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siderolabs / omni

SaaS-simple deployment of Kubernetes - on your own hardware.
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[feature] Modify Raspberry Pi Firmware #537

Open idlezombie opened 1 month ago

idlezombie commented 1 month ago

Problem Description

I need to add a few lines to my R.Pis running in the cluster. Cluster was deployed using Omni from the web GUI downloading the R.Pi disk image and flashing directly to the devices.

I could have missed something in the documentation and if so I am happy to be directed to the right solution to have a go at it but I am primairy considering Omni as a paid solution in order to make my life easier and save time which the custom image build/overlay process does not really do for me.

Solution

The ability to add simple strings as extra lines to the config.txt file on nodes managed by Omni via any of the options that the platform already presents to manage devices e.g.

  1. Could have an extension that allows addition of a config file to merge?
  2. Could have an extra input box like the kernal command args to all appending strings to firmware?

image

There has been talk of a custom extension to this end but it was shutdown with the the response of use the supported builld overlay process.

Alternative Solutions

I have looked through a bunch of the threads under the Talos repo and can see there is an 'official' method for editing config.txt which in short seems to be build a custom image with an overlay. I haven't dug into that in great detail yet as I've not used any of those tools before but upon initial investigations I'm finding it hard to figure out based on the documentation of Omni and Talos both how to make the Talos build process fit properly into the node deployment process when using Omni from the GUI.

Notes

So far experience with Omni has been very very positive. Has been very easy to just download an image flash a Pi and get a cluster up in a few clicks. But now for what should be a very simple tweak to a key firmware file it feels like I have to invest a whole bunch of time into figuring out how to make images and/or overlays and use Talos CLI tools rather than spending that time on messing with the app deployments in the cluster.

I think this issue under Talos has the most relevant responses regarding this and the image process I am refering to. https://github.com/siderolabs/talos/issues/5688

frezbo commented 1 month ago

This is already supported via Image Factory, you can copy the omni kernel args and generate an sbc image with customization that allows modiyfing config.txt

idlezombie commented 1 month ago

And I do acknowledge that and I referenced your posts in that other issue about it.

Perhaps I should re-phrase my suggestion a little. This wasn't so much about the inability to do this at all but the level of 'ease' with which the task is acomplished.

For me personally in the short term I will probably live with not customising it and then look into the custom images later as I don't have time to go through that process right now. If there was an easier option in Omni side of things to shortcut the function into the gui or into a machine patch or something then it would be one less thing I would have to go back and figure out by hand thus having more appeal to Omni as a product that in general is attempting to make the job of managing cluster hardware easier and more seamless.

Anyway, its just a suggestion and I appreciate that SBCs may not even be a large segment of the target market for this product hence not something that would be a priority feature even if it were accepted as a feature to be added and so on.

Side note, I went back and double checked for the Image Factory documentation to make sure I hadn't missed something the first time. Little bit of feedback about the user experience when I tried that:

  1. Searching for "image factory" in the Omni-docs site returned no results and I couldn't see any details in the guides in the menu regarding custom image build process in relation to Omni (considering this purely from the Omni perspective, I would have to be aware that there is another docs library under Talso and that I also need to search over there to find the info which first time Omni users with no Talso experience won't know)

image

  1. In the Talos side the link to the image factory docs under the Raspberry Pi image guide links to a dead page.

image

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Unix4ever commented 1 month ago

Yeah, we should add that to Omni too. Shouldn't be hard.