TinyIPA images

TinyIPA is an Ironic Python Agent image based on TinyCoreLinux. It is very lightweight and thus very suitable for CI use. It may lack necessary drivers and the build process uses insecure communication, thus these images are not recommended for production usage.

Requirements

You need to have a git clone of ironic-python-agent-builder:

git clone https://opendev.org/openstack/ironic-python-agent-builder
cd ironic-python-agent-builder/tinyipa

Then you need to install some utilities. For the main build script:

  • wget

  • pip

  • unzip

  • sudo

  • awk

  • mksquashfs

For building an ISO you’ll also need:

  • mkisofs, genisoimage, or xorrisofs

Building

Building ramdisk

To create a new ramdisk, run:

make

or:

./build-tinyipa.sh && ./finalise-tinyipa.sh

This will create two new files once completed:

  • tinyipa.vmlinuz - the kernel image

  • tinyipa.gz - the initramfs image

Upload them to the Image service or another location where you want them to be hosted (an HTTP or FILE location in case of standalone ironic).

Building ISO

Once you’ve built tinyIPA it is possible to pack it into an ISO if required. To create a bootable ISO, run:

make iso

or:

./build-iso.sh

This will create one new file once completed:

  • tinyipa.iso

Cleaning up

To clean up the whole build environment, run:

make clean

For cleaning up just the iso or just the ramdisk build:

make clean_iso

or:

make clean_build

Advanced options

Enabling/disabling SSH access to the ramdisk

By default tinyIPA will be built with OpenSSH server installed but no public SSH keys authorized to access it.

If you want to enable SSH access to the image, set AUTHORIZE_SSH variable in your shell before building tinyIPA:

export AUTHORIZE_SSH=true

By default it will use public RSA or DSA keys of the user running the build. To provide a different public SSH key, export path to it in your shell before building tinyIPA:

export SSH_PUBLIC_KEY=<full-path-to-public-key>

If you want to disable SSH altogether, set INSTALL_SSH variable in your shell to false before building tinyIPA:

export INSTALL_SSH=false

If you want to change the SSH access of a previously built tinyIPA image, use the make target addssh:

make addssh

This command will either use a local image specified by the TINYIPA_RAMDISK_FILE environment variable or download the version specified by the BRANCH_PATH environment variable (e.g. master or stable-queens) from tarballs.openstack.org. It will install and configure OpenSSH if needed and add public SSH keys for the user named tc using either the same SSH_PUBLIC_KEY shell variable or the public keys of the local user.

Enabling biosdevname in the ramdisk

If you want to collect BIOS given names of NICs in the inventory, set TINYIPA_REQUIRE_BIOSDEVNAME variable in your shell before building tinyIPA:

export TINYIPA_REQUIRE_BIOSDEVNAME=true

Using ironic-lib from source

ironic-lib contains important parts of the provisioning logic. If you would like to build an IPA image with your local checkout of ironic-lib, export the following variable:

export IRONIC_LIB_SOURCE=/absolute/path/to/ironic-lib/checkout