Build Kairos from scratch

Kairos enables the creation of a distribution based on any base OS image that satisfies the Kairos model and contract. Essentially, every OS is treated solely as a collection of packages, and upgrades and operations are managed by Kairos components, which abstract the management model.

In practical terms, upgrades are not carried out by the package manager of the OS. Instead, the kairos-agent handles upgrades through container images. All installation and upgrades are delivered exclusively through container images. These images are overlayed at boot time, which means there is no additional runtime overhead, as no container engine is required for booting the OS.

The Kairos framework is an abstract layer between the OS and the management interface. It follows an atomic A/B approach, which can be controlled through Kubernetes, the CLI, or a declarative model.

The Kairos contract is straightforward: the OS container image must include everything required for booting, from the kernel to the init system.

The contract has several advantages:

• Delegation of package maintenance, CVE, and security fixes to the OS layer
• Easy issuance of upgrades to container images by chaining Dockerfiles or manually committing changes to the image. See also Customizing.
• Clear separation of concerns: the OS provides the booting bits and packages necessary for the OS to function, while Kairos provides the operational framework for handling the node’s lifecycle and immutability interface.
• Support for long-term maintenance: each framework image allows conversion of any OS to the given Kairos framework version, potentially enabling maintenance for as long as the base OS support model allows.

This document outlines the steps for making any base image fully bootable with the Kairos framework. The steps include:

• Building a container image
  • Selecting a base image from the supported OS family (although it should work with any distro)
  • Installing the required packages from the package manager of the chosen OS
  • Building the initramfs
• Building an offline bootable ISO or netbooting the container image.

Prerequisites

To follow the steps below, you’ll need to have Docker or a container engine installed on your local machine. Additionally, note that the steps have been tested on Linux but should also work in other environments.

The base OS used as an example in this document is Fedora 38. However, the steps should work with any other OS as well. The OS should meet the following requirements:

• Use systemd (openRC is currently not supported, but in the roadmap)
• Use grub as bootloader
• If the system will use EFI, the kernel needs to have enabled the CONFIG_EFI_STUB option ( see: https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/efi-stub.html)

If you encounter any issues, please feel free to open up issues and help us improve the Documentation!

Build a container image

To build the container image, follow these steps:

1. Create a new directory for the image and write a Dockerfile inside it. The Dockerfile will contain the instructions for building the image:

FROM fedora:38 as base

# Install any package wanted here
# Note we need to install _at least_ the minimum required packages for Kairos to work:
# - An init system (systemd)
# - Grub
# - kernel/initramfs
RUN echo "install_weak_deps=False" >> /etc/dnf/dnf.conf

RUN dnf install -y \
    audit \
    coreutils \
    curl \
    device-mapper \
    dosfstools \
    dracut \
    dracut-live \
    dracut-network \
    dracut-squash \
    e2fsprogs \
    efibootmgr \
    gawk \
    gdisk \
    grub2 \
    grub2-efi-x64 \
    grub2-efi-x64-modules \
    grub2-pc \
    haveged \
    kernel \
    kernel-modules \
    kernel-modules-extra \
    livecd-tools \
    lvm2 \
    nano \
    NetworkManager \
    openssh-server \
    parted \
    polkit \
    rsync \
    shim-x64 \
    squashfs-tools \
    sudo \
    systemd \
    systemd-networkd \
    systemd-resolved \
    tar \
    which \
    && dnf clean all

RUN mkdir -p /run/lock
RUN touch /usr/libexec/.keep

# Copy the Kairos framework files. We use master builds here for fedora. See https://quay.io/repository/kairos/framework?tab=tags for a list
COPY --from=quay.io/kairos/framework:v2.7.24 / /

# Set the Kairos arguments in os-release file to identify your Kairos image
FROM quay.io/kairos/osbuilder-tools:latest as osbuilder
RUN zypper install -y gettext
RUN mkdir /workspace
COPY --from=base /etc/os-release /workspace/os-release
# You should change the following values according to your own versioning and other details
RUN OS_NAME=kairos-core-fedora \
  OS_VERSION=v9.9.9 \
  OS_ID="kairos" \
  OS_NAME=kairos-core-fedora \
  BUG_REPORT_URL="https://github.com/YOUR_ORG/YOUR_PROJECT/issues" \
  HOME_URL="https://github.com/YOUR_ORG/YOUR_PROJECT" \
  OS_REPO="quay.io/YOUR_ORG/core-fedora" \
  OS_LABEL="latest" \
  GITHUB_REPO="YOUR_ORG/YOUR_PROJECT" \
  VARIANT="core" \
  FLAVOR="fedora" \
  /update-os-release.sh

FROM base
COPY --from=osbuilder /workspace/os-release /etc/os-release

# Activate Kairos services
RUN systemctl enable cos-setup-reconcile.timer && \
          systemctl enable cos-setup-fs.service && \
          systemctl enable cos-setup-boot.service && \
          systemctl enable cos-setup-network.service

## Generate initrd
RUN kernel=$(ls /boot/vmlinuz-* | head -n1) && \
            ln -sf "${kernel#/boot/}" /boot/vmlinuz
RUN kernel=$(ls /lib/modules | head -n1) && \
            dracut -v -N -f "/boot/initrd-${kernel}" "${kernel}" && \
            ln -sf "initrd-${kernel}" /boot/initrd && depmod -a "${kernel}"
RUN rm -rf /boot/initramfs-*

In the Dockerfile, note the following:

• The base image we’re using is fedora. However, you could also base your image on other distributions. See the Kairos official images for an example.
• We’re installing a set of packages, including rsync, grub, systemd, kernel, and we’re generating the initramfs inside the image.
• We’re copying the Kairos framework image file to the root of the container. Choose the framework image that closely matches your setup (normally generic). You can find the framework images published here: https://quay.io/repository/kairos/framework?tab=tags

3. Now build the image with:

docker build -t test-byoi .

Build bootable assets

Once the container image is built, we can proceed directly to creating an ISO or netboot it using AuroraBoot. We can use AuroraBoot to handle the ISO build process and even attach a default cloud config if desired. Here’s an example for both scenarios:

• ISO
• Netboot

docker run -v "$PWD"/build:/tmp/auroraboot \
             -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
             --rm -ti quay.io/kairos/auroraboot:v0.2.7 \
             --set container_image=docker://test-byoi \
             --set "disable_http_server=true" \
             --set "disable_netboot=true" \
             --set "state_dir=/tmp/auroraboot"
# 2:45PM INF Pulling container image 'test-byoi' to '/tmp/auroraboot/temp-rootfs' (local: true)
# 2:45PM INF Generating iso 'kairos' from '/tmp/auroraboot/temp-rootfs' to '/tmp/auroraboot/iso'
# $ sudo ls -liah build/iso
# total 449M
# 35142520 drwx------ 2 root root 4.0K Mar  7 15:46 .
# 35142517 drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4.0K Mar  7 15:42 ..
# 35142521 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root    0 Mar  7 15:45 config.yaml
# 35138094 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 449M Mar  7 15:46 kairos.iso

qemu-system-x86_64 -m 2048 -drive if=virtio,media=disk,file=build/iso/kairos.iso

docker run -v --net host \
             -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
             --rm -ti quay.io/kairos/auroraboot:v0.2.7 \
             --set container_image=docker://test-byoi \
             --set "disable_http_server=true" \
             --set "netboot.cmdline=rd.neednet=1 ip=dhcp rd.cos.disable netboot install-mode console=tty0 selinux=0"

This example is available in the examples/byoi/fedora directory of the Kairos repository, where you can run build.sh to reproduce it.

FIPS compliant flavors

To build a FIPS compliant version of Kairos, there are 2 requirements:

• Your base image should be FIPS compliant
• The kairos package from the fips category should be used (search for “fips” here: https://packages.kairos.io/)

FIPS compliant base image

Different distributions provide different ways to get a FIPS compliant version of the Operating System. For example:

• Ubuntu docs
• RedHat docs
• SLE micro

Your pipeline that builds the base image should take these instructions into account and ensure the base OS is running FIPS compliant binaries.

FIPS compliant kairos binaries

As described in the Dockerfile example above, while building a Kairos image from scratch, you need to copy binaries from a framework image. For FIPS compliant binaries, you should use the appropriate framework image. The kairos pipelines already build one Ubuntu 20 tls:

quay.io/kairos/framework:v2.7.24-fips

The binaries in this framework image are built with golang 1.19.10 which uses boringcrypto commit ae223d61 (Defined here).

Example

A full e2e example to build an Ubuntu Focal FIPS flavor is available here: https://github.com/kairos-io/kairos/tree/master/examples/byoi/ubuntu-fips.

Note: it requires a subscription key.