Sandbox

Generated from README.md in the repository. Edit it there; this wiki is rebuilt on every change.

Validate before you deploy: sandbox with Pi Fleet Emulator

A command that works on one Pi can still break a hundred. Field fleets are mixed: different boards, 32-bit and 64-bit images, and OS releases from years apart. Pi Fleet Emulator, a companion project built alongside EdgeShell, recreates such a fleet in Docker: every node runs real OpenSSH and Node-RED, reports an ARM architecture and Raspberry Pi OS, and answers docker and systemctl like a real Pi. To EdgeShell it looks like hardware.

The sandbox/ directory wires the two together and proves every fleet operation end to end. It runs on every push in CI, on both amd64 and native arm64 runners.

The sandbox fleet:

Node	Architecture	OS
bookworm64 / bookworm32	aarch64 / armv7l	Raspberry Pi OS 12 (Bookworm)
bullseye64 / bullseye32	aarch64 / armv7l	Raspberry Pi OS 11 (Bullseye)
buster64 / buster32	aarch64 / armv7l	Raspberry Pi OS 10 (Buster)

Change sandbox/fleet.json to test any mix, up to 20 nodes.

What sandbox/run.sh verifies:

Area	Checks
Onboarding	Emulator export imported as JSON; every node reachable over SSH
Fleet control	Connection test and architecture detection per node; one command across the fleet returns each node's own OS and architecture
Monitoring	Metrics from every node; Node-RED detected on every node
Data push and pull	A file deployed to every node, then fetched back from each
OTA-style rollout	An update package pushed, applied with sudo and its version verified on every node
Ansible	ansible-core inside the image runs a play on every host with per-host results
Security	Session limits and takeover prompt, stolen cookie rejected after logout, password reset ends sessions, brute-force lockout, identical login errors, monitor role blocked from commands and deploys
Image hardening	Non-root user, read-only code, no .env, databases or keys inside the image
Resilience	Admin password and all nodes survive a container restart

bash sandbox/run.sh                                                 # build from source, test, tear down
EDGESHELL_IMAGE=devprincekumar/edgeshell:1.17.0 bash sandbox/run.sh  # test a published image

Your own workflow: run a change (command, playbook, file rollout) against the sandbox fleet, check the results on the dashboard, then repeat it on the real fleet with the same commands. Only the node list changes.

Note

Emulated nodes report ARM but run on your host's CPU. Use the sandbox to validate management, deployment and monitoring flows, not ARM-compiled binaries. The older sim/ demo is kept for reference; the sandbox replaces it.