This applies to you if you want to see DFE actually work - on your laptop, a demo box, or a proof of concept - without committing to anything yet.
The goal here is narrow and worth stating: get one event in one end and see it come out the other. Everything else can wait.
- Docker and Docker Compose v2
- Python 3
- Access to
ghcr.io/hyperi-io(the images are private)
make init # create .env and env/, generate secrets
make stack VERSION=X.Y.Z # pin every image from the DFE stack manifest
make ci # pull and startmake stack is not optional. The stack refuses to start on unpinned images
rather than quietly pulling latest, so a fresh checkout without it fails with a
message telling you exactly which pin is missing. That is deliberate: on
something you might later deploy, "which image am I running?" should never have a
vague answer.
make ci finishes by running the power-on self test, which injects a few marked
events and proves they reached ClickHouse. If it prints PASS, the pipeline
works - you have already seen the thing you came to see.
Send an event. Which port depends on your profile, because not every profile
runs a receiver - the shipped default (kafka-fetcher) does not:
# Default profile (kafka-fetcher): the fetcher is the ingest edge.
curl -X POST http://localhost:8082/ingest/main \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"_source":"main","message":"hello dfe"}'
# Any profile that runs dfe-receiver (grpc-receiver, kafka-receiver, ...).
curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/ingest \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"_source":"main","message":"hello dfe"}'make post works this out for you from the resolved profile, so if you are not
sure which you have, run that instead.
Then look for it. make init gave ClickHouse's default user a generated
password, so the read needs it -- and a password on a command line is read back
out of ps and your shell history, so this reads it from .env and sends it as
a header:
python3 - <<'PY'
import urllib.request
from pathlib import Path
password = dict(
line.split("=", 1)
for line in Path(".env").read_text().splitlines()
if "=" in line and not line.startswith("#")
)["CLICKHOUSE_PASSWORD"]
query = "SELECT * FROM dfe.main ORDER BY _timestamp_load DESC LIMIT 5 FORMAT Vertical"
print(
urllib.request.urlopen(
urllib.request.Request(
"http://localhost:8123/",
data=query.encode(),
headers={"X-ClickHouse-User": "default", "X-ClickHouse-Key": password},
)
)
.read()
.decode()
)
PY_source is what routes the event - the loader writes it to
<database>.<_source>, so "_source":"main" lands in dfe.main.
It will not appear instantly. The pipeline is asynchronous, and via Kafka genuinely so; a couple of seconds is normal.
| Where | What |
|---|---|
| http://localhost:3000 | DFE UI |
| http://localhost:8081 | Kafka UI (topics, consumer groups, lag) |
| http://localhost:8123 | ClickHouse HTTP |
| http://localhost:8003 | dfe-engine API |
The console asks for a login; Kafbat, HyperDX and the ClickHouse port do not
authenticate you as a person. make creds prints the console login again.
The ingest ports bind all interfaces so anything can push to them. Everything
else -- every web UI included -- binds loopback by default, so the four links
above work on this box and nowhere else. DFE_BIND_SCOPE=all publishes the UIs
on every interface, and needs DFE_EXTERNAL_ORIGIN set to the address browsers
use -- make stops and says so otherwise. Read the auth section of
operating.md before you widen anything.
make down # stop the containers, keep the data
make clean # stop everything and DELETE the volumes, including ClickHousemake clean really does delete the warehouse. On a laptop that is usually what
you want; anywhere else, read it twice.
It is the same image, from the same registry, that a Kubernetes deployment would run. There is no separate "demo build" - what you are evaluating is the real thing, packaged differently.
It is not secured, though it is not open either. make init mints two
logins -- admin for the console and the engine API, and breakglass for
recovery -- and generates ClickHouse's password with them. make creds prints
the admin one on a terminal and names the .env key holding the other;
access-summary.md, written beside .env and readable only by you, carries
both. Kafbat and HyperDX answer to anyone who can reach them on these profiles,
the opt-in auth profile puts an OIDC sign-in in front of both, and nothing here
serves TLS. That is fine on your machine and on a throwaway demo box. It is not
fine on anything reachable by people you have not met.
If the proof of concept goes well and the box becomes something real - even something small - read operating.md before it does. Small is still production, and the defaults here are tuned for a laptop.
| You want to | Read |
|---|---|
| Understand how the pieces fit | architecture.md |
| Run this where others depend on it | operating.md |
| Stand up a real deployment, or upgrade one | deploying.md |
| Know what the stack reports about itself | observability.md |
| Look up a variable or a port | configuration.md |
| Work on a DFE component | developing.md |
| Work out why something is broken | troubleshooting.md |