Torizon in a Docker Container on a QNAP box while waiting for hardware

Technical Support
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#1

I’m taking on an existing project that is moving from a TK1/Ubuntu14.04 to an IMX8/Torizon based system. While I am awaiting hardware to arrive I would like to simulate as much of the software system as possible - particularly with the Wayland and the OTA technology.

I’ve got a nice QNAP server with Virtualization Station/Container station support that I can deploy docker images to, but looking at the docker images posted, they are properly targeted to run on the SOM (no surprise there!).

With that in mind, what are my options while I am waiting for hardware?

What might be the closest images to Torizon for me to make some progress? Should I use a Debian (Bullseye) with Wayland or is there something else that may be a better match? Is there another distro what would get me closer to the Torizon approach for OTA updates?

Thank you!

#2

Greetings @toebes,

If you just want to run our docker images without our hardware, that should be simple enough. If you enable ARM emulation on you machine that should let you just run our ARM-based containers via emulation. Though do keep in mind that things won’t work as we document in many cases. Since the underlying hardware is different and such.

In any case if you want to try you can see how to enable ARM emulation here: Configure Build Environment for Torizon Containers

Best Regards,
Jeremias

#3

Thank you.

Alas I looked at the ARM emulation option and apparently it is on the roadmap for QNAP but not something that functions now. I will look around to see if there is a way I can make it work.

Any other suggestions?

#4

Well if you don’t have a way to run ARM-software in general, then you can’t really use our software until the hardware arrives.

Otherwise you could try creating your own “equivalent” docker images based on ours but built for an architecture you can actually run. As a reference all of our Dockerfile sources are public here: GitHub - toradex/debian-docker-images: Official supported Debian based Docker images.

Though I’m not sure how helpful this experiment will be for you. But I guess it depends on what exactly you want to do. If you just want to get a hang of working with containers than this should be fine. Anything more specific will depend.

Best Regards,
Jeremias

#5

I realized that the Raspberry Pi 4 is ARM based. Has anyone successfully run the Toradex images on a Raspberry Pi 4 using docker?

#6

In theory the container should at least be able to start and run in this case. Again I can’t guarantee everything will transfer over properly in this case. Largely it depends on what you’re trying to do.

Best Regards,
Jeremias