Edge Devices

Adding Edge Devices

With additional edge devices (i.e., industrial PCs) you can deploy IronFlock apps to more machines and offload app operations from the appliance. The appliance itself already serves as an edge device, but you can attach more edge devices in the same way as you would deploy edge devices in the IronFlock cloud. Just go to Project Settings -> Devices -> New Device and follow the instructions.

Device Agent Updates

Edge devices attached to the appliance receive updates of the IronFlock device agent from the appliance itself — they never contact instance-registry.ironflock.com and need no internet access for it:

Plain (IP) mode: http://<appliance-host>:15002/dl — the same port devices already use for registry tokens.
Domain/TLS mode: https://registry.<appliance-domain>/dl on port 443.

The appliance keeps a local mirror of the agent binaries and refreshes it from https://instance-registry.ironflock.com (already part of the firewall allowlist) every 6 hours, or on demand under Settings → License/Appliance → Device agent updates → Sync now. You can also refresh an appliance’s mirror from the IronFlock cloud, without opening the instance and without logging in to the appliance itself: in cloud Studio go to your Profile → Instances, where every appliance you own has a Device agent updates column showing the agent version its mirror currently serves to devices (with the device installer version beneath it) and the same Sync now action in that cell. The mirror follows the cloud release manifest: every agent version the cloud manifest currently references is kept — for all Linux targets and for Windows — and a version is offered to devices only once it is completely present on the appliance. If the cloud publishes a version that is not yet complete on the appliance, devices keep seeing the previous one.

The agent downloads from the signed tree <base>/device-agent/ (a signed manifest.json and the binaries with their .sig signatures), verifies every update before applying it and rolls back automatically if the new version does not come up. Updates are applied only when the agent starts or when a user starts the update in Studio.

A device learns the update location from its .flock file (update_url) and, from agent version 0.21.2 onward, also from the appliance on every heartbeat — so a changed appliance IP or a switch to domain mode propagates to the devices automatically.

Devices provisioned before this feature that still run an older agent need their .flock file re-downloaded once. On Windows: stop the service (device-agent.exe service stop), replace %ProgramData%\IronFlock\DeviceAgent\device.flock with the new file (saved without a BOM) — on devices installed before agent 1.4.0 the folder is %ProgramData%\IronFlock\Reagent — then start it again (device-agent.exe service start).

Enrolling Devices Without Internet Access

The appliance also mirrors the device installer (ironflock-init) and its install script, so a new edge device that can only reach the appliance can still be enrolled. In Project Settings → Devices → New Device the commands shown already point at the appliance — http://<appliance-host>:15002/dl/... in plain (IP) mode, https://registry.<appliance-domain>/dl/... in domain mode:

Linux: the one-liner has the shape curl -fsSL <base>/device-init/install.sh | sudo IRONFLOCK_DL_BASE=<base> bash -s -- -c <file>.flock. Copy the device’s .flock file over first. ironflock-init takes the download base from the .flock file; --download-base overrides it.
Windows: download device-agent.exe from <base>/device-agent/windows/amd64/latest/device-agent.exe and install the service as described under Connect Devices.

Prerequisite for a device without internet access: Docker (Engine + Compose plugin) and the base packages must already be installed. The appliance mirrors IronFlock’s own binaries, not distribution packages — ironflock-init only tries get.docker.com when Docker is missing.

The installer bucket is refreshed together with the agent mirror — same 6-hour cycle, same Sync now button.