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Building a RHEL for Edge Installer

The following describes how to build a boot ISO which installs an OSTree-based system using the "RHEL for Edge Container" in combination with the "RHEL for Edge Installer" image types. The workflow has the same result as the Building OSTree Image guide with the new image types automating some of the steps.

Note that there are some small differences in this procedure between RHEL 8.4 and RHEL 8.5:

  • The names of the image types have changed. In 8.4, the image types were prefixed by rhel-. This prefix was removed in 8.5.
    • The old names rhel-edge-container and rhel-edge-installer still work in RHEL 8.5 as aliases to the new names, however these names are considered deprecated and may be removed completely in future versions.
  • The internal port for the container has changed from 80 in RHEL 8.4 to 8080 in RHEL 8.5.

Process overview​

  1. Create and load a blueprint with customizations.
  2. Build an edge-container (RHEL 8.5) or rhel-edge-container (RHEL 8.4) image.
  3. Load image in podman and start the container.
  4. Create and load an empty blueprint.
  5. Build an edge-installer (RHEL 8.5) or rhel-edge-installer (RHEL 8.4) image, pointing the ostree-url to http://10.0.2.2:8080/repo/ and setting the ostree-ref to rhel/edge/demo.

The edge-container image type creates an OSTree commit and embeds it into an OCI container with a web server. When the container is started, the web server serves the commit as an OSTree repository.

The edge-intaller image type pulls the commit from the running container and creates an installable boot ISO with a kickstart file configured to use the embedded OSTree commit.

Detailed workflow​

Build the container and serve the commit​

Start by creating a blueprint for the commit. The content below is an example and can be modified to fit your needs. For this guide, we will name the file example.toml.

name = "example"
description = "RHEL for Edge Installer example"
version = "0.0.3"

[[packages]]
name = "vim-enhanced"
version = "*"

[[packages]]
name = "tmux"
version = "*"

[customizations]

[[customizations.user]]
name = "user"
description = "Example User"
password = "$6$uvdfeuHQYM6kUaea$fvvzyu.Z.u89TVCB2tq8UEc52XDFGnAqCo75BX3zu8OzIbS.EKMo/Saammb151sLrdzmlESnpNEPrJ7h5b0c6/"
groups = ["wheel"]

Now push the blueprint to osbuild-composer using composer-cli:

$ composer-cli blueprints push example.toml

And start the container build:

$ composer-cli compose start-ostree --ref "rhel/edge/example" example edge-container
Compose 8e8014f8-4d15-441a-a26d-9ed7fc89e23a added to the queue

The value for --ref can be changed but must begin with an alphanumeric character and contain only alphanumeric characters, /, _, -, and ..

Note: In RHEL 8.4, the image type was called rhel-edge-container. It has been renamed to edge-container in 8.5 onwards.

Monitor the build status using:

$ composer-cli compose status

When the compose is FINISHED, download the result:

$ composer-cli compose image 8e8014f8-4d15-441a-a26d-9ed7fc89e23a
8e8014f8-4d15-441a-a26d-9ed7fc89e23a-rhel84-container.tar: 670.45 MB

Load the container into registry:

$ cat 8e8014f8-4d15-441a-a26d-9ed7fc89e23a-rhel84-container.tar | podman load
Getting image source signatures
Copying blob 82934cd3e69d done
Copying config d11911c3dc done
Writing manifest to image destination
Storing signatures
Loaded image(s): @d11911c3dc4bee46cabd52b91c87f48b8a7d450fadc8cfbeb69e2de98b413521

Tag the image for convenience:

$ podman tag d11911c3dc4bee46cabd52b91c87f48b8a7d450fadc8cfbeb69e2de98b413521 localhost/edge-example

Start the container (note the different internal port numbers between the two versions)

For RHEL 8.4:

$ podman run --rm -d -p 8080:80 --name ostree-repo localhost/edge-example

For RHEL 8.5+:

$ podman run --rm -d -p 8080:8080 --name ostree-repo localhost/edge-example

Note: The -d option detaches the container and leaves it running in the background. You can also remove the option to keep the container attached to the terminal.

Build the installer​

Start by creating a simple blueprint for the installer. The blueprint must not have any customizations or packages; only a name, and optionally a version and a description. Add the content below to a file and name it empty.toml:

name = "empty"
description = "Empty blueprint"
version = "0.0.1"

The edge-installer image type does not support customizations or package selection, so the build will fail if any are specified.

Push the blueprint:

$ composer-cli blueprints push empty.toml

Start the build:

$ composer-cli compose start-ostree --ref "rhel/edge/example" --url http://10.0.2.2:8080/repo/ empty edge-installer
Compose 09d98a67-a401-4613-9a5b-b93f8a6e695f added to the queue

Note: In RHEL 8.4, the image type was called rhel-edge-installer. It has been renamed to edge-installer in 8.5 onwards.

The --ref argument must match the one from the rhel-edge-container compose. The --url in this case is IP address of the container. This tutorial uses qemu to boot the virtual machine and 10.0.2.2 is an address which you can use to reach the host system from the guest: User Networking.

Monitor the build status using:

$ composer-cli compose status

When the compose is FINISHED, download the result:

$ composer-cli compose image 09d98a67-a401-4613-9a5b-b93f8a6e695f
 09d98a67-a401-4613-9a5b-b93f8a6e695f-rhel84-boot.iso: 1422.61 MB

The downloaded image can then booted to begin the installation. If you used the blueprint in this guide, use the username "user" and password "password42" to login.