OpenBalena Server Device

I've been working on a mechanism to deploy images to devices (e.g. Raspberry Pi) using OpenBalena.

Details on OpenBalena can be found here. I followed a version of the setup instructions here.

I wasn't able to get this up and running on a Raspberry Pi 3B+, possibly because there is only 1GB RAM on this board which may not be enough. Instead I used an installation of Armbian on the OrangePi Plus2E which has 2GB RAM and seems to run up OK.

I created the instance using the command

cd ~/open-balena
./scripts/quickstart -U [email protected] -P bubbl1n0 -d doesbalena.goip.de

i.e. the above gives the login and password credentials needed to connect to the OpenBalena server from balena-cli (see below).

There is an issue running OpenBalena on local networks (as at DoES) which is that it requires a number of DNS CNAME values to be set to map to the IP address of the device running OpenBalena.

I haven't found a great solution to this but for now am using an Internet DDNS service called GoIP.de

I have set up subdomains on GoIP.de to the current local IP address of the board which is currently 10.0.38.9 as of 15/04/19. (You should be able to check this on a local network segment with ping balenapi)

Login is [email protected], password is Bubbl1n0

doesbalena.goip.de
api.doesbalena.goip.de
registry.doesbalena.goip.de
vpn.doesbalena.goip.de
s3.doesbalena.goip.de

The OrangePi has login balena and password bubbl1n0

TBD: I need to add a script to the OrangePi boot sequence to update the GoIP.de IP address in case it changes...

On boot OpenBalena needs to be started with

cd ~/open-balena
./scripts/compose up -d

TBD: I need to automate this

OpenBalena Client

As in the Getting Started guide above an OpenBalena client needs to be installed on a client PC.

Then set ~/.resin.yml to point to the OpenBalena server

resinUrl: "doesbalena.goip.de"

Then copy the ca.crt file from the OpenBalena board '/open-balena/config/certs/root/ca.crt' to your local PC and add the following to `/.bashrc' (you'll need to login to the shell again to pick this up)

export NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS=~/open-balena/config/certs/root/ca.crt

At this point you should be able to log into the OpenBalena server with

balena login

Use the 'credentials' and enter [email protected] with password bubbl1n0

Then e.g. show available apps with

balena apps