Fleet Sentinel - Applotus Multi-Tenant Cloud

Containers

Workloads running on your fleet machines — grouped by the machine hosting them

Services

One-click, multi-container app deployments from a curated catalog

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Fleet network

cluster groundwork

Which machines can reach each other directly on their own network, bypassing the relay. A cluster needs this; a relayed tunnel is not enough.

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Kubernetes cluster

k3s

Runs a single-node cluster — control plane and workloads on one machine — capped to a share of that machine's CPU and memory.

Catalog

Running

Shared With This Workspace

Machines another workspace has granted you access to. You get only the terminal and/or desktop they shared — not files, containers, stored credentials, or the ability to remove the machine.

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Fleet Connectivity

Which machines were reachable over the last 24 hours. A gap means the agent stopped reporting, not that anything was done to it.

Activity

Who did what, to which machine, and whether it was allowed. Refusals are recorded alongside successes — a run of them is usually the more interesting signal.

Addresses are shown with the country their network is registered in — for corporate or VPN traffic that is where it reaches the internet, not where the person is. IP country data by DB-IP (CC BY 4.0).

Sentinel API Reference

Node, container, and service orchestration — everything below is the same API the dashboard itself calls.

Auth Nodes Container lifecycle Results Services Web proxy Manual agent install Container runtime Remote desktop

Authentication

The browser session cookie (what the dashboard itself uses) or an API key on the x-api-key header. Generate an operator key from the panel.

curl https://applotus.fly.dev/api/sentinel/nodes \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY"

Three kinds of key, not one — the fleet-management endpoints below (dispatch, node deletion, credential lookups, command results, service deploy/remove) require an operator key or a signed-in session. A node or container key gets a 403 on all of them; it can only reach the five agent endpoints (heartbeat, result, download, mesh services) for the one machine it is bound to.

Key type	Scope
Operator	Full workspace access. Minted from the API Keys panel above; up to 20 per workspace.
Node	Bound to one host. Minted automatically the first time an agent connects, or upfront as an enrollment key (unbound until the first machine claims it — see the install docs below) via `POST /api/tenant/keys/enrollment`.
Container	Bound to one container. Minted automatically when a container is deployed with its own agent.

An agent authenticating with a bare workspace ID (the pre-key --tenant flag, no --api-key) is treated as unauthenticated everywhere except its own heartbeat — that one call also mints it a real node key automatically and hands it back, so an already-deployed agent upgrades itself onto a real credential with no reinstall.

Nodes

A node is a machine running the Sentinel agent (a "host") or a container the agent provisioned (a "container" node, linked to its host via parentNodeId).

GET /api/sentinel/nodes

Returns every node in the workspace: status, metrics, container runtime capability, desktop availability, and (for container nodes) image, ports, persistence, and lifecycle state.

POST /api/sentinel/nodes { action: 'delete', nodeId } operator key required

Removes a node's record only — does not touch anything on the host. Use cleanup_node below to actually reclaim what the agent left running.

Container lifecycle

One endpoint for every agent-executed action. The agent picks the task up on its next heartbeat (or instantly, if its control socket is connected) and reports back asynchronously — see Results.

POST /api/sentinel/agent/dispatch { nodeId, type, ...type-specific fields } operator key required

curl -X POST https://applotus.fly.dev/api/sentinel/agent/dispatch \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"nodeId":"node-xyz","type":"provision_container","image":"docker.io/library/redis:7-alpine","cpus":1,"memoryMb":512}'

type	Notes
provision_container	Deploys a container. Fields: `image, cpus, memoryMb, diskMb, ports[], env{}, persistent, withAgent, serviceAlias`. Database images (mysql/postgres/mongo/mariadb) get a bootstrap password and, where verified, a collision-safe port assigned automatically.
remove_container	Fields: `containerId`. Stops and deletes it on the host.
extend_container_ttl	Fields: `containerId, addSeconds` (timed containers only, capped at 24h added at a time).
set_container_persistence	Fields: `containerId, persistent, ttlSeconds?`. Persistent = no expiry, restarted on exit, snapshotted on a schedule.
hibernate_container / wake_container	Fields: `containerId`. Stops a persistent container to free its CPU/memory without losing it (snapshotted first), then starts it back up.
backup_container	Fields: `containerId`. Manual filesystem snapshot (persistent containers also get these on a schedule).
get_container_env / update_container_env	Fields: `containerId` / `containerId, env{}`. Reads or replaces the deployment env vars (recreates the container for updates).
get_container_logs	Fields: `containerId, tail?` (default 200, max 500). Tails the runtime's own stdout/stderr log.
install_container_desktop	Fields: `containerId`. Installs a virtual desktop (Xvfb + XFCE + VNC) inside a running container. Needs the container's own agent and ≥1 CPU / ≥2GB memory.
cleanup_node	Fields: `stopAgent?`. Full teardown: every container, snapshot, and network the agent put on the node, optionally stopping the agent itself.

Results

GET /api/sentinel/agent/results?nodeId=... operator key required

Every dispatched task is asynchronous — there's no "wait for it to finish" response. Poll this and match on the task.id the dispatch call returned against each result's taskId. A result's exit_code is 0 on success; stdout holds a JSON-encoded payload on success, stderr holds the error message on failure.

Services

A service is a named group of containers from a curated catalog (see the Services tab), deployed and torn down together on the tenant's shared mesh network. Every component is an ordinary provision_container dispatch under the hood — nothing here needs a different agent version.

GET /api/services

Returns the template catalog plus every running instance, with live status (healthy / degraded / down) and per-component CPU/RAM derived from the same node records the Containers tab shows.

POST /api/services/deploy { templateId, nodeId } operator key required

nodeId must have a usable container runtime. Returns the new instance immediately (components are still provisioning) with each component's mesh alias and, for database components, its generated credential.

POST /api/services/remove { instanceId } operator key required

Dispatches removal for every component container and drops the instance record.

Container web proxy

ANY /c/<containerNodeId>/<port>/<path>

Reverse-proxies HTTP(S) into a port a container listens on — no in-container agent, no port published to the host or the internet, and it's what the "Open" link on a Containers/Services card actually points at. Root-relative asset paths and same-origin redirects are rewritten to stay inside the proxy prefix automatically. Apps that build absolute URLs into their own HTML from the request they received (rather than relative ones) will not render correctly through this — that's why the Services catalog favors single-page tools like Adminer over full frameworks.

Manually enabling the Sentinel agent

The button runs these same commands for you when it has a way to reach the host directly, and already bakes in an enrollment key rather than an operator key -- see below. Use the copy-paste versions here for a machine you'd rather install on by hand.

An install command ends up in shell history, a systemd unit, a plist, a scheduled task -- wherever it lands, a workspace-wide operator key sitting there is a bigger handout than a fresh install needs. Generate a scoped enrollment key instead and use it in --api-key below:

curl -X POST https://applotus.fly.dev/api/tenant/keys/enrollment \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_OPERATOR_KEY"

Call this with your operator key (or a signed-in session) to mint the scoped key -- it's how the enrollment key gets created, not what the new agent authenticates with. Reuses any enrollment key that hasn't been claimed yet, so calling this repeatedly doesn't accumulate unused credentials. The key binds to whichever machine's first heartbeat presents it; every heartbeat after that from a different machine is refused.

🐧 Linux — systemd (survives reboot, auto-restarts on crash)

sudo bash -c 'curl -fsSL https://applotus.fly.dev/download/sentinel-agent.py -o /usr/local/bin/sentinel-agent.py && chmod +x /usr/local/bin/sentinel-agent.py
cat <<EOF > /etc/systemd/system/sentinel-agent.service
[Unit]
Description=Applotus Sentinel Node Agent
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=root
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 /usr/local/bin/sentinel-agent.py --server https://applotus.fly.dev --api-key YOUR_API_KEY
Restart=always
RestartSec=10

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF
systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl enable --now sentinel-agent'

Replace YOUR_API_KEY with the enrollment key from above (or an operator key from Settings → API Keys, for a quick test). Logs: journalctl -u sentinel-agent -f.

🍎 macOS — launchd LaunchAgent (starts at login, restarts on crash)

mkdir -p ~/.applotus ~/Library/LaunchAgents ~/Library/Logs
curl -fsSL https://applotus.fly.dev/download/sentinel-agent.py -o ~/.applotus/sentinel-agent.py
chmod +x ~/.applotus/sentinel-agent.py
# Pick a python3 launchd can actually exec (see server.js for why this is not just /usr/bin/python3).
PY=""
for c in /opt/homebrew/bin/python3 /usr/local/bin/python3 /usr/bin/python3; do
  if [ -x "$c" ] && "$c" -c "import sys" >/dev/null 2>&1; then PY="$c"; break; fi
done
[ -n "$PY" ] || echo "WARNING: no working python3 found -- run 'xcode-select --install' or 'brew install python3', then re-run this. The agent will not start until then."
cat <<EOF > ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.applotus.sentinel-agent.plist
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key><string>com.applotus.sentinel-agent</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>$PY</string>
    <string>$HOME/.applotus/sentinel-agent.py</string>
    <string>--server</string><string>https://applotus.fly.dev</string>
    <string>--api-key</string><string>YOUR_API_KEY</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key><true/>
  <key>KeepAlive</key><true/>
  <key>StandardOutPath</key><string>$HOME/Library/Logs/applotus-sentinel-agent.log</string>
  <key>StandardErrorPath</key><string>$HOME/Library/Logs/applotus-sentinel-agent.log</string>
</dict>
</plist>
EOF
launchctl bootout gui/$(id -u)/com.applotus.sentinel-agent 2>/dev/null
launchctl bootstrap gui/$(id -u) ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.applotus.sentinel-agent.plist
launchctl print gui/$(id -u)/com.applotus.sentinel-agent | head -5

⬇️ Download install-macos.shthen bash ~/Downloads/install-macos.sh

Prefer the download. The script below has to survive a copy-paste into Terminal, and on a real Mac it did not — the plist's argument block is one very long line, and zsh mangled it mid-heredoc. The downloaded installer writes the same plist a line at a time, checks that python3 actually runs, verifies the agent compiled, and lints the plist before loading it.

A LaunchAgent starts at login, not at boot. For a headless Mac that must run unattended, put the same plist in /Library/LaunchDaemons owned by root instead — but then the agent has no user session, so desktop/VNC detection won't work. KeepAlive auto-restarts the process, so stopping it requires launchctl bootout gui/$(id -u)/com.applotus.sentinel-agent, not just deleting the plist.

🪟 Windows — PowerShell (quick) or install.bat (boot-persistent)

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://applotus.fly.dev/download/sentinel-agent.py" -OutFile "sentinel-agent.py"
python sentinel-agent.py --server https://applotus.fly.dev --api-key YOUR_API_KEY

That runs in the foreground and stops when the window closes or the machine reboots. For a Windows box that needs to come back up on its own after every reboot — before anyone logs in — download and run install.bat as Administrator instead: it checks for Python (installing it via winget if missing), downloads the agent, and registers it as a SYSTEM-run Scheduled Task with an "at startup" trigger, the Windows equivalent of the macOS LaunchDaemon above.

⬇️ Download install.bat Right-click → Run as administrator

To stop or remove it later: schtasks /end /tn ApplotusSentinelAgent or schtasks /delete /tn ApplotusSentinelAgent /f (from an Administrator prompt).

Making a node container-ready (podman)

A node needs a container engine before it can run containers or services. Applotus deploys rootless podman — no daemon, no root requirement on Linux. The "Install Runtime" action on a node card runs the matching command below for you automatically when it detects passwordless sudo (Linux) or admin rights (Windows); use these yourself when it can't.

OS	Install command
Debian / Ubuntu	sudo apt-get update -y && sudo apt-get install -y podman
Fedora / RHEL / CentOS / Rocky / Alma	sudo dnf install -y podman
Arch / Manjaro	sudo pacman -Sy podman
Alpine	sudo apk add podman
openSUSE	sudo zypper install -y podman
macOS	brew install podman && podman machine init && podman machine start
Windows	winget install -e --id RedHat.Podman

macOS runs containers inside a small Linux VM that podman machine creates — that init step is the only slow, multi-GB one. Windows gets native Windows images with the default backend, or Linux images if you set podman's backend to WSL2 first.

Rootless Linux prerequisites — if the install above succeeds but containers still fail to start, the host is usually missing user namespaces. Fix with:

sudo sysctl -w user.max_user_namespaces=28633
sudo sysctl -w kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone=1
sudo usermod --add-subuids 100000-165535 --add-subgids 100000-165535 "$USER"
podman system migrate

Making a node remote-desktop ready

A node with no VNC server has no desktop to stream, so "Remote Desktop" on its card falls back to terminal-only. The "Enable Desktop" action installs the right piece automatically when it detects passwordless sudo (Linux) or admin rights (Windows/macOS); the equivalent manual commands are below for hosts where that can't run unattended.

🐧 Linux — x11vnc (attaches to the active desktop session)

sudo apt-get install -y x11vnc      # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo dnf install -y x11vnc          # Fedora/RHEL
sudo pacman -Sy x11vnc              # Arch
sudo zypper install -y x11vnc       # openSUSE
sudo apk add x11vnc                 # Alpine

🍎 macOS — native Screen Sharing / Apple Remote Desktop

sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart   -activate -configure -access -on   -clientopts -setvnclegacy -vnclegacy yes -setvncpw -vncpw YOUR_VNC_PASSWORD   -restart -agent

No package to install — this just turns on the OS's own VNC-compatible screen sharing daemon on port 5900. YOUR_VNC_PASSWORD is capped at 8 characters (VNC's legacy DES key limit).

🪟 Windows — TightVNC Server

powershell -Command "(New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadFile('https://www.tightvnc.com/download/2.8.84/tightvnc-2.8.84-gpl-setup-64bit.msi', 'tightvnc-setup.msi'); Start-Process msiexec.exe -ArgumentList '/i tightvnc-setup.msi /quiet ADDLOCAL=Server' -Wait"

Installs and registers the tvnserver Windows service bound to loopback (127.0.0.1:5900) — traffic only ever reaches it through the encrypted agent tunnel, never a directly opened port. The one-click "Enable Desktop" action additionally locks down loopback-only + disables its own auth prompts, since the agent tunnel is the only intended path in.

— PTY

Connecting…

Macros

Negotiating RFB session with agent...

🗂️

Remote File Explorer Gzip / Zip Stream

Loading directory...

👁 Preview

None selected

🔍

Click Preview on a file to see it here — images, audio, video, and text/code all render inline.

0 items Direct Agent WebSocket Channel

🔑 Connection details

Reachable under this hostname from your other containers on the same tenant network.

Connection URI

CLI command

Run this from another container on the same fleet machine — for example the VPS image’s terminal. The tenant bridge is local to each machine, so it will not resolve from your laptop, nor from a container on a different machine.

Host

Port

User

Password

⚠️ Containers unavailable

🔐

VNC Authentication Required

Enter the remote desktop session password.

VNC Password

Maximum 8 characters for RFB authentication.

🖥️

Remote Desktop (RDP) Port 3389

Direct high-performance native RDP session

ℹ️ Native RDP Service Detected

This node runs xrdp / Microsoft RDP protocol on port 3389 with hardware-accelerated compression. For the best responsiveness, connect directly or download the preconfigured .rdp launcher.

1. One-Click Native Client Launcher

Works directly with Windows Remote Desktop (mstsc), macOS Microsoft Remote Desktop, or Remmina.

2. Terminal / Linux Command (Remmina / xfreerdp)

xfreerdp /v:HOST:3389 /u:USERNAME

🤝

Share Machine Access

This grants real access to this machine. A terminal share is an interactive shell running as whatever user the agent runs as. Share only with a workspace you trust, and prefer a short duration — you can revoke at any time, which also disconnects any session already open.

Share with workspace id

The recipient's workspace id, shown in their header as Org:.

What to share

>_ Terminal 🖥️ Desktop 🔌 Services 📊 Stats 📁 Files

Independent — desktop-only lets someone see the screen without granting a shell. Services only reaches ports you have published on the node below.

Duration

Current shares

🛠️

Enable Remote Desktop 1-Click Setup

Target Node

This node has verified administrative privileges, but Remote Desktop is not currently active.

Applotus can enable remote desktop non-interactively so you can manage this machine visually.

Command to be executed by agent:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y x11vnc

📦

Install Container Runtime 1-Click Setup

Target Node

This node has verified administrative privileges, but no container runtime was detected. Applotus can install rootless Podman non-interactively so you can deploy on-demand containers as child nodes.

Podman is daemonless and runs rootless by default — no root-owned socket, unlike Docker.

Command to be executed by agent:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y podman

🚀

Deploy Container

Target Node

Runs on the node's existing container runtime with a hardened, capability-limited profile (no --privileged, no host network/PID namespace). Exposed ports are bound to 127.0.0.1 on the host and streamed to your browser over the agent's secure tunnel — never exposed on the LAN or public internet.

Vetted Image

Image Reference

Pick a vetted image above, or type any reference. Short names are qualified against Docker Hub automatically.

CPUs

Memory (MB)

Disk (GB)

Ports to expose (comma-separated)

Service name (optional)

Containers on this same machine reach this one at this name — e.g. mysql://user:pw@mysql:3306/db. The tenant network is a local bridge per machine, so containers elsewhere need the service mesh. Lowercase letters, digits, - and _.

Auto-remove after

Environment variables (optional, one per line)

Treated as secrets: they are passed to the container and never shown again — only the variable names are kept. Names must be letters, digits and underscore. Values cannot contain newlines. For a database image, the bootstrap password set by Applotus wins over anything you put here.

Mesh reach (optional -- leave every box unchecked for unrestricted tenant-wide reach, the default for every container)

No other mesh-published services in this workspace yet.

Keep this container running (persistent). Ignores the timer above. The node's agent takes ownership: it sets a runtime restart policy, restarts the container if it exits, and snapshots its filesystem every 15 minutes (keeping the last 3) so it can be rebuilt after a crash. You can switch any container between timed and persistent later from the Containers tab.

Tenant API Credentials

Profile

Create Custom App

Sign Out

Sentinel

Fleet Machines

Containers

Services

Fleet network

Kubernetes cluster

Catalog + Custom App

Running

Shared With This Workspace

Fleet Connectivity

Activity

Sentinel API Reference

Authentication

Nodes

Container lifecycle

Results

Services

Container web proxy

Manually enabling the Sentinel agent

Making a node container-ready (podman)

Making a node remote-desktop ready

Remote File Explorer Gzip / Zip Stream

👁 Preview

🔑 Connection details

⚠️ Containers unavailable

VNC Authentication Required

Remote Desktop (RDP) Port 3389

Share Machine Access

Enable Remote Desktop 1-Click Setup

Install Container Runtime 1-Click Setup

Deploy Container

Sentinel Assist

Container Lifetime

Container Environment Variables

Agent Logs

Deploy Applotus Node Agent

AI Orchestrator Configuration

Account Sign In

Confirm Action

Make Port Public

Buy me a coffee

Confirm Destructive Action

Catalog