Updated November 2021
Product designers can use Pantavisor and Pantacor Hub to create, deploy and manage many different types of containerized apps on a variety of IoT devices. Pantavisor is the framework for containerized embedded Linux development. It connects embedded devices, and containerizes and modularizes both the embedded firmware and user-land. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to install Pantavisor onto a Raspberry Pi, claim your device and then make it accessible from the Pantacor Hub dashboard. Lastly, we describe how to prepare and deploy Solr the open source search platform from Apache onto your device and then connect to it with a laptop.
Before you begin this tutorial, sign up to Pantacor Hub. It’s open source and free to use.
Prepare your Raspberry Pi 3 to deploy Solr
Step 1: Flash the RPI3 initial stable image into your sd card.
Download RPI3 image:
unxz the device image
$ unxz rpi3_initial_stable.img.xz
Flash the Pantavisor image onto the sd card with the Raspberry Pi Imager.
Step 2: Boot your RPI3
Insert your sd card and then supply the power
Step 3: Sign up to Pantacor Hub.
Step 4: Download & Install a CLI tools “pvr”
Note: pvr is a CLI tool which can be used to interact with your device through pantacor hub. With pvr you can share and revision your firmware and projects as simple as with a git tree. Move the pvr binary to your bin folder after downloading.
Linux(AMD64): Download Linux(ARM32v6): Download Darwin(AMD64): Download
pvr clone; pvr commit; pvr post
To install from gitlab source code:
$ go get gitlab.com/pantacor/pvr
$ go build -o ~/bin/pvr gitlab.com/pantacor/pvrNote: You need “GOLANG” to be installed in your system for building pvr from gitlab source code.
Step 5: Detect & Claim your device
Connect a LAN cable between your RPI3 & computer/Router.
Open your terminal & run:
$ pvr scan
Claim the device:
$ pvr claim -c merely-regular-gorilla https://api.pantahub.com:443/devices/5f1b9c44e193a5000afa9901
Log into Pantacor Hub and check for the newly claimed device in the dashboard.
Step 6: Clone the device to your computer using the Clone URL of your device
$ pvr clone https://pvr.pantahub.com/sirinibin/presently_learning_pelican/0 presently_learning_pelican
Now your device is ready to deploy your Solr search engine app
Deploy Solr to the device by following 4 Steps
Step 1: Add new app “solr” into the device
$ pvr app add solr --from=arm32v7/solr:5-slim 
Step 2: Deploy the changes to the device
$ pvr add .
$ pvr commit
$ pvr post
Step 3: Access the Solr dashboard
Step 4: Try creating your 1st Solr Core
SSH into the app container “solr”
ssh -p 8222 solr@10.42.0.231 
Create a new core:
$ cd /opt/solr/bin
$ ./solr create -c "core1"
Access the Solr core you just created
http://10.42.0.231:8983/solr/#/~cores
You are Done!
Final Thoughts
In this tutorial, we described how to deploy a containerized version of Aphache Solr onto your Pantavisor-enabled device. Pantavisor doesn’t run Docker containers natively, but it does use Docker images as a great source of root file systems for containers that are run by the Pantavisor with LXC.
Take a deeper dive into managing Pantavisor Linux on your device locally with our front-end utilities Pantabox.
We’re really excited for you to try Pantabox and Pantavisor Linux and we’d love to hear your thoughts. Try one of the guides or join us in the Pantavisor community forum.