= Immutable infrastructure
When it comes to using programs, systems and environments… I like determinism. I like reproducability. A phrase I’ve heard is immutable infrastructure and I really liked that.
= The past - CoreOS
I had a good experience with CoreOS, but I found the rigmarole of generating an Ignition configuration file beforehand in order to securely connect to it was a bit of a headache.
= The present - Fedora CoreOS
I want to try it. I’ll still need to write a YAML file, validate it, and transpile it to an Ignition config file, but hopefully the process won’t be so foreign to me.
== Installation
I have a crustly old tower PC that I wanted to install it on, so I followed the bare metal instructions here. After the ISO failed to copy to the USB key using dd, I used the MX Linux Live USB maker to burn the ISO, and it worked perfectly.
The distro offers a LiveUSB mode, and when starting up it initially didn’t get past the bootup phase, it seemed to hang. I realised this was because it seemed to expect network connectivity - as soon as I plugged in an ethernet cable and restarted the machine, it brought me straight to the prompt I was expecting.
== Generating an Ignition config
I followed the docs to generate an Ignition config. It wasn’t too bad, I created a file a YAML file locally and used their container to generate its JSON representation:
docker run --rm -i --rm quay.io/coreos/fcct --pretty --strict < ignition_fedoracoreos.config > out.ign
I then uploaded this file to an S3 bucket and made the file publically available - I figured this would be the handiest place to host the file.
== Connecting
It’s as simple as using the SSH key you associated with your ignition config, and the core user:
~ eval $(ssh-agent); ssh-add id_rsa
Agent pid 28604
Enter passphrase for id_rsa:
Identity added: id_rsa (id_rsa)
~ ssh core@192.168.0.242
Fedora CoreOS 31.20200407.3.0
Tracker: https://github.com/coreos/fedora-coreos-tracker
Discuss: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/c/server/coreos/
Last login: Mon Mar 30 20:26:29 2020 from 192.168.0.200
[core@localhost ~]$