Artifact Naming Convention

There are many different artifacts that Kairos produces. In this page we try to summarize them all and have a clear naming convention for them.

Images

OS images are stored in GitHub Releases, so the name of the artifact includes all the information about the image. The only exception is when the image is too big to be stored in GitHub Releases, in that case the image is stored in Quay.io.

The format of the name is the following:

kairos-<flavor>-<flavor_release>-<variant>-<arch>-<device>-<version>.<extension>

Where:

• <flavor>: Underlying Linux distribution e.g. ubuntu, debian, fedora, alpine, etc
• <flavor_release>: The version of the above distribution e.g. 23.04 for Ubuntu
• <variant>: core or standard
• <arch>: amd64 or arm64
• <device>: either the specific device name, e.g. rpi4 or generic for generic images
• <version>: the version of Kairos e.g. v1.0.0 for Core, and can also include the K3S version e.g. v1.0.0-k3s1 for Standard
• <extension>: iso, squashfs, ipxe

K3S Version Policy

As mentioned before, the version for the standard image includes both the Kairos and the K3S version e.g. v3.0.1-k3sv1.28.2+k3s1. Every Kairos release ships 3 K3S versions, e.g.: 1.27.3, 1.28.2, 1.29.1.

When we bump the version we bump all three of them to their latest available patch release, or if there’s a newer minor release, then we bump the smallest of all to the latest minor and the other two to the latest patch. Let’s say in our previous example that 1.30.0 is released upstream and with it versions 1.27.4, 1.28.3 and 1.29.2, then the next Kairos release would not ship 1.27.3, would add 1.30.0 and bump the two in between to 1.28.3 and 1.29.2. The resulting versions would be: v3.1.0-k3sv1.28.3+k3s1, v3.1.0-k3sv1.29.2+k3s1 and v3.1.0-k3sv1.30.0+k3s1.

Keep in mind that:

• This means that not all K3S releases will make it to a Kairos release.
• We will try not to bump the K3S minor version during Kairos patch releases, but this will depend on the release cycle and urgency of a K3S bump like in the case of security.

Examples

• kairos-ubuntu-23.04-core-amd64-generic-v3.2.3
• kairos-ubuntu-23.04-standard-arm64-rpi4-v3.2.3-k3sv1.28.2+k3s1.iso

Kernel and RAM Disk Images

Kernel and RAM Disk images are stored in GitHub Releases and follow a similar convention to images, but they have no extension:

kairos-<flavor>-<flavor_release>-<variant>-<arch>-<device>-<version>-<type>

Where:

• <type>: kernel or initrd

Examples

• kairos-ubuntu-23.04-core-amd64-generic-v3.2.3-kernel
• kairos-ubuntu-23.04-standard-arm64-rpi4-v3.2.3-k3sv1.28.2+k3s1-initrd

iPXE Images

For iPXE we deliver three types of artifacts. The first one is the iPXE script, with the ipxe extension, and the other two are iPXE bootable images, with the iso and img extensions.

Examples

• kairos-ubuntu-23.04-core-amd64-generic-v3.2.3.ipxe
• kairos-ubuntu-23.04-core-amd64-generic-v3.2.3-ipxe.iso
• kairos-ubuntu-23.04-core-amd64-generic-v3.2.3-ipxe-usb.img

Reports

Reports are also stored in GitHub Releases and follow a similar convention to images, but they include the name of the report:

kairos-<flavor>-<flavor_release>-<variant>-<arch>-<device>-<version>-<report>.<extension>

Where:

• <report>: trivy, sbom, grype, etc

Examples

• kairos-alpine-3.18-core-arm64-generic-v3.2.3-trivy.sarif
• kairos-alpine-3.18-core-arm64-generic-v3.2.3-grype.json

Container Images

Container images are stored in Quay.io and follow the following convention:

quay.io/kairos/<flavor>:<flavor_release>-<variant>-<arch>-<device>-<version>

This nomenclature for container images lacks some information for the following reasons:

1. All version information (kairos, k3s, etc) is in the tag. This makes it easier to publish new versions under the same container repository.
2. The name Kairos is already part of the repository name, so it is not included in the image name.

Examples

• quay.io/kairos/@flavor:@flavorRelease-core-amd64-generic-v3.2.3

IMG Images

As mentioned before, some images are too big to be delivered via GitHub Releases, so they are stored in Quay.io. At the moment this is only for arm .img images.

The convention is the following:

quay.io/kairos/<flavor>:<flavor_release>-<variant>-<arch>-<device>-<version>-img

Examples

• quay.io/kairos/@flavor:@flavorRelease-core-arm64-rpi4-v3.2.3-img

Framework images

There are 2 framework flavors currently, generic and fips, the latter builds Kairos packages in compliance with FIPS.

All different framework flavors are stored in the same image, so the details are included in the tag. The name is simplified since not all attributes apply for framework images.

quay.io/kairos/framework:<version>[-fips]

Examples

• quay.io/kairos/framework:v2.14.4
• quay.io/kairos/framework:v2.14.4-fips
• quay.io/kairos/framework:main
• quay.io/kairos/framework:main-fips
• quay.io/kairos/framework:latest
• quay.io/kairos/framework:latest-fips

Binaries

<name>-<version>-<os>-<arch>.<extension>

Where:

• <name>: the name of the binary e.g. kairosctl, kairos-agent, provider-kairos, etc
• <version>: the version of the binary e.g. v1.0.0
• <os>: Linux, Windows, Darwin, etc
• <arch>: amd64, arm64, 386, etc
• <extension>: tar.gz, zip, etc

Examples

• kairosctl-v2.3.0-Linux-386.tar.gz
• provider-kairos-2.3.0-Windows-amd64.tar.gz
• kairos-agent-v2.1.10-Linux-arm64.tar.gz