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Add a doc for container provisioning and updates
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The layering model is an entirely new way to do systems
management.  Let's document the current state.
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cgwalters committed May 4, 2023
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100 changes: 100 additions & 0 deletions modules/ROOT/pages/deriving-container.adoc
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= Deriving from Fedora CoreOS as a bootable container image

== Bootable containers overview

The operating system images used for Fedora CoreOS are available as a standard container image; there is one per stream. See xref:update-streams.adoc[Update Streams].

- quay.io/fedora/fedora-coreos:stable
- quay.io/fedora/fedora-coreos:next
- quay.io/fedora/fedora-coreos:testing

== Creating custom builds

See the https://github.com/coreos/layering-examples[layering examples] git repository. While the examples there tend to use Containerfile/Dockerfile style builds, you can use any tool which can build containers and push the result to a registry.

The default suggested approach is to have container tags be the source of truth for initating upgrades, and to have the client systems poll. Example systemd units for this are in [https://github.com/coreos/layering-examples/tree/main/autoupdate-host]; they boil down to a systemd `.service` which just runs `rpm-ostree upgrade --reboot` and a corresponding `.timer` unit to run it once a day.

Of course, client side logic could be much more complex, including a privileged container image that runs completely arbitrary logic.

== Using Ignition to switch to a bootable container image

The https://coreos.github.io/rpm-ostree/container/[rpm-ostree container page] describes the commands for interacting with bootable ostree container images.

This systemd unit will run only on the first boot, and switch a "stock" Fedora CoreOS node to your custom image.

[source,yaml]
----
variant: fcos
version: 1.4.0
systemd:
units:
# Our custom unit for rebasing
- name: rebase-custom.service
enabled: true
contents: |
[Unit]
Description=Fetch and deploy target image
# Only run on the firstboot
ConditionFirstBoot=true
After=network-online.target
[Service]
# This ordering is important
After=ignition-firstboot-complete.service
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=rpm-ostree rebase --reboot ostree-unverified-registry:quay.io/example/example-derived:latest
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
----

== Adding pull secrets for private container images

If your registry requires authentication, then you can add a pull secret. See https://coreos.github.io/rpm-ostree/container/#registry-authentication[container pull secrets].

[source,yaml]
----
variant: fcos
version: 1.4.0
storage:
files:
- path: /etc/ostree/auth.json
mode: 0600
contents:
inline: >
{
"auths": {
"quay.io": {
"auth": "..."
}
}
}
----

== Maintaining custom builds

As the upstream container image (e.g. quay.io/fedora/fedora-coreos:stable) changes for security and functionality improvements, you are responsible for re-building your derived image. Implementing this depends on your chosen container build system.

However, key to this model is the assumption that if you're deploying Fedora CoreOS, you have already invested in container infrastructure and can manage the operating system updates in the same way as application containers.

== Understanding Ignition versus container content

Ignition's philosophy is that it runs exactly once, and any subsequent changes should generally be done by node reprovisioning. This can
be very expensive in some environments. Storing configuration directly
with the OS content allows strongly coupling them and ensuring that
the state of your machines is exactly what you build and replicate
as a container image.

Note however that content injected via Ignition will still persist as
machine-local state into subsequent OS updates (including by default
our unit to do the switch, which will remain inactive; though your
container could run code to delete or mask the unit).

This serves as a very useful "escape hatch" for machine local state.
Crucially for example, networking is needed in order to fetch custom
container images in this model. If your environment uses static IP
addressing, then you will need to continue to inject that configuration
via Ignition.

As but even without the bootstrap problem of networking, there is other
potential machine local state such as `/etc/hostname`, kernel
arguments, etc.
2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion modules/ROOT/pages/getting-started.adoc
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Expand Up @@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ Fedora CoreOS does not have a separate install disk. Instead, every instance sta

Each platform has specific logic to retrieve and apply the first boot configuration. For cloud deployments, Ignition gathers the configuration via user-data mechanisms. In the case of bare metal, Ignition can fetch its configuration from the disk or from a remote source.

For more information on configuration, refer to the documentation for xref:producing-ign.adoc[Producing an Ignition File].
For more information on configuration, refer to the documentation for xref:producing-ign.adoc[Producing an Ignition File]. There is also the ability to derive from the container base image, see xref:deriving-container.adoc[Booting a derived container image].

== Quickstart

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