Stop the war

Stand with Ukraine flag

Support Ukraine
Try it now Pricing
PE Edge
Community Edition Professional Edition Cloud Edge PE Edge IoT Gateway License Server Trendz Analytics Mobile Application PE Mobile Application MQTT Broker
Installation > Installing Edge with Docker (Linux or Mac OS)
Getting Started Documentation
Architecture API FAQ
On this page

Installing ThingsBoard Edge using Docker (Linux or Mac OS)

doc warn icon

Rules of Compatibility Between ThingsBoard Edge and ThingsBoard Server Versions:

  • A ThingsBoard Edge version X.Y.Z is compatible with the same ThingsBoard Server version X.Y.Z and any later versions.
  • A ThingsBoard Edge version X.Y.Z is NOT compatible with ThingsBoard Server versions preceding X.Y.Z.

Example: ThingsBoard Edge version 3.3.4.1 is compatible with ThingsBoard Server version 3.3.4.1 and subsequent versions (3.4.0, 3.4.1, …). However, ThingsBoard Edge version 3.4.0 is NOT compatible with ThingsBoard Server version 3.3.4.1 or any prior versions (3.3.4, 3.3.3, …). In such scenarios, ThingsBoard Server 3.3.4.1 or a preceding version must first be upgraded to ThingsBoard Server 3.4.0 or a later version.

Please ensure that the ThingsBoard Server is updated to the latest version before proceeding.

This guide will help you to install and start ThingsBoard Edge using Docker on Linux or Mac OS.

Prerequisites

Edge Hardware Requirements

The hardware specifications needed for ThingsBoard Edge are determined by both the number of devices connected locally and the extent of GUI interaction:

  • Light Usage: If you intend to operate ThingsBoard Edge with minimal GUI interactions (such as local dashboards and device management) and anticipate connecting fewer than 100 devices to a single machine, a minimum of 1GB of RAM should suffice.

  • Heavy Usage: Conversely, for heavy GUI interactions and connections to 100+ devices on a single machine, we recommend allocating at least 4GB of RAM to ensure optimal performance.

Setting Up the Server Environment for ThingsBoard Edge

To start utilizing ThingsBoard Edge, it is essential to have an operational server that supports Edge functionality.

The easiest way is to use ThingsBoard Cloud server.

Alternatively, you can install the ThingsBoard Professional Edition server on-premise. For installation guidance, please refer to Install PE.

Provisioning a New Edge Instance on Server

Additionally, you will need to provision ThingsBoard Edge on a server.

  • Sign in to your ThingsBoard PE instance and navigate to the “Edge Management” -> “Instances” page. Click the “+” icon in the top right corner and select “Add Edge”.

  • Enter a name for your edge. For instance, “My New Edge”. If necessary, update the cloud endpoint. This URL should be accessible from the edge. If the edge is running in a Docker container, using “localhost” is incorrect. It must be the IP address of the machine where ThingsBoard PE is running and accessible by the edge container. If you are using the ThingsBoard Cloud server to evaluate the edge, leave this setting as it is. Click “Add” to create your new edge.

  • Your new edge should now appear at the top of the list, as entries are sorted by creation time by default.

Sign in to your ThingsBoard <b>PE</b> instance and navigate to the "Edge Management" -> "Instances" page. Click the "+" icon in the top right corner and select "Add Edge".

Sign in to your ThingsBoard PE instance and navigate to the “Edge Management” -> “Instances” page. Click the “+” icon in the top right corner and select “Add Edge”.

Enter a name for your edge. For instance, "My New Edge". If necessary, update the cloud endpoint. This URL should be accessible from the edge. If the edge is running in a Docker container, using "localhost" is <b>incorrect</b>. It must be the IP address of the machine where ThingsBoard <b>PE</b> is running and accessible by the edge container. If you are using the ThingsBoard <b>Cloud</b> server to evaluate the edge, leave this setting as it is. Click "Add" to create your new edge.

Enter a name for your edge. For instance, “My New Edge”. If necessary, update the cloud endpoint. This URL should be accessible from the edge. If the edge is running in a Docker container, using “localhost” is incorrect. It must be the IP address of the machine where ThingsBoard PE is running and accessible by the edge container. If you are using the ThingsBoard Cloud server to evaluate the edge, leave this setting as it is. Click “Add” to create your new edge.

Your new edge should now appear at the top of the list, as entries are sorted by creation time by default.

Your new edge should now appear at the top of the list, as entries are sorted by creation time by default.

Docker installation

doc warn icon

Don’t forget to add your linux user to the docker group. See Manage Docker as a non-root user.

Guided Installation Using ThingsBoard Server Pre-configured Instructions

The most straightforward method to install and connect Edge to the Server is by utilizing the prepared installation instructions provided by the ThingsBoard Server. For every Edge Entity, the Server has prepared instructions with already populated fields such as the Edge secret key, Edge routing key, Edge RPC host URI, etc. Please follow the steps below to use these prepared instructions:

  • Open the Edge Entity Details Page by Clicking on the Edge Row;

  • Click on Install & Connection instructions;

  • Follow instructions to install Edge and connect to Server.

Open the Edge Entity Details Page by Clicking on the Edge Row;

Open the Edge Entity Details Page by Clicking on the Edge Row;

Click on Install & Connection instructions;

Click on Install & Connection instructions;

Follow instructions to install Edge and connect to Server.

Follow instructions to install Edge and connect to Server.

Manual Installation and Configuration

If, for any reason, you are unable to use the prepared ThingsBoard Server Instructions above, please follow the generic steps outlined below. These steps will guide you through installing and configuring the Edge by yourself.

Step 1. Pull ThingsBoard Edge Images

Make sure your have logged in to docker hub using command line.

1

docker pull thingsboard/tb-edge-pe:3.6.1EDGEPE

Step 2. Running ThingsBoard Edge

Here you can find ThingsBoard Edge docker image:

Click on Copy Edge Key and Copy Edge Secret in the edge details section. This will copy your edge credentials to your clipboard. Be sure to store them in a secure location, as these values will be needed in the following steps.

Create docker compose file for ThingsBoard Edge service:

1

nano docker-compose.yml

Add the following lines to the yml file:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29

version: '3.0'
services:
  mytbedge:
    restart: always
    image: "thingsboard/tb-edge-pe:3.6.1EDGEPE"
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
      - "1883:1883"
      - "5683-5688:5683-5688/udp"
    environment:
      SPRING_DATASOURCE_URL: jdbc:postgresql://postgres:5432/tb-edge
      EDGE_LICENSE_INSTANCE_DATA_FILE: /data/instance-edge-license.data
      CLOUD_ROUTING_KEY: PUT_YOUR_EDGE_KEY_HERE # e.g. 19ea7ee8-5e6d-e642-4f32-05440a529015
      CLOUD_ROUTING_SECRET: PUT_YOUR_EDGE_SECRET_HERE # e.g. bztvkvfqsye7omv9uxlp
      CLOUD_RPC_HOST: PUT_YOUR_CLOUD_IP # e.g. 192.168.1.250 or thingsboard.cloud
      CLOUD_RPC_SSL_ENABLED: 'false' # set it to 'true' if you are connecting edge to thingsboard.cloud 
    volumes:
      - ~/.mytb-edge-data:/data
      - ~/.mytb-edge-logs:/var/log/tb-edge
  postgres:
    restart: always
    image: "postgres:12"
    ports:
      - "5432"
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: tb-edge
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: postgres
    volumes:
      - ~/.mytb-edge-data/db:/var/lib/postgresql/data

Where:

  • restart: always - automatically start ThingsBoard Edge in case of system reboot and restart in case of failure;
  • 8080:8080 - connect local port 8080 to exposed internal HTTP port 8080;
  • 1883:1883 - connect local port 1883 to exposed internal MQTT port 1883;
  • 5683-5688:5683-5688/udp - connect local UDP ports 5683-5688 to exposed internal COAP and LwM2M ports;
  • mytb-edge-data:/data - mounts the host’s dir mytb-edge-data to ThingsBoard Edge DataBase data directory;
  • mytb-edge-logs:/var/log/tb-edge - mounts the host’s dir mytb-edge-logs to ThingsBoard Edge logs directory;

  • mytb-edge-data/db:/var/lib/postgresql/data - mounts the host’s dir mytb-edge-data/db to Postgres data directory;

  • thingsboard/tb-edge-pe:3.6.1EDGEPE - docker image;

  • CLOUD_ROUTING_KEY - your edge key;
  • CLOUD_ROUTING_SECRET - your edge secret;

  • CLOUD_RPC_HOST - ip address of the machine with the ThingsBoard platform;

  • CLOUD_RPC_SSL_ENABLED - enable or disable SSL connection to server from edge.
Doc info icon

Please set CLOUD_RPC_HOST with an IP address of the machine where ThingsBoard PE version is running:

  • DO NOT use ‘localhost’ - ‘localhost’ is the ip address of the edge service in the docker container.

  • Use thingsboard.cloud in case you are connecting edge to ThingsBoard Cloud.

NOTE: thingsboard.cloud uses SSL protocol for edge communication. Please change CLOUD_RPC_SSL_ENABLED to true as well.

  • Use X.X.X.X IP address in case edge is connecting to the cloud instance in the same network or in the docker.
Doc info icon

If ThingsBoard Edge is set to run on the same machine where the ThingsBoard PE server is operating, you need to update additional configuration parameters to prevent port collision between the ThingsBoard server and ThingsBoard Edge.

Please update next lines of docker-compose.yml file:
…
ports:
- “18080:8080”
- “11883:1883”
- “15683-15688:5683-5688/udp”
…

Ensure that the ports listed above (18080, 11883, 15683-15688) are not being used by any other application.

Before starting your Docker containers, execute the following commands to create directories for data storage and logs. These commands will also change the ownership of the newly created directories to the Docker container user.

The chown command is used to change the owner of the directories, and it requires sudo permissions. You may be prompted to enter a password to grant sudo access:

1

mkdir -p ~/.mytb-edge-logs && sudo chown -R 799:799 ~/.mytb-edge-logs

1

mkdir -p ~/.mytb-edge-data && sudo chown -R 799:799 ~/.mytb-edge-data

NOTE: Replace directory ~/.mytb-edge-data and ~/.mytb-edge-logs with directories you’re planning to use in docker-compose.yml.

Set the terminal in the directory which contains the docker-compose.yml file and execute the following commands to up this docker compose directly:

1
2

docker compose up -d
docker compose logs -f mytbedge
Doc info icon

ThingsBoard supports Docker Compose V2 (Docker Desktop or Compose plugin) starting from 3.4.2 release, because docker-compose as standalone setup is no longer supported by Docker.

We strongly recommend to update to Docker Compose V2 and use it.

If you still rely on using Docker Compose as docker-compose (with a hyphen), then please execute the following commands to start ThingsBoard:
docker-compose up -d
docker-compose logs -f mytbedge

Step 3. Open ThingsBoard Edge UI

Once started, you will be able to open ThingsBoard Edge UI using the following link http://localhost:8080.

Doc info icon

If you changed the Edge HTTP bind port to 18080 during Edge installation, use the following ThingsBoard Edge UI link: http://localhost:18080.

Please use your tenant credentials from local Server instance or ThingsBoard Cloud to log in to the ThingsBoard Edge.

Step 4. Detaching, stop and start commands

You can detach from session terminal using Ctrl-p Ctrl-q key sequence - the container will keep running in the background.

In case of any issues you can examine service logs for errors. For example to see ThingsBoard Edge container logs execute the following command:

1

docker compose logs -f mytbedge

To stop the container:

1

docker compose stop mytbedge

To start the container:

1

docker compose start mytbedge
Doc info icon

Docker Compose as docker-compose (with a hyphen) is deprecated. It is recommended to use Docker Compose V2 instead.
If you still rely on docker compose as standalone here is the list of the above commands:
docker-compose logs -f mytbedge
docker-compose stop mytbedge
docker-compose start mytbedge

Troubleshooting

DNS issues

NOTE If you observe errors related to DNS issues, for example

1

127.0.1.1:53: cannot unmarshal DNS message

You may configure your system to use Google public DNS servers. See corresponding Linux and Mac OS instructions.

Database issues

NOTE If you see errors related to edge is not able to connect to database, for example

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28

Caused by: org.postgresql.util.PSQLException: Connection to localhost:5432 refused. Check that the hostname and port are correct and that the postmaster is accepting TCP/IP connections.
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at org.postgresql.core.v3.ConnectionFactoryImpl.openConnectionImpl(ConnectionFactoryImpl.java:262)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at org.postgresql.core.ConnectionFactory.openConnection(ConnectionFactory.java:52)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at org.postgresql.jdbc.PgConnection.<init>(PgConnection.java:216)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at org.postgresql.Driver.makeConnection(Driver.java:404)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at org.postgresql.Driver.connect(Driver.java:272)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at com.zaxxer.hikari.util.DriverDataSource.getConnection(DriverDataSource.java:138)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at com.zaxxer.hikari.pool.PoolBase.newConnection(PoolBase.java:358)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at com.zaxxer.hikari.pool.PoolBase.newPoolEntry(PoolBase.java:206)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at com.zaxxer.hikari.pool.HikariPool.createPoolEntry(HikariPool.java:477)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at com.zaxxer.hikari.pool.HikariPool.checkFailFast(HikariPool.java:560)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at com.zaxxer.hikari.pool.HikariPool.<init>(HikariPool.java:115)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at com.zaxxer.hikari.HikariDataSource.getConnection(HikariDataSource.java:112)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at org.hibernate.engine.jdbc.connections.internal.DatasourceConnectionProviderImpl.getConnection(DatasourceConnectionProviderImpl.java:122)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at org.hibernate.internal.NonContextualJdbcConnectionAccess.obtainConnection(NonContextualJdbcConnectionAccess.java:38)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at org.hibernate.resource.jdbc.internal.LogicalConnectionManagedImpl.acquireConnectionIfNeeded(LogicalConnectionManagedImpl.java:108)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	... 117 common frames omitted
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | Caused by: java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused (Connection refused)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketConnect(Native Method)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at java.net.AbstractPlainSocketImpl.doConnect(AbstractPlainSocketImpl.java:350)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at java.net.AbstractPlainSocketImpl.connectToAddress(AbstractPlainSocketImpl.java:206)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at java.net.AbstractPlainSocketImpl.connect(AbstractPlainSocketImpl.java:188)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at java.net.SocksSocketImpl.connect(SocksSocketImpl.java:392)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:607)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at org.postgresql.core.PGStream.<init>(PGStream.java:61)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	at org.postgresql.core.v3.ConnectionFactoryImpl.openConnectionImpl(ConnectionFactoryImpl.java:144)
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | 	... 131 common frames omitted
mytbedge_1_f5648ad89a6e | pg_ctl: could not send stop signal (PID: 10): No such process

Stop and remove containers:

1
2

docker compose stop
docker compose rm
Doc info icon

If you still rely on Docker Compose as docker-compose (with a hyphen) here is the list of the above commands:
docker-compose stop
docker-compose rm

Remove postmaster.pid file:

1

sudo rm -rf ~/.mytb-edge-data/db/postmaster.pid

Start containers again:

1
2

docker compose up -d
docker compose logs -f mytbedge
Doc info icon

If you still rely on Docker Compose as docker-compose (with a hyphen) here is the list of the above commands:
docker-compose up -d
docker-compose logs -f mytbedge

Next Steps

Congratulations! You have successfully provisioned, installed and connected ThingsBoard Edge to ThingsBoard server.

You can continue with Getting started guide to get the basic knowledge of ThingsBoard Edge or you can jump directly to more advanced topics: