Installer for Universal Blue Images

[noelmiller]

For full spec, please visit: https://hackmd.io/@ublue-os/ByEpOVeYp Website: https://universal-blue.org/ Github Organization: https://github.com/ublue-os

Purpose

Our current ISO installer is not sufficiently supporting our growing user base. We are hoping to utilize bootc-image-builder as a way build our ISO images using consistent tooling. We would also like to fully integrate it into our CI process.

MVP

Taken directly from our spec, here is what we feel we need to have for a successful MVP:

Offline ISO

A fully Fedora offline experience that does not require internet to install.

Use cases

• Bazzite - it's a mobile device and that team prefers a full offline installer for reliability reasons
• Anyone who runs a lab - users have asked for an offline experience so that they can make custom images to deploy labs in places with limited internet. "Burn 50 usb sticks at the home base, ship to this conference"

Features

• Build ISO using bootc-image-builder
• Ability to directly install a signed OCI image directly without need for the user to ever use an unsigned image.
  • This is one of our biggest issues with the current implementation of our existing ISO installer
• The installer experience should be as close as possible to upstream Fedora.
  • Adding the user account on first boot.
  • Adding the user account to specific groups
  • Have the same partition layout as upstream (Currently there is hardcoding to use EXT4 rather than BTRFS which is what is used upstream)
  • Configure Full Disk Encryption
  • Allow for networking configuration and choice of hostname.
• The ability to use kickstart files in a way a linux sysadmin expects.
• Ability to build it in a Github action
• Ability to build via Podman or Podman Desktop
• Ability to generate cloud images with the same tooling.
• No deviation from standard Fedora - we don't want "the ublue way"

[noelmiller]

Closing issue. We were able to resolve with a different method.