Image Flavors: Wrong base inheritance

[max06]

(Assuming the image definitions in .obs/dockerfile/* are used to offer the image channels for the elemental-operator)

There are 3 different flavors of the SL Micro 6.2 image: bare-metal, kvm, rt (not checked here), as well as the base-image used by these flavors.

Testing elemental in a virtualized environment, we used the kvm flavor to deploy clusters, experiencing severe issues, like a missing iptables-package.

Turns out: While the base image contains a lot of elemental-related dependencies, the important stuff for rke2-clusters is installed in the bare-metal-image. This makes the bare-metal images the only usable flavor. The other flavors are based on the base-image and don't add the required dependencies defined in the bare-metal dockerfile.

I'd suggest adding the rke2-requirements of the bare-metal dockerfile to the base image, or change the bases of the other 2 flavors to use the bare-metal image instead.

[kkaempf]

The initial k8s target for Elemental was k3s. That's what the -kvm image was created for.

Adding a few dependencies is probably doable.
Re-basing on top of bare-metal should not be done, as this adds 300-500MB of (useless in a virtual environment) driver and firmware packages.

[kkaempf]

Btw, you're explicitly welcome to build your own images based on the provided "baseline" ones 😉

[max06]

Oh, I see. It looked like the kvm image provided the same functionality as the bare-metal one just minus the whole hardware stuff. Turned out the bare-metal image not only has iptables, but also ssh-server and other quality-of-life improvements. So we simply updated to the bare-metal version instead, issues gone.

You're doing a great job with these images, no need the re-invent the wheel. But I agree, we might have to start building our own images soon, when we finalized the network.

The last time I tried that (about a year ago) it didn't went very well. We needed frr-support in network-manager but somehow packages collided with your branding-elemental package. I think we ended up building images from scratch. Let's see, I'm gonna put this on my todo-list for next weekend... 😅

[kkaempf]

Here's the thinking behind the various image flavors: 😉

• base: focus on minimal size and minimal package selection (to run k3s) in a virtual environment. Base for all other images. Drop a single package and it becomes useless. Don't add any fluff.
• kvm: focus on minimal size and make it useful in a virtual environment - chose a minimal kernel, add qemu-guest-agent.
• baremetal: add drivers and firmware for bare metal deployment, add "usability" packages without considering final image size.
• rt: bare metal with a realtime kernel

while you can use these images as-is, users are explicitly encouraged to build their own images (just like you add/remove packages from a normal Linux installation).

[kkaempf]

frr-support in network-manager but somehow packages collided with your branding-elemental package.

Details please 🥺 (maybe in a separate issue ?)

[kkaempf]

Btw, feel free to reach out via the #elemental channel on the Rancher Users Slack.