BOOTy

A simple initrd that is used by plunder for Operating System image deployment.

It should go without saying that this it an early version of this software. It comes with no guard rails and if used incorrectly could break an existing Operating System

Example deployment

BOOTy build

At the moment the most simple method of building BOOTy is to use the initrd.Dockerfile to build all the components that are required and compile in BOOTy as the init process.

docker build -t init -f ./initrd.Dockerfile . ; \
docker run init:latest tar -cf - /initramfs.cpio.gz | tar xf -   

to-do Mulit-arch builds may work with something like the following:

docker buildx build --platform linux/amd64 -o local -t init -f ./initrd.Dockerfile . ; \ docker run init:latest tar -cf - /initramfs.cpio.gz | tar xf -

The above command will build these components:

• BusyBox
• LVM
• BOOTy

It will then produce a simple initramfs that can be booted with a kernel and then finally it will copy the new initrams from the Docker image to the local file system.

BOOTy boot

Create a boot configuration (the below example uses plunder/plndr.io):

pldrctl create boot -i initramfs.cpio.gz -k kernel -c "console=tty0 console=ttyS0,9600" -n booty

Create a deployment configuration:

pldrctl create deployment -a a -m 00:50:56:a5:0e:0f -c booty

Example Server

Until the server components are implemented into plndr.io the server is an external component built for testing.

The two actions dictate the direction of Operating system images.

The writeImage action will instruct the new server on boot to pull the -sourceImage and write the contents to the -destinationDevice.

go run server/server.go -action writeImage \
-mac 00:50:56:a5:0e:0f \
-sourceImage http://192.168.0.95:3000/images/ubuntu.img \
-destinationDevice /dev/sda    

The readImage action should be used when network booting a server that already has an Operating System installed. The -destinationAddress should be the address of the machine that is running the server and should be in the format http://<address>/image as the /image is a specific handler for receiving the disk image.

go run server/server.go -action readImage \
-mac 00:50:56:a5:0e:0f \
-destinationAddress http://192.168.0.95:3000/image \
-sourceDevice /dev/sda    

Disk Support

The below command will write the Image http://192.168.0.95:3000/images/ubuntu.img to /dev/sda, it will then grow the partition 1 (which is /dev/sda1) and it will grow the root volume /dev/ubuntu-vg/root to the full size of the underlying disk. Also for development purposes -shell will drop to a shell if the process fails.

go run server/server.go -action writeImage \
-mac 00:50:56:a5:0e:0f  \
-sourceImage http://192.168.0.95:3000/images/ubuntu.img \
-destinationDevice /dev/sda \
-growPartition 1 \
-lvmRoot /dev/ubuntu-vg/root \
-shell 

Network Support

With BOOTy we can now configure all of the required network settings that are needed to set a static address for a host.

 go run server/server.go -action writeImage \
 -mac 00:50:56:a5:0e:0f \
 -sourceImage http://192.168.0.95:3000/images/ubuntu.img \
 -destinationDevice /dev/sda \
 -growPartition 1 \
 -lvmRoot /dev/ubuntu-vg/root \
 -address 172.16.1.126/24 \
 -gateway 172.16.1.1

Debugging

Two additional flags can be passed to debug:

• -shell - drop to a shell if something failes
• -wipe - wipe the provisioned disk if something fails