/bin/confd-entr…" 2 hours ago Up About an hour (healthy) open-balena-registry-1
50c66dbe3718 open-balena-cert-manager "/bin/bash -c /usr/l…" 2 hours ago Up About an hour 80/tcp, 443/tcp open-balena-cert-manager-1
81fdacd298dd open-balena-haproxy-sidecar "dockerd-entrypoint.…" 2 hours ago Up About a minute 2375-2376/tcp open-balena-haproxy-sidecar-1
d240bba19026 balena/ca-private:0.0.15 "/bin/bash -c /usr/l…" 2 hours ago Up About an hour (healthy) 8888/tcp open-balena-balena-ca-1
12a902bcfd61 balena/open-balena-db:6.0.0 "/balena-entrypoint.…" 2 hours ago Up About an hour (healthy) 5432/tcp open-balena-db-1
f8aa155831f6 docker:dind "/bin/sh -c 'set -x\n…" 2 hours ago Up About an hour (healthy) 2375-2376/tcp open-balena-docker-1
e25607280bb0 open-balena-haproxy "docker-entrypoint.s…" 2 hours ago Up About an hour (healthy) 0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp, [::]:80->80/tcp, 0.0.0.0:443->443/tcp, [::]:443->443/tcp, 0.0.0.0:1936->1936/tcp, [::]:1936->1936/tcp open-balena-haproxy-1
aab4db854779 redis:8.2-alpine "docker-entrypoint.s…" 2 hours ago Up About an hour (healthy) 6379/tcp open-balena-redis-1
94686cf938f3 balena/open-balena-s3:2.28.92 "/usr/bin/entry.sh" 2 hours ago Up About an hour (healthy) 80/tcp open-balena-s3-1

```

The command:

`balena device-type list`

returns an empty list, but even on the online machine I used to create the balena images, the same command returns an empty list, yet I can create fleets correctly there. I don’t understand what is going wrong here.

What checks can I perform?  
Thank you.  
Andrea

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andrea](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/andrea/32/10162_2.png) [@andrea](https://forums.balena.io/u/andrea)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2025, 8:30am UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/device-type-not-recognized-fleet-creation-fails-on-internet-isolated-host/375258/2 "2025-12-17T08:30:47Z")

</div>

Using `--debug` option the result is the following

```auto
lcladm@ansrvgem05:~$ balena fleet create gems-c4-4aio --type revpi-connect-4 --debug
[debug] new argv=[/home/lcladm/balena-cli/bin/node,/home/lcladm/balena-cli/bin/run,fleet:create,gems-c4-4aio,--type,revpi-connect-4] length=6
[debug] Deprecation check: 0.74840 days since last npm registry query for next major version release date.
[debug] Will not query the registry again until at least 7 days have passed.
[debug] Event tracking error: getaddrinfo ENOTFOUND data.MY_DOMAIN.local
Device type slug not recognized. Perhaps misspelled?
Check available device types with "balena device-type list"

BalenaInvalidDeviceType: Invalid device type: revpi-connect-4
    at Object.get (/home/lcladm/balena-cli/node_modules/balena-sdk/es2018/models/device-type.js:158:23)
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:105:5)
    at async /home/lcladm/balena-cli/node_modules/balena-sdk/es2018/models/application.js:485:28
    at async Promise.all (index 0)
    at async Object.create (/home/lcladm/balena-cli/node_modules/balena-sdk/es2018/models/application.js:506:52)
    at async Object.applicationCreateBase (/home/lcladm/balena-cli/build/utils/application-create.js:12:29)
    at async FleetCreateCmd.run (/home/lcladm/balena-cli/build/commands/fleet/create.js:8:9)
    at async FleetCreateCmd._run (/home/lcladm/balena-cli/node_modules/@oclif/core/lib/command.js:181:22)
    at async Config.runCommand (/home/lcladm/balena-cli/node_modules/@oclif/core/lib/config/config.js:456:25)
    at async run (/home/lcladm/balena-cli/node_modules/@oclif/core/lib/main.js:97:16)

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andrea](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/andrea/32/10162_2.png) [@andrea](https://forums.balena.io/u/andrea)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2025, 11:42am UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/device-type-not-recognized-fleet-creation-fails-on-internet-isolated-host/375258/3 "2025-12-17T11:42:30Z")

</div>

Hi everyone,

**I managed to solve the issue.**  
It turns out my offline database was empty.  
I fixed it by dumping the following tables from an online machine (where fleet creation was working) and importing them into the offline one:

On the online machine:

```auto
docker exec open-balena-db-1 pg_dump -U docker -d resin -t '"cpu architecture"' --data-only --inserts > 01_cpu_arch.sql
docker exec open-balena-db-1 pg_dump -U docker -d resin -t '"device manufacturer"' --data-only --inserts > 02_manufacturer.sql
docker exec open-balena-db-1 pg_dump -U docker -d resin -t '"device family"' --data-only --inserts > 03_family.sql
docker exec open-balena-db-1 pg_dump -U docker -d resin -t '"device type"' --data-only --inserts > 04_device_types.sql
docker exec open-balena-db-1 pg_dump -U docker -d resin -t '"device type alias"' --data-only --inserts > 05_aliases.sql

```

On the offline machine:

```auto
cat 01_cpu_arch.sql | docker exec -i open-balena-db-1 psql -U docker -d resin
cat 02_manufacturer.sql | docker exec -i open-balena-db-1 psql -U docker -d resin
cat 03_family.sql | docker exec -i open-balena-db-1 psql -U docker -d resin
cat 04_device_types.sql | docker exec -i open-balena-db-1 psql -U docker -d resin
cat 05_aliases.sql | docker exec -i open-balena-db-1 psql -U docker -d resin

```

After importing the `device type alias` table (which was the missing link for the CLI/SDK), I was finally able to create the fleet successfully.

I would like to understand when these tables are supposed to be populated during a standard setup. In my case, they were completely empty. I wonder if this is related to an initial boot issue I had with incorrect cgroup settings that prevented containers from starting, or if something else went wrong during the setup phase.

Any insight or suggested checks to verify the root cause would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks to everyone for the support!  
Andrea

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ab77](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/ab77/32/2870_2.png) [@ab77](https://forums.balena.io/u/ab77)\
**Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 7:38pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/device-type-not-recognized-fleet-creation-fails-on-internet-isolated-host/375258/4 "2025-12-29T19:38:52Z")

</div>

> I would like to understand when these tables are supposed to be populated during a standard setup.

Hello, these tables are populated by the initialisation of open-balena-api on startup/init from public [AWS/S3](https://github.com/balena-io/open-balena-api/blob/master/src/features/device-types/storage/s3.ts). If the API doesn’t have Internet connectivity on startup, it will never initialise this list. What you’ve done, by manually importing DB content, IMO is a valid workaround.

openBalena was not designed to be air-gapped.

Cheers!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![andrea](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/andrea/32/10162_2.png) [@andrea](https://forums.balena.io/u/andrea)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2026, 12:54pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/device-type-not-recognized-fleet-creation-fails-on-internet-isolated-host/375258/5 "2026-01-08T12:54:14Z")

</div>

Hi ab77,

I see.  
In the end, I wasn’t able to complete the offline installation because once that error was resolved, the CLI started throwing timeout errors during fleet creation (specifically, `balena fleet create` was timing out). I checked the logs for all containers and mapped out the request chain (aided by the `--debug` flag and source code investigation), then simulated the calls between containers using `curl`. The result was always a timeout. I couldn’t find a way to resolve it.

Therefore, I proceeded to perform the installation on an internet-connected Linux VM, generating the fleets and JSON configurations while still online, and then moved the VM into the isolated environment.

[Off-topic] Currently, I’m having issues setting up a new device, so I can’t verify yet if it will connect correctly to open-balena and if open-balena will work in the isolated environment.

Even though it isn’t designed to work in an air-gapped environment, I hope it’s still usable.  
Or do you happen to know of any specific blockers?

Thanks, Andrea

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ab77](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/ab77/32/2870_2.png) [@ab77](https://forums.balena.io/u/ab77)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2026, 8:25pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/device-type-not-recognized-fleet-creation-fails-on-internet-isolated-host/375258/6 "2026-01-08T20:25:43Z")

</div>

Have you looked at this (stale) PR: [DRAFT: Enable Air-gapped open-balena deployment by compiaffe · Pull Request #241 · balena-io/open-balena · GitHub](https://github.com/balena-io/open-balena/pull/241) ?

It may provide some inspiration…

Cheers!