Ironic Agent Container

This is an experimental container and associated tooling for using ironic-python-agent (IPA) on top of CoreOS. This is different from standard IPA images that are built with diskimage-builder from a conventional Linux distribution, such as CentOS.

Installation

So far it has not been tested with other Metal3 components, to experiment with it you'll need a pure Ironic installation, such as Bifrost. Make sure to allocate enough RAM to the testing nodes, I have used 6 GiB (e.g. add --memory 6144 to ./bifrost-cli testenv invocation).

Make sure you have patch 790472 in your Ironic.

You will need coreos-installer, it can be installed with cargo:

sudo dnf install -y cargo
cargo install coreos-installer

Finally, you'll need a container registry. You can set one up locally:

sudo podman run --privileged -d --name registry -p 5000:5000 \
    -v /var/lib/registry:/var/lib/registry --restart=always registry:2

Preparing deploy image - Redfish virtual media

So far this project has been tested with Fedora CoreOS. Download the suitable bare metal image, for example:

sudo curl -Lo /httpboot/fcos-ipa.iso \
    https://builds.coreos.fedoraproject.org/prod/streams/stable/builds/33.20210314.3.0/x86_64/fedora-coreos-33.20210314.3.0-live.x86_64.iso

Next you need to inject the Ignition configuration into it. This repository contains a Python script to generate such configuration from the IP addresses. For Bifrost it may looks like:

./ignition/build.py \
    --host 192.168.122.1 \
    --registry 192.168.122.1:5000 \
    --insecure-registry > ~/ironic-agent.ign

Then use coreos-installer to inject it:

sudo ~/.cargo/bin/coreos-installer iso ignition embed \
    -i ~/ironic-agent.ign -f /httpboot/fcos-ipa.iso

Configure the nodes to use the redfish-virtual-media boot interface:

baremetal node update <node> \
    --driver redfish \
    --boot-interface redfish-virtual-media \
    --reset-interfaces

Finally, update your node(s) to use the resulting image:

baremetal node set <node> \
    --driver-info redfish_deploy_iso=file:///httpboot/fcos-ipa.iso

Preparing deploy image - PXE

For PXE/iPXE boot you will need to download 3 artifacts: the kernel, the initramfs and the root file system, for example:

sudo curl -Lo /httpboot/fcos.kernel \
    https://builds.coreos.fedoraproject.org/prod/streams/stable/builds/34.20210427.3.0/x86_64/fedora-coreos-34.20210427.3.0-live-kernel-x86_64
sudo curl -Lo /httpboot/fcos.initramfs \
    https://builds.coreos.fedoraproject.org/prod/streams/stable/builds/34.20210427.3.0/x86_64/fedora-coreos-34.20210427.3.0-live-initramfs.x86_64.img
sudo curl -Lo /httpboot/fcos.rootfs.img \
    https://builds.coreos.fedoraproject.org/prod/streams/stable/builds/34.20210427.3.0/x86_64/fedora-coreos-34.20210427.3.0-live-rootfs.x86_64.img

Next, copy the Ignition configuration, generated on the previous step, to the HTTP root directory, for example:

sudo cp ~/ironic-agent.ign /httpboot/ironic-agent.ign

Then you'll need to update the kernel parameters to point at the generated file. Open /etc/ironic/ironic.conf and edit the following option:

[pxe]
pxe_append_params = nofb nomodeset systemd.journald.forward_to_console=yes console=ttyS0 ipa-insecure=1 ignition.config.url=http://192.168.122.1:8080/ironic-agent.ign coreos.live.rootfs_url=http://192.168.122.1:8080/fcos.rootfs.img ignition.firstboot ignition.platform.id=metal

You'll need to add the following parameters to the existing value (use your IP where needed):

• ignition.config.url=http://192.168.122.1:8080/ironic-agent.ign
• coreos.live.rootfs_url=http://192.168.122.1:8080/fcos.rootfs.img
• ignition.firstboot
• ignition.platform.id=metal

Restart the ironic conductor if it's already started.

Finally, configure the nodes:

baremetal node set <node> \
    --driver-info deploy_kernel=file:///httpboot/fcos.kernel \
    --driver-info deploy_ramdisk=file:///httpboot/fcos.initramfs \
    --boot-interface ipxe

Preparing container

This is a straightforward step. Build the container from this repository (or pull it using the instructions above) and push it to your registry:

podman build -t ironic-agent -f Dockerfile.ocp
podman push ironic-agent localhost:5000/ironic-agent --tls-verify=false

Now you're ready to inspect, clean and deploy nodes.

Using CoreOS installer

If you want to use coreos-installer instead of the standard Ironic deploy procedure, you need to switch to the custom-agent deploy interface added (very) recently to Ironic:

baremetal node set <node> --deploy-interface custom-agent

Then you can deploy with:

baremetal node deploy <node> \
    --deploy-steps '[{"interface": "deploy", "step": "install_coreos", "priority": 80, "args": {}}]' \
    --config-drive '{"user_data": {.. your ignition ..}}'