Bootstrap device

By following the steps below you will automatically provision a new device via a publicly available Eclipse Hono sandbox using Eclipse Kanto. A simple Eclipse Hono northbound business application written in Python is provided to explore the capabilities for device bootstrapping and automatically provision a new device.

First a bootstrapping request is sent from the edge. The custom Python application handles the request by automatically provisioning a new device. Upon successful automatically provisioning it sends back all mandatory remote communication, identification and authentication data. On the edge side, the response is handled by updating the connection configuration with the received data and by executing a basic post_bootstrap.sh script to restart the Suite Connector service for the changes to take effect.

Before you begin

To ensure that your edge device is capable to execute the steps in this guide, you need:

• If you don’t have an installed and running Eclipse Kanto, follow Install Eclipse Kanto

• If you don’t have a connected Eclipse Kanto to Eclipse Hono sandbox, follow Explore via Eclipse Hono

• The suite bootstrapping application and post bootstrap script

  Navigate to the quickstart folder where the resources from the Explore via Eclipse Hono guide are located and execute the following script:

  wget https://github.com/eclipse-kanto/kanto/raw/main/quickstart/hono_commands_sb.py && \
  wget https://github.com/eclipse-kanto/kanto/raw/main/quickstart/post_bootstrap.sh
  

• Grab the post script file and place it in the /var/tmp/suite-bootstrapping directory via executing:

  sudo mkdir -p /var/tmp/suite-bootstrapping/ && sudo cp ./post_bootstrap.sh /var/tmp/suite-bootstrapping/
  

• Back up /etc/suite-connector/config.json as this file will be modified from this guide

• Stop suite-connector.service. Suite bootstrapping automatically provision device and try to start the suite connector service with new device

  sudo systemctl stop suite-connector.service
  

Configure Suite Bootstrapping

Open file /etc/suite-connector/config.json, copy address, tenantId, deviceId, authId and password.

{
    ...
    "address": "mqtts://hono.eclipseprojects.io:8883",
    "tenantId": "demo",
    "deviceId": "demo:device",
    "authId": "demo_device",
    "password": "secret"
    ...
}

Bootstrapping uses the /etc/suite-bootstrapping/config.json to acquire all the remote communication, identification and authentication data to establish the remote connection for bootstrapping. It is also where you need to specify the path to the post bootstrapping script and where to store received response data. Update the configuration as shown below and replace tenantId, deviceId, authId and password with the settings that you copied in the previous step.

{
  "logFile": "/var/log/suite-bootstrapping/suite-bootstrapping.log",
  "postBootstrapFile": "/etc/suite-connector/config.json",
  "postBootstrapScript": ["/var/tmp/suite-bootstrapping/post_bootstrap.sh"],
  "caCert": "/etc/suite-bootstrapping/iothub.crt",
  "address": "mqtts://hono.eclipseprojects.io:8883",
  "tenantId": "demo",
  "deviceId": "demo:device",
  "authId": "demo_device",
  "password": "secret"
}

Restart the suite bootstrapping service for the changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl restart suite-bootstrapping.service

When configured correctly the Suite Bootstrapping service automatically sends the bootstrapping request.

Automatically provision via bootstrapping

To explore the suite bootstrapping, we will use a Python script to automatically provision and monitor the new device. The location where the Python application will run does not have to be your edge device as it communicates remotely with Eclipse Hono only.

Now we are ready to handle the bootstrapping request via executing the application that requires the Eclipse Hono tenant (-t), the device identifier (-d) and the password (-p) you wish to use for the new device:

python3 hono_commands_sb.py -t demo -d demo:device -p secret

Verify

The last event received for the application is with the new tenant id that is automatically provisioning for the Suite Connector. You can check out that the Suite Connector is now connected to the new device via its status.

sudo systemctl status suite-connector.service

Clean up

Revert previous back up /etc/suite-connector/config.json file. Remove temporary directory for post bootstrap file /var/tmp/suite-bootstrapping via executing:

sudo rm -r -f /var/tmp/suite-bootstrapping/

Stop suite bootstrapping service and restart suite connector service by executing:

sudo systemctl stop suite-bootstrapping.service && \
sudo systemctl restart suite-connector.service