RFE: Anaconda ISO configured for network install

osbuild / osbuild-composer

An HTTP service for building bootable OS images.

https://www.osbuild.org

Apache License 2.0

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RFE: Anaconda ISO configured for network install #4120

Open lzap opened 2 months ago

lzap commented 2 months ago

I find useful to be able to generate ISO that does not actually carry the container repository payload, just the kickstart with the upstream URL where Anaconda can install from. I actually made a simple shell script that converts an official "netboot" Fedora or RHEL installation ISO into such artifact the other day:

https://github.com/lzap/bootc-mkiso

But this is dirty, I am wondering if there could be a bib switch to disable container payload embeding. When disabled, the upstream URL would be used instead.

achilleas-k commented 2 months ago

I don't know if this is a useful feature to have in BIB. This is quite simple to accomplish with mkksiso from Lorax. All you need is an Anaconda ISO and a kickstart file.

Meanwhile, doing it in BIB would require:

Pulling the container to inspect it, so that BIB can determine what kind of ISO to make (distro version, repository URLs).
Downloading RPMs from the repositories defined in the container.
Throwing away the container because it wont be included in the ISO anyway.
Building the ISO with the necessary kickstart file.

That first step is where things get weird and wasteful. I'd much rather we supported this in osbuild-composer, where we could have a "net-install" ISO for different types of payloads, including bootc containers.

lzap commented 2 months ago

Understood, I did not know about mkksiso thanks. However, I believe this new kind of ISO would be pretty useful on the console.redhat.com image-builder. And ISO download/extract/wrap operation is something we do not want to do in openshift pods.

Definitely not a priority right know, I just want to discuss this feature with PMs and UX, so I am researching how much work this actually is for BIB. Not sure if this repo is the right place, I want this to be in the hosted image-builder service so it can be leveraged on ConsoleDot. You mention osbuild-composer, so I guess I just asked at the wrong place. Can you move the RFE into that project for me?

Thanks again for your info.

achilleas-k commented 2 months ago

I want this to be in the hosted image-builder service so it can be leveraged on ConsoleDot. You mention osbuild-composer, so I guess I just asked at the wrong place. Can you move the RFE into that project for me?

Yeah, getting this as a feature in osbuild-composer would be the way to go to bring it into the IB service in console-dot. Building pre-configured PXE ISOs is a nice idea for IB and osbuild-composer, I agree.

ondrejbudai commented 2 months ago

I'm not against it, tbh. Yes, we would have to pull the container image and inspect it. But I can imagine a scenario where a user wants both an online and offline ISO, so building both with the same tool sounds quite sane.