openedge

Edge virtual appliance with Docker.

openedge builds a minimal Ubuntu Server virtual machine with Docker Engine pre-installed and ready to run, designed to be deployed as an edge device on any virtualization platform. It produces a QEMU qcow2 image (KVM/Proxmox/cloud), a VirtualBox Vagrant box, and an OVA appliance. Two appliance variants are available: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (autoinstall, current LTS) and Ubuntu 18.04 (preseed, legacy).

The appliance is produced with Packer.

Features

• Automated, unattended install of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (ubuntu2404.json, autoinstall) or Ubuntu 18.04 (ubuntu1804.json, preseed)
• Docker Engine + Compose plugin pre-installed
• Optional offline preconfigure menu to bake in a compose source (HTTP/S3/GCS), runtime parameters, a static network (IP/mask/gateway/DNS), a run-on-boot script and an edge-login script
• Works out of the box: with zero configuration, on first boot the appliance downloads a default docker-compose.yml (the sample edge stack) over HTTP and starts it with docker compose up -d
• At boot, the appliance registers/logs in the device (edge-login.sh), runs the user boot script (runmeonboot) and fetches docker-compose.yml from the configured source to start the stack — no remote access required
• Override with a URL, or set the compose source to none to disable fetching/starting a stack
• Standard names for the shipped artifacts: docker-compose.yml, runmeonboot, edge-login.sh
• A ready-to-deploy sample edge stack with all three artifacts
• Default user has passwordless sudo and direct access to the docker group
• Base CLI utilities (git, wget, curl, vim) and NFS client support included
• Slim final image: Ansible and package caches removed, free space zeroed
• Ships as qcow2, VirtualBox Vagrant box, and OVA

Repository layout

Path	Purpose
distro/	Packer build source for the virtual appliance
distro/ubuntu2404.json	Packer template for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (autoinstall)
distro/ubuntu1804.json	Packer template for Ubuntu 18.04 (preseed, legacy)
distro/preconfigure/preconfigure.sh	Terminal menu that bakes deployment settings into the image
distro/http/preseed.cfg	Unattended Ubuntu 18.04 install answers
distro/http/{user-data,meta-data}	Ubuntu 24.04 autoinstall answers (cloud-init nocloud seed)
distro/scripts/	Shell provisioning steps (Ansible, setup, Docker, edge bootstrap, network, cleanup, disk-zeroing, OVA packaging)
distro/ansible/main.yml	Ansible playbook for base utilities
distro/sample/	Sample edge stack: docker-compose.yml, runmeonboot, edge-login.sh
distro/Vagrantfile	Tests the built VirtualBox box locally
distro/builds/	Build output (appliance images, not tracked)

Quick start

See distro/README.md for the full build guide. In short:

cd distro
packer plugins install github.com/hashicorp/qemu         # one-time
./preconfigure/preconfigure.sh                           # optional: configure the edge stack
packer build -only qemu ubuntu2404.json                  # Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (default)
# packer build -only qemu ubuntu1804.json                # legacy Ubuntu 18.04

The 24.04 QEMU appliance lands in distro/builds/qemu-2404/, and the 18.04 one in distro/builds/qemu/. On an x86_64 host you can also build the VirtualBox box and OVA with packer build -only virtualbox-iso ubuntu2404.json; see the distro README.

Testing

Boot the QEMU image directly, or vagrant up the VirtualBox box from distro/:

cd distro
qemu-system-x86_64 -m 1024 -smp 1 \
  -machine q35,accel=tcg \
  -netdev user,id=net0 -device e1000,netdev=net0 \
  -drive file=builds/qemu-2404/openedge-2404,format=qcow2,if=virtio \
  -display cocoa

Log in as vagrant / vagrant and check docker --version, docker compose version, docker ps. Sampled: ~1 minute after boot the sample stack is up — docker logs -f hello-edge shows the heartbeat. See the distro README for details and configuration guidance.

For the VirtualBox build, vagrant up from distro/ boots the box, or import the generated OVA directly (VBoxManage import distro/builds/virtualbox-ubuntu2404.ova).

Apple Silicon note: the qemu builder works on ARM Macs through full TCG emulation, but the build is very slow. The virtualbox-iso builder requires an x86_64 host.

Requirements

• Packer
• VirtualBox
• Vagrant (optional, for testing)

License

Released under the MIT license.