Device setup & provisioning

Take a device from blank hardware to a managed device in your project.

This section takes a device from blank hardware to a managed device: creating an install image, onboarding the device so it joins your project, setting the administrator password, and confirming it is online.

Setup at a glance

Create an install image for the target device type, with the defaults you want baked in (encryption, network, storage, time).
Write the image to installation media and boot the device from it.
Onboard the device so it obtains an identity and joins your project.
Set the administrator password for local and console access.
Verify the device is online on the dashboard.

The rest of this page covers each step.

Which steps apply depends on how you got the device

This page describes installing SPEKTRA Edge OS on your own hardware. Two other routes skip parts of it:

A SPEKTRA Edge appliance arrives with the OS already installed, so start at Onboarding methods — steps 1 and 2 are done for you, and the administrator password works differently. See User accounts.
An existing Linux machine can be brought under management with the droplet agent instead of the OS. Only onboarding applies. See Install the droplet agent.

Create an install image

You create install images from the SPEKTRA Edge dashboard. An image carries the OS itself plus a set of defaults, so a device is useful the moment it boots.

Setting	Purpose	More detail
Device type	Target hardware family and CPU architecture.	Supported platforms
OS version	The OS version installed by the image.	OS upgrades
Disk encryption	Encrypt the configuration and data areas.	Disk encryption
Recovery passphrase	Break-glass passphrase for encrypted devices.	Disk encryption
Storage mapping	Partitions and mounts to ensure on the device.	Storage
Network configuration	Initial network settings (the fallback baseline).	Networking
Time / NTP	Initial time sources.	Time synchronization
Proxy	Initial proxy settings.	Proxy configuration
Administrator password	Initial local administrator password.	Set the administrator password
Provisioning credentials	Allow the device to onboard automatically on first boot.	Onboarding methods

Defaults, not limits

The values you embed at image creation are only a starting point. Once a device is online, almost everything can be changed from the dashboard — so a single image can serve a whole fleet, with per-device differences applied afterward.

Write the image and boot

Write the downloaded image to your installation media, then boot the target hardware from that media. The device boots into SPEKTRA Edge OS, applies the embedded configuration, and begins onboarding.

Tip

Keep the same install image for a batch of identical devices. Per-device differences (name, location, network specifics) are best applied after the device is online, so a single image can serve a whole fleet.

Onboarding methods

Onboarding is how a device obtains its identity and joins your project. There are three approaches; choose based on how much you want to pre-arrange versus letting devices self-register.

Zero-touch provisioning

With zero-touch provisioning, a device that has never been configured can find the right SPEKTRA Edge deployment, prove its hardware identity, and receive its credentials automatically — no per-device setup required. This is the preferred method for large fleets and for hardware that is shipped directly to a site.

Zero-touch provisioning relies on the device’s hardware security module to establish a trustworthy identity. See TPM & device attestation for how that identity is verified.

Provisioning policy

A provisioning policy lets devices self-register into a project using a shared credential and a template that describes how each new device should be configured. Policies operate in one of two modes:

Mode	Behavior
Unattended	A device that presents the policy credential is registered automatically and created from the policy’s template.
Manual approval	A device that presents the policy credential creates a pending request that an operator must approve before the device becomes active.

The policy template carries the desired device configuration (network, SSH, logging, and so on), so every device created through the policy starts from the same baseline.

Pre-registering hardware

You can pre-register specific hardware ahead of time and bind it to a provisioning target. A field technician can then bring the hardware online using a registration token without needing project credentials in hand. This is useful when installation is performed by someone who should not have broad access to the project.

Set the administrator password

Each device has a local administrator account used for console and SSH access. Where its first password comes from depends on how the device was installed:

Building your own image, as in this guide — you set the password at image creation, so it applies to every device built from that image, or when preparing installation media on a per-device basis. There is no default password to worry about.
A SPEKTRA Edge appliance, shipped with the OS already installed — the hardware serial number is accepted until you set a password. Set one on first login, because a serial number is not a secret.

The password must be non-empty, and it is stored only as a salted hash on the device’s configuration storage. See User accounts for details and for how to reset a lost password.

Verify the device is online

Once the device boots and onboards, it appears in the dashboard under your project. A device is Online when the platform detects it as connected.

On the device overview page you can confirm:

connection status (Online / Offline)
device information — OS version, hardware details, disks, and network interfaces
reported IP addresses

If a device does not come online, start with the connectivity requirements and the troubleshooting playbooks.

Device overview — how the OS is laid out, and what survives a reboot or an upgrade.
Security — disk encryption, attestation, and the administrator account.

Next steps

With the device online, configure it for your use case:

set up storage
configure networking
review and tighten security