Atomic on A Random Walk Down Tech Street

Fedora Atomic Host Nearing End Of Life

Thu, 21 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

cross posted with this Project Atomic blog post

TL;DR Fedora 29 will be End Of Life soon. With it Fedora Atomic Host will have its last incremental release (based on the Fedora 29 stream). Please move to the Fedora CoreOS preview if you can.

Last year we introduced the plans for Fedora CoreOS including that Fedora CoreOS would be the successor to Fedora Atomic Host and Container Linux (from CoreOS Inc.). As part of that succession plan we decided that Fedora 29 Atomic Host would be the last stream of Fedora Atomic Host to be released.

Fedora 28->29 Atomic Host Upgrade Guide

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

cross posted with this Project Atomic blog post

Introduction

This week we put out the first release of Fedora 29 Atomic Host. This will be the last major release of Fedora Atomic Host as we prepare for Fedora CoreOS which will be released in Fedora 30.

In this post we’ll quickly list some known issues and then talk about updating an existing Fedora 28 Atomic Host system to Fedora 29. We’ll cover preparing the system for upgrade and performing the upgrade.

RPM-OSTree Bisecting Helps Track Down Boot Timeout Issue

Sat, 20 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Last time I talked about using rpm-ostree-bisect, a tool that I wrote to automatically bisect the history of an OSTree remote in order to find the exact commit when a problem was introduced. I recently put the tool to the test again.

The Problem

Recently a user reported an issue where their system was seeing timeouts on boot. They determined that if they removed the resume=/dev/mapper/fedora-swap argument from the kernel command line then the system would boot without timing out on the swap device (i.e. an extra 90 seconds added to boot time).

Automated Bisect Testing Of An Entire OS with RPM-OSTree

Sun, 10 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Occasionally in OS land we’ll come across a bug that snuck its way into a build and has been in the wild for a while before anyone notices it. One example is a recent bug (originally discovered by the community of CoreOS Container Linux) where the jumbo packet MTU size of 9001 was no longer getting set properly on EC2 instances.

So we have this bug, and we know things used to work. I fired up the first and last releases of F28 Atomic Host. Both had the problem. I then went all the way back to the first release of F27 Atomic Host and fired up an AMI from that release. On that release the MTU looks good at 9001:

Pinning Deployments in OSTree Based Systems

Tue, 22 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

cross posted with this Project Atomic blog post

Introduction

RPM-OSTree/OSTree conveniently allows you to rollback if you upgrade and don’t like the upgraded software. This is done by keeping around the old deployment; the old software you booted in to. After a single upgrade you’ll have a booted deployement and the rollback deployment. On the next upgrade the current rollback deployment will be discarded and the current booted deployment will become the new rollback deployment.

April Fedora Infrastructure Hackfest

Mon, 23 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Earlier this month I was lucky enough to attend the 2018 Fedora Infrastructure Hackfest. It’s always a treat to hang out with some of the people who really make Fedora tick. Sinny Kumari and I were there to help represent the Atomic Working Group, and also get some face time with each other to learn and hack on a few things related to the Atomic Working group.

The Hackfest was held in Paul Frield’s hometown of Fredricksburg, VA. Since I live in Raleigh, NC I decided it would be nice to take the train since I don’t often get to take the train in the southeast. As can be expected the train was a little late, but got us there without a problem and was a pretty good experience.

Pruning Policy for Specific Branches of OSTree Repos

Sun, 04 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

In Fedora we are moving to a unified OSTree repo structure where there is a single OSTree repository that is the remote for all branches of Fedora (rawhide, branched, stable, etc). As part of this we want to be able to define different retention policies for different branches within the repository. For rawhide we’ll retain a few weeks worth of commits, but for stable we don’t want to prune any of the commits.

Firewalld in Atomic Host

Thu, 01 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

cross posted with this Project Atomic blog post

TL;DR

Fedora Atomic Host (and derivatives) will now include the firewalld package in the base OSTree that is tested, delivered, and released every two weeks. Existing users should observe no change as it won’t be enabled by default.

Firewalld in Atomic Host

In the past we have had requests to have firewalld in Atomic Host to enable a better interface into firewall management for administrators and management software. It turns out that if you have lots of rules to manage, or even multiple pieces of software trying to manage different sets of rules on a single system, then iptables becomes a limitation pretty quickly.

Fedora 26->27 Atomic Host Upgrade Guide

Tue, 14 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

cross posted with this Project Atomic blog post

Introduction

This week we put out the first release of Fedora 27 Atomic Host. Some quick notes:

In Fedora 27 Atomic Host we removed kubernetes from the base OSTree. See Appendix A: Upgrading Systems with Kubernetes for more information.
For Fedora 27 we are currently sticking with the non-unified repo approach as opposed to a unified repo. TL;DR nothing is changing for now but we expect to implement a unified repo as described here during the F27 release cycle.

Setting up an Atomic Host Build Server

Thu, 05 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Hosting your own Atomic Host OSTree can be useful from time to time. Maybe you want to try out something new or maybe you want to permanently build your own custom tree and use it forever. It can be quite easy to set up a build server and host the contents, especially for personal use.

This post will walk through setting up a server to do builds and also hosting the content over http.

Atomic Host 101 Lab Part 5: Containerized and Non-Containerized Applications

Sun, 03 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

In Part 4 of this series we learned about package layering and experimental features of atomic host OSTree mutations. This included installing packages from external repositories as well as removing and replacing components of the base OSTree that was delivered with Atomic Host. We also converted our localweb service to be hosted by a local docker container running the httpd software rather than Python 3.

In this section of the lab we’ll talk a litte bit more about Containerized and Non-Containerized Applications and the role Atomic Host plays.

Atomic Host 101 Lab Part 4: Package Layering, Experimental Features

Sat, 02 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

In Part 3 of this series we learned about rebasing, upgrading, and performing rollbacks on Atomic Host. We also learned how files are restored during a rollback operation and how to inspect the differences in RPM content between each commit in the OSTree history of an Atomic Host using the rpm-ostree command line tool. In this section we will cover the following topics from the outline in Part 0.

Package Layering
Experimental Features (livefs, remove, replace)

Adding Packages to Atomic Host via Package Layering

When Atomic Host was first released we could not change much about the the delivered software on the system. Over time we developed a system for layering packages on top of what was provided by the base OSTree to allow the flexibility needed for those few packages that, for whatever reason, we may not want to put into a container.

Atomic Host 101 Lab Part 3: Rebase, Upgrade, Rollback

Fri, 01 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

In Part 2 of this series we learned about configuring container storage on Atomic Host. In this section we will cover the following topics from the outline in Part 0.

Atomic Host Rebasing
Atomic Host Upgrades and Rollbacks
Browsing OS History

Rebasing

One of the more fascinating aspects of Atomic Host techology is that you can rebase to completely different operating system trees. Let’s take this to an extreme and go from the newer technology in Fedora to the older (more stable) technology in CentOS. We’ll achieve by rebasing to an OSTree commit that was built from CentOS 7 RPMs:

Atomic Host 101 Lab Part 2: Container Storage

Thu, 31 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

In Part 1 of this series we learned a little about the technology behind Atomic Host and how to interact with a deployed system. In this section we will cover the Configuring Storage for Containers topic from the outline in Part 0.

History of Container Storage

One of the early goals of Atomic Host was to be a good platform for running containerized workloads. This is still a fundamental goal of Atomic Host and certainly includes making sure that the container runtime (currently the docker daemon) has proper storage configuration such that it can get a balance of good performance and stability.

Atomic Host 101 Lab Part 1: Getting Familiar

Wed, 30 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

In Part 0 of this series we helped get a Fedora 26 Atomic Host system set up for the rest of this lab. In this section we will cover the following topics from the outline:

Getting Familiar With Atomic Host
Viewing Changes To A Deployed System

Getting Familiar

Atomic Host is built on top of underlying technology known as OSTree and leveraged by an RPM aware higher level technology known as rpm-ostree. rpm-ostree is able to build and deliver OSTrees built out of RPMs. Once built, an OSTree commit can be installed to a server just like a traditional OS. New OSTree commits are created by a build system and a server can pull down and apply updates, similar to a git pull.

Atomic Host 101 Lab Part 0: Preparation

Tue, 29 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

While Atomic Host has been around since 2014 there are still a lot of people that aren’t as familiar with the technology. The Atomic team within Red Hat, along with numerous other upstream contributors, have brought the OSTree and RPM-OSTree technology a long way. At the Fedora user and contributor conference (known as Flock) this week we will be giving a lab on Atomic Host designed to let new users learn about Atomic Host. The audience for this lab is anyone familiar with Linux and interested in learning a new technology.

Fedora 26 Atomic Host August 08 Release

Wed, 09 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

cross posted with this Project Atomic blog post

A new Fedora Atomic Host update is available via an OSTree commit:

Commit: f6331bcd14577e0ee43db3ba5a44e0f63f74a86e3955604c20542df0b7ad8ad6
Version: 26.101

In this release we have fixed an issue with our qcow and vagrant images from the 20170723 release. If you used the qcow or vagrant images from that release then please make sure you are following the fedora/26/x86_64/atomic-host ref. See this Atomic Working Group issue for more details.

The diff between this and the previous released version is:

How Do We Create OSTree Repos and Artifacts in Fedora

Tue, 08 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

a more permanent version of this content lives here

Introduction

NOTE: For background on OSTree check out the docs.

When you want to create a new OSTree using rpm-ostree you usually define a few yum repos, and then a json file that says what rpms you want to be composed in the tree. You then run an rpm-ostree compose tree command to create the commit in the ostree repo. Once the ostree commit has been created you can then create installer images (ISOs) and cloud/VM images (qcow, etc) from that ostree.

Fedora 25->26 Atomic Host Upgrade Guide

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

cross posted with this Project Atomic blog post and this Fedora Magazine post

Introduction

In July we put out the first and second releases of Fedora 26 Atomic Host. In this blog post we’ll cover updating an existing Fedora 25 Atomic Host system to Fedora 26. We’ll cover preparing the system for upgrade and performing the upgrade.

NOTE: If you really don’t want to upgrade to Fedora 26 see the later section: Appendix B: Fedora 25 Atomic Host Life Support.