Images via the UI

Operators can generate and download sd card images for Raspberry Pis via the UI admin section: Admin > Provisioning > SD Card Images. The end-user functionality is documented in the public user docs.

This page details additional documentation for developer-only functionality in that same admin section.

Claiming and Releasing Balena Applications

Balena Applications need to be 'claimed' by an Infra to prevent them from being written to by two different contexts. This makes the application available in that infra and allows operators to create images for it.

Releasing removes the application from the infra.

Locking Applications

Locking an application prevents it from being accidentally released from the infra.

You cannot release an application with has a locked image on it either. (See the user docs for image locking.) This is intended to remind you when an image has live devices running off it, so that we do not lose the ability to redeploy it if necessary. In these circumstances it might be safer and wiser to create a new application instead.

Env Variables and Configuration

Configuration and env variable setting is done via the balena cli, not the UI. See Balena for more details on this.