Installation ​

This page walks through installing Pulse onto a fresh machine, either as an appliance or as a collector that reports to one. The procedure is the same whether the target is a small industrial PC, a rack server, or a virtual machine — boot the ISO, choose a role, answer a handful of questions in the installer TUI, and wait for the machine to reboot into the operator interface.

The steps below match the order of the installer wizard you see on the console, one-for-one.

Hardware requirements ​

The appliance is intentionally modest in what it needs:

  • CPU: 2 cores (x86_64). Any modern Intel or AMD CPU works.
  • RAM: 4 GB minimum, 8 GB recommended for sites with more than a few hundred monitors.
  • Disk: 32 GB minimum. SSD strongly recommended — the database does enough random I/O that a spinning disk noticeably slows the web UI.
  • Firmware: UEFI or legacy BIOS — both are supported. The ISO is a hybrid image that boots either way.
  • Network: at least one ethernet port. A second port is supported and is worth having where the machines sit on their own network. Wi-Fi is not supported.

The target disk will be completely erased during installation. If the machine has more than one disk, the installer lets you pick which one to use, but everything on the selected disk is gone once you confirm.

Flashing the ISO to a USB drive ​

You need a USB drive of 4 GB or more. Any tool that does a raw block copy of the ISO onto the drive will work — the image is bootable as-is, with no partitioning or formatting step required.

  • Linux / macOS: sudo dd if=pulse.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync (replace /dev/sdX with the actual device — lsblk or diskutil list will identify it). Get the device wrong and you wipe the wrong disk; double-check before pressing enter.
  • Windows: use Rufus in DD image mode (not ISO mode). Select the ISO, select the USB drive, click start.
  • Cross-platform GUI: Balena Etcher works on all three operating systems and hides the manual device-picking.

The resulting USB drive boots on both UEFI and legacy-BIOS machines, so the same stick can install any target you have on hand.

First boot ​

Plug the USB drive into the target machine and power it on. You may need to press a key during the firmware splash to open the boot menu — typical keys are F12, F11, F10, F2, Esc, or Del, depending on the vendor.

In the boot menu, pick the USB drive. The appliance ISO loads and, after a few seconds, drops you into the installer TUI on tty1. There is no graphical installer — the entire setup is keyboard-driven from the console.

If the machine boots back into its existing OS instead of the USB drive, the boot order in firmware is wrong. Reboot, enter firmware setup, and either change the boot priority or use the one-time boot menu again.

Installer wizard ​

The wizard steps through a fixed sequence of screens. The first screen picks the role, and that choice decides which of the later screens you see — disk, network and NTP are the same either way; what follows them is not. Navigate with the arrow keys (or j / k), enter to confirm a step, esc to step back. ctrl+c aborts the installation entirely.

Role ​

Before anything else, the installer asks which role you are installing: Appliance or Collector. Use the arrow keys to choose and press enter to confirm.

  • Appliance is a self-contained Pulse server. This is the role described throughout the rest of this page unless a step says otherwise.
  • Collector reports to an appliance rather than running the web UI itself. It skips the base URL step and instead asks for the appliance it will report to and a pairing code — see Collector Pairing for how that pairing works.

Welcome ​

The opening screen names the wizard and summarises what comes next for the role you picked: disk selection, network configuration, optional NTP, and then either a base URL (Appliance) or an appliance address and pairing code (Collector). It also reminds you that the target disk will be erased. Press enter to begin or ctrl+c to back out.

Disk ​

The installer scans the machine and lists every disk it could install onto. Each row shows the device name (for example /dev/sda), its size, and the model string the firmware reports. Use the arrow keys to highlight the target and press enter to select it.

Warning. The disk you select here is wiped completely. There is no undo once the installation step starts. If the machine has both a working OS disk and a separate empty disk, take a moment to confirm which is which — vendor model strings and sizes are usually enough to tell them apart.

Network ​

If the machine has more than one ethernet port, the screen begins with a list of them. Pick the port the appliance will be reached on — the one patched into the network the people using Pulse are on. Each entry shows the port's hardware address, whether a cable is in it, and any address it has already picked up. If that is not enough to tell two identical ports apart, press d, then unplug and replug the cable of the port you mean — the installer detects it and selects it for you. A machine with a single port skips this and goes straight to the mode.

Only this one port is configured during installation. If the appliance also needs a port on a second network, set that up after the first boot from the Network Configuration screen — see Networking.

Then pick how the appliance gets its IP address:

  • DHCP — the network already hands out addresses automatically. Most internal LANs and many plant networks work this way. Choose this if you do not know.
  • Static IP — the LAN team has reserved a fixed IP for the appliance. Choosing this reveals three extra fields: the IP address (in CIDR notation, e.g. 192.168.1.100/24), the gateway, and a DNS server.

The static-IP fields are validated before the wizard moves on — typos or impossible values produce an error and you stay on the page until they are fixed. See Networking for guidance on choosing static-IP values and switching modes later.

NTP ​

Optional. Leave the field empty to use the default upstream NTP pool — fine when the appliance has internet access. If the site uses an internal time server, type its hostname or IP here and the appliance will sync against that instead. Press enter to continue.

BaseURL ​

This step appears only for the Appliance role. A collector has no base URL of its own — see Appliance address below.

The URL that the web UI and the mobile pairing flow will use to reach the appliance. This is the address operators type into a browser and that the mobile app stores when a phone is paired.

  • If the appliance has a DNS name on the LAN, use that (https://pulse-system.example.local).
  • If not, use the IP you assigned in the previous step (https://192.168.1.100).
  • Always include the scheme (https://). Plain hostnames are rejected.

A bad base URL can be changed later from the TUI, but mobile pairings created against the old URL will need to be redone — so it pays to get this right the first time.

Appliance address ​

This step, and the pairing-code step after it, replace the base URL step for the Collector role.

Enter the appliance's IP address or hostname, with an optional port after a colon — leave the port out and the installer assumes 443. This is usually an IP address; the collector works out the rest of what it needs to reach the appliance on its own.

If the collector connects to Pulse Cloud rather than an appliance, enter the domain shown in Organization > Settings > Collectors the same way — for example, app.pulsehq.de.

Pairing code ​

Enter the pairing code shown on the appliance, in the form XXXX-XXXX-XXXX. Upper or lower case both work, and the dashes are optional — ab12cd34ef56 and AB12-CD34-EF56 are both accepted. Get the code from the appliance's Organization > Settings > Collectors > Add collector dialog; see Collector Pairing for where it comes from and what to do if it has expired by the time you get here.

A mistyped code is rejected on the spot, with a message telling you to check it and try again — you do not have to wait for the confirm screen to find out.

Confirm ​

The wizard shows everything you entered on one screen, so you can check it before anything is written to disk. It repeats the warning that the disk will be erased. Press enter to start the actual installation, or esc to back up and change something.

  • Appliance: disk, network mode (and static-IP details, if any), NTP server, and base URL.
  • Collector: role, disk, network mode (and static-IP details, if any), NTP server, appliance address, and pairing code.

Progress ​

After confirmation, the installer partitions the disk, copies the system image for the role you chose, and writes the configuration. Progress lines stream to the screen as each step completes. Press l at any time to open the full installer log — useful when the wizard pauses on a slow operation and you want to see what is actually happening.

The installation typically takes a few minutes on an SSD; spinning disks can take noticeably longer because of the partitioning and copy steps. Do not power off the machine during this phase.

Done ​

When the installer finishes, you land on the Done screen. On success it confirms the installation completed and offers a reboot — press enter to reboot, and remove the USB drive while the BIOS POST runs so the machine boots from the freshly installed disk.

If the install failed, the screen shows the error instead; l opens the log so you can see what went wrong, and esc returns you to the Confirm step so you can adjust an answer and retry. ctrl+c exits without rebooting.

After the reboot, an appliance comes up with the TUI as the default console session, ready for day-to-day operation. A collector comes up on its Collector Status screen instead, and pairs with the appliance in the background using the address and code you entered — see Collector Pairing for what happens next, including what to do if the code has expired by then.