The Photon OS Administration Guide describes the fundamentals of administering Photon OS.
The Administration Guide covers the basics of managing packages, controlling services with systemd, setting up networking, initializing Photon OS with cloud-init, running Docker containers, and working with other technologies, such as Kubernetes.
Product version: 5.0
This documentation applies to all 5.0.x releases.
Intended Audiences
This information is intended for Photon OS administrators who install and set up Photon OS.
1 - Photon OS Packages
The design of Photon OS simplifies life-cycle management and improves the security of packages. Photon reduces the burden and complexity of managing clusters of Linux machines by providing curated package repositories and by securing packages with GPG signatures.
Photon OS is available in a variety of pre-built packages in binary formats.
1.1 - Examining the Packages in the SPECS Directory on Github
The SPECS directory of the GitHub website for Photon OS contains all the packages that can appear in Photon OS repositories. The following is the path to the SPECS directory:
To see the version of a package, in the SPECS directory, click the name of the subdirectory of the package that you want to examine, and then click the .spec filename in the subdirectory.
For example, python3.spec appears as follows::
%global VER 3.11
%global with_gdb_hooks 1
Summary: A high-level scripting language
Name: python3
Version: 3.11.0
Release: 6%{?dist}
License: PSF
URL: http://www.python.org
Group: System Environment/Programming
Vendor: VMware, Inc.
Distribution: Photon
1.2 - Looking at the Differences Between the Minimal and the Full Version
The minimal version of Photon OS contains around 50 packages. As it is installed, the number of packages increases to nearly 100 to fulfill dependencies. The full version of Photon OS adds several hundred packages to those in the minimal version to deliver a more fully featured operating system.
You can view a list of the packages that appear in the minimal version by examining the following file:
If the minimal or the developer version of Photon OS does not contain a package that you want, you can install it with tdnf, which appears in both the minimal and full versions of Photon OS by default. In the full version of Photon OS, you can also install packages by using yum.
One notable difference between the two versions of Photon OS pertains to OpenJDK, the package that contains not only the Java runtime environment (openjre) but also the Java compiler (javac). The OpenJDK package appears in the full but not the minimal version of Photon OS.
To add support for Java programs to the minimal version of Photon OS, install the Java packages and their dependencies by using the following command:
```console
tdnf install openjdk
Installing:
openjre x86_64 1.8.0.92-1.ph1 95.09 M
openjdk x86_64 1.8.0.92-1.ph1 37.63 M
```
NOTE:openjdk and openjre are available as openjdk8 and openjre8 in Photon OS 3.0 and later.
1.3 - The Root Account and the 'sudo' and 'su' Commands
The Photon OS Administration Guide assumes that you are logged in to Photon OS with the root account and running commands as root.
On the minimal version, you must install sudo with tdnf if you want to use it. As an alternative to installing sudo, to run commands that require root privileges you can switch users as needed with the su command.
1.4 - Examining Signed Packages
Photon OS signs its packages and repositories with GPG signatures to enhance security. The GPG signature uses keyed-hash authentication method codes, typically the SHA1 algorithm and an RSA Data Security, Inc. MD5 Message Digest Algorithm, to simultaneously verify the integrity of a package. A keyed-hash message authentication code combines a cryptographic hash function with a secret cryptographic key.
In Photon OS, GPG signature verification automatically takes place when you install or update a package with the default package manager, tdnf. The default setting in the tdnf configuration file for checking the GPG is set to 1 for true:
Once you have the name of the key, you can view information about the key with the rpm -qi command, as the following abridged output demonstrates:
rpm -qi gpg-pubkey-66fd4949-4803fe57
Name : gpg-pubkey
Version : 66fd4949
Release : 4803fe57
Architecture: (none)
Install Date: Thu Jun 16 11:51:39 2016
Group : Public Keys
Size : 0
License : pubkey
Signature : (none)
Source RPM : (none)
Build Date : Tue Apr 15 01:01:11 2008
Build Host : localhost
Relocations : (not relocatable)
Packager : VMware, Inc. -- Linux Packaging Key -- <linux-packages@vmware.com>
Summary : gpg(VMware, Inc. -- Linux Packaging Key -- <linux-packages@vmware. com>)
Description :
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: rpm-4.11.2 (NSS-3)
mI0ESAP+VwEEAMZylR8dOijUPNn3He3GdgM/kOXEhn3uQl+sRMNJUDm1qebi2D5b ...
rpm -qi gpg-pubkey-8a6a826d-596882ca
Name : gpg-pubkey
Version : 8a6a826d
Release : 596882ca
Architecture: (none)
Install Date: Tue 18 Apr 2023 10:17:59 AM UTC
Group : Public Keys
Size : 0
License : pubkey
Signature : (none)
Source RPM : (none)
Build Date : Fri 14 Jul 2017 08:37:30 AM UTC
Build Host : localhost
Packager : VMware, Inc. (Linux Packaging Key) <linux-packages@vmware.com>
Summary : VMware, Inc. (Linux Packaging Key) <linux-packages@vmware.com> public key
Description :
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: rpm-4.18.0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=ogBe
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
#
If you have one of the RPMs from Photon OS on another Linux system, such as Ubuntu, you can use SHA and the RSA Data Security, Inc. MD5 Message Digest Algorithm for the package to verify that it has not been tampered with:
rpm -K GConf-3.2.6-1.ph5.src.rpm
GConf-3.2.6-1.ph5.src.rpm: digests signatures OK
You can view the SHA1 digest and the RSA Data Security, Inc. MD5 Message Digest Algorithm by running the following command:
rpm -Kv GConf-3.2.6-1.ph5.src.rpm
GConf-3.2.6-1.ph5.src.rpm:
Header V3 RSA/SHA256 Signature, key ID 66fd4949: OK
Header SHA256 digest: OK
Header SHA1 digest: OK
Payload SHA256 digest: OK
V3 RSA/SHA256 Signature, key ID 66fd4949: OK
MD5 digest: OK
#
The above examples show that the Kubernetes package has not been tampered with.
1.5 - Photon OS Package Repositories
The default installation of Photon OS includes yum-compatible repositories and the repository on the Photon OS ISO when it is available on a CD-ROM drive:
The Photon ISO repository (photon-iso.repo) contains the installation packages for Photon OS. All the packages that Photon builds and publishes reside in the RPMs directory of the ISO when it is mounted. The RPMs directory contains metadata that lets it act as a yum repository. Mounting the ISO gives you all the packages corresponding to a Photon OS build. If, however, you built Photon OS yourself from the source code, the packages correspond only to your build, though they will typically be the latest. In contrast, the ISO that you obtain from the VMware Photon Packages web site contains only the packages that are in the ISO at the point of publication. As a result, the packages may no longer match those on in the ISO, because they are updated more frequently.
The Photon repository (photon.repo) contains all the rpms released for a particular Photon release. This repository is disabled by default but can be enabled in case the end user wants to install an older version of an rpm.
The Photon Updates repository (photon-updates.repo) contains the latest versions of all the rpms for a particular Photon release. This repository is updated with the new rpm releases. This repository is enabled by default.
The Photon debuginfo repository (photon-debuginfo.repo) contains the debuginfo rpms which can be installed for debugging coredumps or issues. This repository is disabled by default.
The Photon release repository (photon-release.repo) contains the rpms snapped at the major release time. This repository is not updated after GA. This repository is disabled by default.
The Photon SRPM repository (photon-srpms.repo) contains all the source rpms for a particular Photon release. This can be used to extract the source which was used to build the rpm. This repository is disabled by default.
1.6 - Building a Package from a Source RPM
This section describes how to install and build a package on the full version of Photon OS from the package’s source RPM. Obtain the source RPMs that Photon OS uses from the VMWare Packages repository: packages.vmware.com/photon
Prerequisites
To build a package from its source RPM, or SRPM, Photon OS requires the following packages:
rpmbuild. This package is installed by default on the full version of Photon OS, so you should not have to install it.
gcc. This package is also installed by default on the full version of Photon OS, so you should not have to install it.
make, Cmake, automake, or another make package, depending on the package you are trying to install and build from its source RPM. Cmake is installed by default on Photon OS.
You can install other make packages by using tdnf or yum.
A local unprivileged user account other than the root account. You should build RPMs as an unprivileged user. Do not build a package as root becau–building an RPM with the root account might damage your system.
Take a snapshot of your virtual machine before building the package if you are building a package on a virtual machine running Photon OS in VMware vSphere, VMware Workstation, or VMware Fusion.
Procedure
VMware recommends that you install and build packages from their source RPMs on the full version of Photon OS. Do not use the minimal version to work with source RPMs.
Perform the following steps to install and build an example package- sed from its source RPM on Photon OS with an unprivileged account.
check whether rpmbuild is installed by running the following command:
rpmbuild --version
If it is not installed, install it by running the following command as root:
tdnf install rpm-build
Create the directories for building RPMs under your local user account home directory and not under root:
Create a .rpmmacros file under your home directory and override the default location of the RPM building tree with the new one. This command overwrites an existing .rpmmacros file. Before running the following command, make sure you do not already have a .rpmmacros file. If a .rpmmacros file exists, back it up under a new name in case you want to restore it later.
Place the source RPM file that you want to install and build in the /tmp directory.
Install the source file, run the following command with your unprivileged user account, replacing the sed example source RPM with the name of the one that you want to install:
rpm -i /tmp/sed-4.2.2-2.ph1.src.rpm
The above command unpacks the source RPM and places its .spec file in your ~/rpmbuild/SPECS directory. In the next step, the rpmbuild tool uses the .spec file to build the RPM.
Build the RPM, run the following commands with your unprivileged user account. Replace the sed.spec example file with the name of the .spec file that you want to build.
cd ~/rpmbuild/SPECS
rpmbuild -ba sed.spec
If successful, the rpmbuild -ba command builds the RPM and generates an RPM package file in your ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64 directory. For example:
ls RPMS/x86_64/
sed-4.2.2-2.x86_64.rpm sed-debuginfo-4.2.2-2.x86_64.rpm sed-lang-4.2.2-2.x86_64.rpm
The rpmbuild command also generates a new SRPM file and saves it in your ~/rpmbuild/SRPMS directory. For example:
ls SRPMS/
sed-4.2.2-2.src.rpm
If the rpmbuild command is unsuccessful with an error that it cannot find a library, you must install the RPMs for the library that your source RPM depends on before you can successfully build your source RPM. Iterate through installing the libraries that your source RPM relies on until you can successfully build it.
To install the RPM, run the following command with your unprivileged user account:
rpm -i RPMS/x86_64/sed-4.2.2-2.x86_64.rpm
1.7 - Compiling C++ Code on the Minimal Version of Photon OS
As a minimalist Linux run-time environment, the minimal version of Photon OS lacks the packages that you need to compile the code for a C++ program. For example, without the requisite packages, trying to compile the file containing the following code with the gcc command will generate errors:
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
return 0;
}
The errors appear as follows:
gcc test.c
-bash: gcc: command not found
tdnf install gcc -y
gcc test.c
test.c:1:19: fatal error: stdio.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
To enable the minimal version of Photon OS to preprocess, compile, assemble, and link C++ code, you must install the following packages as root with tdnf:
gcc
glibc-devel
binutils
To install the packages, use the following the tdnf command:
tdnf install gcc glibc-devel binutils
2 - Package Management in Photon OS with 'tdnf'
Photon OS manages packages with an open source, yum-compatible package manager called tdnf, for Tiny Dandified Yum. Tdnf keeps the operating system as small as possible while preserving yum’s robust package-management capabilities.
2.1 - Introduction to 'tdnf'
On Photon OS, tdnf is the default package manager for installing new packages. It is a C implementation of the DNF package manager without Python dependencies.
Tdnf appears in the minimal and full versions of Photon OS.
Tdnf implements a subset of the dnf commands as listed in the dnf guide.
2.2 - Configuration Files and Repositories
The main configuration files reside in /etc/tdnf/tdnf.conf. The configuration file appears as follows:
The cache files for data and metadata reside in /var/cache/tdnf.
The following repositories appear in /etc/yum.repos.d/ with .repo file extensions:
ls /etc/yum.repos.d/
photon-extras.repo
photon-iso.repo
photon-updates.repo
photon.repo
You can list the the repositories by using the tdnf repolist command. Tdnf filters the results with enabled, disabled, and all. Running the command without specifying an argument returns the enabled repositories:
tdnf repolist
repo id repo name status
photon-updates VMware Photon Linux 2.0(x86_64)Updates enabled
photon-extras VMware Photon Extras 2.0(x86_64) enabled
photon VMware Photon Linux 2.0(x86_64) enabled
The photon-iso.repo, however, does not appear in the list of repositories because it is unavailable on the virtual machine from which these examples are taken. The photon-iso.repo is the default repository and it points to /media/cdrom. The photon-iso.repo appears as follows:
The local cache is populated with data from the repository:
ls -l /var/cache/tdnf/photon
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 18 22:52 repodata
d-wxr----t 3 root root 4096 May 3 22:51 rpms
You can clear the cache to help troubleshoot a problem, but doing so might slow the performance of tdnf until the cache becomes repopulated with data. To clear the cache, use the following command:
tdnf clean all
Cleaning repos: photon photon-extras photon-updates lightwave
Cleaning up everything
The command purges the repository data from the cache:
ls -l /var/cache/tdnf/photon
total 4
d-wxr----t 3 root root 4096 May 3 22:51 rpms
2.3 - Adding a New Repository
On Photon OS, you can add a new repository from which tdnf installs packages. To add a new repository, you create a repository configuration file with a .repo extension and place it in /etc/yum.repos.d. The repository can be on either the Internet or a local server containing your in-house applications.
Be careful if you add a repository that is on the Internet. Installing packages from untrusted or unverified sources might put the security, stability, or compatibility of your system at risk. It might also make your system harder to maintain.
On Photon OS, the existing repositories appear in the /etc/yum.repos.d directory:
ls /etc/yum.repos.d/
photon-extras.repo
photon-iso.repo
photon-updates.repo
photon.repo
To view the format and information that a new repository configuration file should contain, see one of the .repo files. The following is an example:
You can configure multiple repositories in one repository configuration file. Configuration for each of the repositories must have a separate section and ID.
The repository settings details are as follows:
The minimal information needed to establish a repository is an ID and human-readable name of the repository and its base URL. The ID, which appears in square brackets, must be one word that is unique among the system’s repositories; `.
The username setting specifies a username for the repository, if required.
The password setting sets a password for the repository, if required.
The baseurl is a URL for the repository’s repodata directory. For a repository on a local server that can be accessed directly or mounted as a file system, the base URL can be a file referenced by file://. Example:
baseurl=file:///server/repo/
You can also use the following protocols: http:https:ftp:ftps:file:
You can add multiple URLs separated by commas. If download fails for one URL, the next URL is used.
The URL can contain the variables $releasever and $basearch, which refers to the current release of the distribution (for example, 5.0) and the architecture (for example, x86_64 or aarch64).
You can use the metalink file to set hashes and priorities for URLs. To use the metalink feature, the tdnf-metalink plugin must be installed and loaded. A sample metalink file is as follows:
cat metalink
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><metalinkversion="3.0"xmlns="http://www.metalinker.org/"type="dynamic"pubdate="Wed, 05 Feb 2020 08:14:56 GMT"generator="mirrormanager"xmlns:mm0="http://fedorahosted.org/mirrormanager"><files><filename="repomd.xml"><size>2035</size><verification><hashtype="sha1">478437547dac9f5a73fe905d2ed2a0a5b153ef46</hash><hashtype="sha512">6c6fbfba288ec90905a8d2220a0bfd2a50e835b7faaefedb6978df6ca59c5bce25cc1ddd33023e305b20bcffc702ee2bd61d0855f4f1b2fd7c8f5109e428a764</hash></verification><resourcesmaxconnections="1"><urlprotocol="http"type="http"location="IN"preference=“100”>https://packages.vmware.com/photon/3.0/photon_updates_3.0_x86_64/repodata/repomd.xml</url></resources></file></files></metalink>
In the metalink file, provide the preference for each url, so tdnf first tries to sync the repository data from the mirror which has the highest preference. If it fails for any reason, tdnf will use the next mirror URL.
Note: Ensure that the shasum for respomd.xml in all the mirrors should be same.
The metadata_expire setting specifies the expiry time limit for the downloaded metadata in seconds. After the set limit expires, metadata is refreshed on the next action that requires them. The default value is 172800 seconds.
The priority setting specifies the priority of the repositories.
The gpgcheck setting specifies whether to check the GPG signature. The default value is true. If you enable this setting, set the gpgkey.
The repo_gpgcheck setting allows tdnf to verify the signature of a repository metadata before downloading the repository artifacts. When repo_gpgcheck is set to 1 in the tdnf.conf file, all repositories are checked for the metadata signatures. The default value is 0. To use the repo_gpgcheck feature, the tdnf repogpgcheck plugin must be installed and enabled.
If a repository has repo_gpgcheck enabled,a repomd.xml.asc file is downloaded and the API equivalent of gpg --verify repomd.xml.asc repomd.xml is done. If repomd.xml.asc is missing, repository is deactivated. If repomd.xml.asc fails to verify, the repository is deactivated. The public key for verification must be manually installed for the initial implementation.
Note: Ensure that you have installed libgcrypt for this implementation.
The gpgkey setting furnishes the URL for the repository’s ASCII-armored GPG key file. tdnf uses the GPG key to verify a package if its key has not been imported into the RPM database.
The repository configuration also supports public keys that are remote for the gpgkey option. So, the URLs starting with http, https, or ftp can be used for gpgkey.
For example:
gpgkey=http://build-squid.eng.vmware.com/build/mts/release/bora-16633979/publish/packages/keys/vmware.asc
You can use the enabled setting to enable the repository. The default value is false. You can override this setting with --disablerepo, --enablerepo, and --repoid options on the command line.
The skip_if_unavailable setting instructs tdnf to continue running if the repository goes offline.
The retries setting in the repository configuration specifies the number of retries when downloading a file throws an error. The default is 10.
The timeout setting specifies the number of seconds that a download is allowed to take or 0 for no limit. Note that this is an absolute value and may interrupt large file downloads.
The minrate setting specifies the limit below which if the download rate falls, tdnf aborts the download. The default value is 0 (no limit).
The maxrate setting specifies the maximum download rate (throttle). The default value is 0 (no limit).
You can use the skip metadata download settings to skip the download of metadata files for repositories with a lot of packages. When you skip the download of the metadata files, it improves the download time of the packages and the processing time of refreshing the cache.
The following list describes the benefits and drawbacks of the skip metadata settings:
skip_md_filelists: The skip_md_filelists=1 setting deactivates the download of the complete list of files in all packages. The setting improves the download and processing time but affects the repoquery queries for files. The default value is 0.
skip_md_other: The skip_md_other=1 setting deactivates the download of miscellaneous data like the changelog data of packages. The setting improves the download and processing time but affects the repoquery queries for changelogs. The default value is 0.
skip_md_updateinfo: The skip_md_updateinfo=1 setting deactivates the download of the update info data. The setting improves the download and processing time but affects the output of the updateinfo command. The default value is 0.
Other options and variables can appear in the repository file. The variables that are used with some of the options can reduce future changes to the repository configuration files. There are variables to replace the value of the version of the package and to replace the base architecture. For more information, see the man page for yum.conf on the full version of Photon OS: man yum.conf
The following is an example of how to add a new repository for a local server that tdnf polls for packages:
You can also specify the SSL Certificate details in the following settings:
sslcacert: Use a string value.
sslclientcert: Use a string value.
sslclientkey: Use a string value.
sslverify: Specify whether to perform the SSL verification. The default value is true.
2.4 - Mount the Photon ISO Image for the Photon-ISO Repository
Photon OS comes with a preconfigured repository called photon-iso that resides in \etc\yum.repos.d. If you receive an access error message when working with the photon-iso repository, it is probably because you do not have the Photon OS ISO mounted. Mount the ISO and the run the following command to update the metadata for all known repositories, including photon-iso:
mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom
tdnf makecache
Refreshing metadata for: 'VMware Photon Linux 1.0(x86_64)Updates'
Refreshing metadata for: 'VMware Photon Extras 1.0(x86_64)'
Refreshing metadata for: 'VMware Photon Linux 1.0(x86_64)'
Metadata cache created.
2.5 - Adding the Dev Repository to Get New Packages from the GitHub Dev Branch
To try out new packages or the latest versions of existing packages as they are merged into the dev branch of the Photon OS GitHub site, add the dev repository to your repository list.
Perform th following steps:
On your Photon OS machine, run the following command as root to create a repository configuration file named photon-dev.repo, place it in /etc/yum.repos.d, and concatenate the repository information into the file:
After establishing a new repository, run the following command to update the cached binary metadata for the repositories that tdnf polls:
tdnf makecache
2.6 - tdnf-automatic
tdnf-automatic is an alternative Command Line Interface (CLI) to tdnf upgrade/tdnf update with specific features so that it is suitable to be executed automatically and regularly from systemd timers, cron jobs, and so on.
The operation of the tool is usually controlled by the configuration file or the function-specific timer units. The command only accepts a single optional argument pointing to the config file, and some control arguments intended for use by the services that back the timer units. If no configuration file is passed from the command line,then /etc/tdnf/automatic.conf is used.
The tool synchronizes package metadata as needed and then checks for the updates available for the given system and then either exits or shows available updates or downloads and installs the packages.
The outcome of the operation is then reported through stdio.
The systemd timer unit tdnf-automatic.timer behaves as the configuration file specifies whether to download and apply updates. Some other timer units are provided which override the configuration file with some standard behaviors:
Irrespective of the configuration file settings, the first only notifies of available updates. The second one downloads and installs the updates.
Run tdnf-automatic
You can select one that most closely fits your needs, customize /etc/tdnf/automatic.conf for any specific behaviors, and enable the timer unit.
For example: systemctl enable –now tdnf-automatic-notifyonly.timer
Configuration file format
The configuration file is separated into two sections. This basically gives info on what can be put in /etc/tdnf/automatic.conf. ‘automatic.conf’ is a configuration INI file.
Format
tdnf-automatic help:
tdnf-automatic [{-c|--conf config-file}(optional)] [{-i|--install}] [{-n|--notify}] [{-h|--help}] [{-v|--version}]
-c, --conftdnf-automatic configuration file (Optional argument)
-i, --installOverride automatic.conf apply_updates and install updates
-n, --notifyShow available updates
-h, --helpShow this help message
-v, --versionShow tdnf-automatic version information
Commands
To set the mode of the operation of the program:
apply_updates (boolean, default: no)
Whether packages comprising the available updates should be applied by tdnf-automatic.timer, i.e. installed via RPM. Note that the other timer units override this setting.
show_updates (boolean, default: yes)
To just receive updates use tdnf-automatic-notifyonly.timer
network_online_timeout (time in seconds, default: 60)
Maximum time tdnf-automatic will wait until the system is online. 0 means that network availability detection will be skipped.
random_sleep (time in seconds, default: 0)
Maximum random delay before downloading. Note that, by default, the systemd timers also apply a random delay of up to 1 hour.
upgrade_type (either one of all or security. default: all)
Looks at the kind of upgrades. all signals looking for all available updates. security indicates only those with an issued security advisory.
tdnf_conf (string, default: /etc/tdnf/tdnf.conf)
Configurations to override default tdnf configuration.
Reports
To select how the results should be reported:
emit_to_stdio (boolean, default: yes)
Report the results through stdio. If no, no report will be shown.
system_name (string, default: hostname of the given system)
How the system is called in the reports.
emit_to_file (string, absolute path of file)
If we want to capture the logs in a file
2.7 - Install Packages from CLI
You can install the packages from the command line. The package can be a file or a URL. The dependencies are installed automatically.
For example:
Using a URL:
tdnf install https://packages.vmware.com/photon/5.0/photon_release_5.0_x86_64/x86_64/open-vm-tools-11.2.5-1.ph5.x86_64.rpm
open-vm-tools-11.2.5-1.ph5.x86_64.rpm 763014 100%
Installing:
attrx86_642.4.48-1.ph5 photon 88.65k 90778
nss x86_643.57-2.ph5photon 1.69M 1768005
...
open-vm-tools x86_6411.2.5-1.ph5 @cmdline2.65M 2779392
Total installed size: 91.57M 96019175
Upgrading:
nss-libsx86_643.57-2.ph5photon 2.48M 2601790
util-linux-libs x86_642.36-2.ph5photon752.75k 770816
pcre-libs x86_648.44-2.ph5photon275.60k 282216
Total installed size: 3.49M 3654822
Is this ok [y/N]:
You can set the following SSL options in the repository configuration file:
sslverify
When downloading using https, this option helps to verify the SSL certificate of the server. You can set it to 0 or 1. The default is 1.
sslcacert
You can use this option to set the path to a certificate file to verify the server.
sslclientcert
You can use this option to set the path to a client certificate file.
sslclientkey
You can set this path to the client key file.
2.9 - Standard Syntax for tdnf Commands
The standard syntax for tdnf commands is the same as that for DNF and is as follows:
tdnf [options] <command> [<arguments>...]
You can view help information by using the following commands:
tdnf --help
tdnf -h
2.9.1 - tdnf Commands
autoremove [pkg-spec]: This command removes a package with its dependencies. This is similar to the erase/remove command. You can use this command to remove the packages that are no longer needed regardless of the clean_requirements_on_remove option.
autoremove without any arguments removes all automatically installed packages that are no longer required.
check: Checks for problems in installed and available packages for all enabled repositories. The command has no arguments. You can use --enablerepo and --disablerepo to control the repos used. Supported in Photon OS 2.0 (only).
check-local: This command resolves dependencies by using the local RPMs to help check RPMs for quality assurance before publishing them. To check RPMs with this command, you must create a local directory and place your RPMs in it. The command, which includes no options, takes the path to the local directory containing the RPMs as its argument. The command does not recursively parse directories. It checks the RPMs only in the directory that you specify. For example, after creating a directory named /tmp/myrpms and placing your RPMs in it, you can run the following command to check them:
tdnf check-local /tmp/myrpms
Checking all packages from: /tmp/myrpms
Found 10 packages
Check completed without issues
check-update: This command checks for updates to packages. It takes no arguments. The tdnf list updates command performs the same function. Here is an example of the check update command:
clean: This command cleans up temporary files, data, and metadata. It takes the argument all. Example:
tdnf clean all
Cleaning repos: photon photon-extras photon-updates
Cleaning up everything
You can use this command to clean all configured repositories.
You can also use the following sub-commands or arguments to clean specific files:
metadata: This sub-command cleans up downloaded metadata from the repositories.
dbcache: This sub-command cleans up metadata generated from libsolv
packages: This sub-command removes downloaded packages from the cache.
keys: This sub-command removes downloaded keys from the cache.
expire-cache: This sub-command removes the cache expiry marker. This triggers a download of metadata on the next action that needs them.
distro-sync: This command synchronizes the machine’s RPMs with the latest version of all the packages in the repository. The following is an abridged example:
tdnf distro-sync
Upgrading:
zookeeper x86_64 3.4.8-2.ph1 3.38 M
yum noarch 3.4.3-3.ph1 4.18 M
Total installed size: 113.01 M
Reinstalling:
zlib-devel x86_64 1.2.8-2.ph1 244.25 k
zlib x86_64 1.2.8-2.ph1 103.93 k
yum-metadata-parser x86_64 1.1.4-1.ph1 57.10 k
Total installed size: 1.75 G
Obsoleting:
tftp x86_64 5.2-3.ph1 32.99 k
Total installed size: 32.99 k
Is this ok [y/N]:
downgrade: This command downgrades the package that you specify as an argument to the next lower package version. The following is an example:
tdnf downgrade boost
Downgrading:
boost x86_64 1.56.0-2.ph1 8.20 M
Total installed size: 8.20 M
Is this ok [y/N]:y
Downloading:
boost 2591470 100%
Testing transaction
Running transaction
Complete!
To downgrade to a version lower than the next one, you must specify it by name, epoch, version, and release, all properly hyphenated. The following is an example:
tdnf downgrade boost-1.56.0-2.ph1
erase: This command removes the package that you specify as an argument.
To remove a package, run the following command:
tdnf erase pkgname
The following is an example:
tdnf erase vim
Removing:
vim x86_64 7.4-4.ph1 1.94 M
Total installed size: 1.94 M
Is this ok [y/N]:
You can also erase multiple packages:
tdnf erase docker cloud-init
When you remove a package, by default, tdnf does not remove the dependencies that are no longer used if tdnf installed them as dependencies. To remove the dependencies, modify the clean_requirements_on_remove option in the /etc/tdnf/tdnf.conf file to true, or use the autoremove command.
history: This command allows you to record every transaction (commands that install, update, or remove packages) in a database. You can roll back the transactions to a past state, or undo or redo a range of transactions.
There are five sub-commands or arguments that you can use with the history command:
history init/update: The sub-commands init or update initializes the history database. It is recommended that you use these commands right after tdnf is installed. If the database is not already initialized, any altering commands such as install or erase initializes the database.
If the database is already initialized, the commands have no effect unless an application such as an RPM command adds or removes any packages after the last recorded transaction.
history list: This command lists the history of transactions. Note that this result is similar when you use the history command without an argument or sub-command.
The following example shows the use of the command:
# tdnf history
ID cmd line date/time +added / -removed
1 (set) Thu May 05 2022 19:14 +152 / -0
2 -y install less Thu May 05 2022 19:14 +1 / -0
3 -y install lsof Thu May 05 2022 19:18 +2 / -0
You can specify the following options for this sub-command:
--info: Use this option to list a more detailed history that includes added or removed packages.
--reverse Use this option to list the history in reverse order.
--from <id> and --to <id>: Use this option to list a range of transactions. You can specify the transaction IDs of the range in this option.
The following example shows how to use the options:
# tdnf history --info --from 2 --to 3
ID cmd line date/time +added / -removed
2 -y install less Thu May 05 2022 19:14 +1 / -0
added: less-551-2.ph4.aarch64
3 -y install lsof Thu May 05 2022 19:18 +2 / -0
added: libtirpc-1.2.6-2.ph4.aarch64, lsof-4.91-1.ph4.aarch64
history rollback –to trans_id: This command allows you to revert to a previous state. You must specify the ID of the desired state with the --to parameter.
Example:
# tdnf history rollback --to 49
Upgrading:
curl-devel aarch64 7.82.0-3.ph4 photon-updates 885.16k 906404
curl aarch64 7.82.0-3.ph4 photon-updates 256.73k 262896
...
Total installed size: 3.52M 3688748
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading:
curl-devel 793306 100%
curl 148725 100%
...
Testing transaction
Running transaction
Installing/Updating: rpm-libs-4.16.1.3-9.ph4.aarch64
Installing/Updating: rpm-4.16.1.3-9.ph4.aarch64
...
Complete!
history undo –from trans_id [–to trans_id]: You can use this command to undo a transaction. The parameter --from is mandatory, and the specified transaction in the parameter is reversed. Optionally, you can specify a range with the parameter --to to reverse all the specified transactions. Note that the range you specify is inclusive. For example, if you specify the range as 2 to 4, the transactions in 2, 3, and 4 are reversed.
history redo –from trans_id [–to trans_id]: You can use this command to redo a transaction. The parameter --from is mandatory, and the specified transaction in the parameter is redone. Optionally, you can specify a range with the parameter --to to redo all the specified transactions. The range you specify in the parameters is inclusive.
NOTE
Deltas: When you make changes using history commands, the changes are resolved based on the total deltas between the start and the target states. For each range of transactions, the intermediate states are irrelevant. For example, in a range of transactions where one transaction installs a package and the last one removes the package, the final installed state of the package remains the same from start to end.
Unresolved Packages: If a package is not found, tdnf fails with an error message. For instance, when you roll back to a state before an update, the system might not find all the required installation packages in the repository. In such a case, you can enable the additional repositories to successfully revert.
Example:
The following example shows how the tdnf fails with an error message for the unavilable packages:
# tdnf history rollback --to 1
The following packages could not be resolved:
curl-libs-7.82.0-1.ph4.aarch64
rpm-libs-4.16.1.3-7.ph4.aarch64
...
The package(s) may have been moved out of the enabled repositories since the
last time they were installed. You may be able to resolve this by enabling
additional repositories.
Error(1011) : No matching packages
The following example shows how you can enable the repository to resolve the issue:
Transactions outside tdnf: tdnf keeps track of the transactions it performs. However, other tools such as rpm can also add or remove packages. While performing the next transaction, if tdnf detects transactions performed by other tools, it records such transactions as pseudo transactions.
Example:
# tdnf history --info --from 49 --to 49
ID cmd line date/time. +added / -removed
49 (unknown) Thu May 05 2022 23:38 +1 / -0
added: gdb-10.1-2.ph4.aarch64
Dependencies: The undo and redo actions might need to install additional depedencies apart from the previously existing packages. For example, when you redo a transaction that installs a single package which was earlier removed along with its depedencies, the command also attempts to install the dependecies.
Note that this is not an issue for the rollback command because the entire set of packages is restored assuming that the dependecies are also satisfied at the state.
info: This command displays information about packages. It can take the name of a package. Or it can take one of the following arguments: all, available, installed, extras, obsoletes, recent, upgrades. The following are examples:
tdnf info ruby
tdnf info obsoletes
tdnf info upgrades
install: This command takes the name of a package as its argument. It then installs the package and its dependencies.
list: This command lists the packages of the package that you specify as the argument. The command can take one of the following arguments: all, available, installed, extras, obsoletes, recent, upgrades.
tdnf list updates
The list of packages might be long. To more easily view it, you can concatenate it into a text file, and then open the text file in a text editor:
tdnf list all > pkgs.txt
vi pkgs.txt
To list enabled repositories, run the following command:
tdnf repolist
makecache: This command updates the cached binary metadata for all known repositories. The following is an example:
mark install|remove pkg_spec: Mark one or more packages as auto installed (remove) or unmark as auto installed (install), which means it is user-installed. This is used to determine if this package gets removed on autoinstall.
provides: This command finds the packages that provide the package that you supply as an argument. The following is an example:
reinstall: This command reinstalls the packages that you specify. If some packages are unavailable or not installed, the command fails. The following is an example:
tdnf reinstall docker kubernetes
Reinstalling:
kubernetes x86_64 1.1.8-1.ph1 152.95 M
docker x86_64 1.11.0-1.ph1 57.20 M
Total installed size: 210.15 M
repoquery [args]: The repoquery command allows you to query packages from the repositories and installed packages with different criteria and output options. It can take multiple package specifications as arguments.
Example:
$ tdnf repoquery vim
vim-8.2.4925-1.ph4.aarch64
vim-8.2.1361-1.ph4.aarch64
$ tdnf repoquery vim*
vim-8.2.4925-1.ph4.aarch64
vim-8.2.1361-1.ph4.aarch64
vim-extra-8.2.4925-1.ph4.aarch64
vim-extra-8.2.1361-1.ph4.aarch64
$ tdnf repoquery --installed vim
vim-8.2.4925-1.ph4.aarch64
$ tdnf repoquery --requires vim
ld-linux-aarch64.so.1()(64bit)
ld-linux-aarch64.so.1(GLIBC_2.17)(64bit)
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.17)(64bit)
...
The following groups of options are available for repoquery:
select option: Use this option to filter the list of packages. You can use the following parameters with the select option:
--available: Use this parameter to show available packages in the repositories.
--duplicates: Use this parameter to show duplicate installed packages.
--extras: Use this parameter to show the packages that are installed but not in any repositories.
--filefile: Use this parameter to show packages that contain the specified files.
--installed: Use this parameter to show the installed packages.
--userinstalled: Use this parameter to show the user-installed packages.
--whatdepends, --whatenhances, --whatobsoletes, --whatprovides, --whatrecommends, whatrequires, --whatsuggests, --whatsupplements capability: Use these parameters to show packages that have the specified dependency on capability.
Example:
$ tdnf repoquery --whatrequires vim
minimal-0.1-6.ph4.aarch64
vim-extra-8.2.4925-1.ph4.aarch64
minimal-0.1-4.ph4.aarch64
query option: Use this option to control what you want the command to display. The query option lists the selected packages by default. You can use the following parameters to get the required output:
--list: Use this parameter to list all files of the selected packages.
--depends, --enhances, --obsoletes, --provides, --recommends, requires, requires-pre, --suggests, --supplements: Use these parameters to list specified dependencies.
reoposync: This command synchronizes a remote repository with a local one. By default, all packages are downloaded to a local directory unless they already exist. Optionally, metadata is also downloaded.
You can use the following options with the command:
--delete: Use this option to remove old packages that are not part of the repository any more.
--download-metadata: Use this option to download the metadata. After you download the the metadata, you can use the directory as a repository.
--gpgcheck: Use this option to check the gpg signature. If invalid, the package is deleted.
--norepopath: When you use this option, no subdirectory with the repo name is created. This option is only valid if you configure more than one repository.
--urls: When you use this option, instead of downloading, the URLs of all files are printed to stdout.
--download-path: Use this option to specify the download path. By default, files are downloaded relative to the current directory.
--metadata-path: Use this option to specify the download path. You can download metadata to a different directory.
--arch: Use this option to download specific architectures. You can use this option repeatedly.
--source: Use this option to download only source packages. This option is similar to --arch src. Note that this option is incompatible with the --arch option.
--newest-only: Use this option to download only the latest versions of the repository.
remove: This command removes a package. When removing a package, tdnf by default also removes dependencies that are no longer used if they were was installed by tdnf as a dependency without being explicitly requested by a user. You can modify the dependency removal by changing the clean_requirements_on_remove option in /etc/tdnf/tdnf.conf to false.
tdnf remove packagename
search: This command searches for the attributes of packages. The argument can be the names of packages. The following is an example:
The argument of the search command can also be a keyword or a combination of keywords and packages:
tdnf search terminal bash
rubygem-terminal-table : Simple, feature rich ascii table generation library
ncurses : Libraries for terminal handling of character screens
mingetty : A minimal getty program for virtual terminals
ncurses : Libraries for terminal handling of character screens
ncurses : Libraries for terminal handling of character screens
bash : Bourne-Again SHell
bash-lang : Additional language files for bash
bash-lang : Additional language files for bash
bash : Bourne-Again SHell
bash-debuginfo : Debug information for package bash
bash : Bourne-Again SHell
bash-lang : Additional language files for bash
updateinfo: This command displays security advisories about packages. The following is an example:
tdnf updateinfo info
Name : unzip-6.0-15.ph3.x86_64.rpm
Update ID : patch:PHSA-2020-3.0-0083
Type : Security
Updated : Fri Apr 24 01:15:03 2020
Needs Reboot: 0
Description : Security fixes for {'CVE-2018-1000035'}
Name : runc-1.0.0.rc9-3.ph3.x86_64.rpm
Update ID : patch:PHSA-2020-3.0-0102
Type : Security
Updated : Tue Jun 9 06:01:28 2020
Needs Reboot: 0
Description : Security fixes for {'CVE-2019-19921'}
Name : ruby-2.5.8-2.ph3.x86_64.rpm
Update ID : patch:PHSA-2020-3.0-0163
Type : Security
Updated : Thu Nov 19 17:21:29 2020
Needs Reboot: 0
upgrade: This command upgrades the package or packages that you specify to an available higher version that tdnf can resolve. If the package is already the latest version, the command returns Nothing to do. The following is an example:
tdnf upgrade boost
Upgrading:
boost x86_64 1.60.0-1.ph1 8.11 M
Total installed size: 8.11 M
Is this ok [y/N]:y
Downloading:
boost 2785950 100%
Testing transaction
Running transaction
Complete!
You can also run the upgrade command with the refresh option to update the cached metadata with the latest information from the repositories. The following example refreshes the metadata and then checks for a new version of tdnf but does not find one, so tdnf takes no action:
upgrade-to: This command upgrades to the version of the package that you specify. The following is an example:
tdnf upgrade-to ruby2.3
The commands and options of tdnf are a subset of those of dnf. For more help with tdnf commands, see the DNF documentation.
2.9.2 - tdnf Command Options
You can add the following options to tdnf commands. If the option to override a configuration is unavailable in a command, you can add it to the /etc/tdnf/tdnf.conf configuration file.
OPTION
DESCRIPTION
–allowerasing
Allow erasing of installed packages to resolve dependencies
–assumeno
Answer no for all questions
–best
Try the best available package versions in transactions
–debugsolver
Dump data aiding in dependency solver debugging info.
–disablerepo=
Disable specific repositories by an id or a glob.
–enablerepo=
Enable specific repositories
-h, –help
Display help
–refresh
Set metadata as expired before running command
–nogpgcheck
Skip gpg check on packages
rpmverbosity=<debug level name>
Debug level for rpm
–version
Displays the tdnf version and exit
-y, –assumeyes
Answer yes to all questions
-q, –quiet
Quiet operation
–downloadonly
Enables you to download the packages and dependencies that are not installed to the cache.
–alldeps
Enables you to downloads all dependencies for a package regardless of whether they are installed. This command is valid when used together with –downloadonly command.
–downloaddir=dir
Downloads the packages to the specified directory
-C, –cacheonly
Disables downloading metadata, and enables usage of the cached metadata even if it is expired.
–config file, -c file
Use an alternative configuration file
–exclude=package1[,package2[…]]
Enables you to list the packages that you want to exclude from the operations.
–disableexcludes
Disables excludes even if the excludes option is present in the configuration file.
–disablerepo=pattern
Disables one or more repositories. You can set it to a repoid or a pattern. You can also use it together with --enablerepo, but it is mutually exclusive with --repo/--repoid. For example, tdnf --disablerepo=* --enablerepo=photon list.
–enablerepo=pattern
Enables one or more repositories. You can set it to a repoid or a pattern. This command is mutually exclusive with --repo/--repoid.
–downloaddir=directory
Specifies a directory where to download the packages. If the directory is not specified, the package is downloaded in the cache directory. You can only use it together with --downloadonly.
–installroot=directory
Allows you to install packages relative to this directory. Unless you specify with -c or --config, tdnf uses the following configuration file in this directory: etc/tdnf/tdnf.conf. If the configuration file is not present in this directory, tdnf uses the following configuration file in the host: /etc/tdnf/tdnf.conf. This is the same for the repository configurations. The cache directory is relative to the installroot. Note that the cache directory is created, if necessary.
–json, -j
Enables you to get the output information in JSON format. Using tdnf with its alias tdnfj is similar to using tdnf with tdnf -j -y.
–noautoremove
Disables automatic removal of orphaned dependencies regardless of the clean_requirements_on_remove option.
–repofrompath=repoid,baseurl
Adds a repository with the id repoid and baseurl as the base url. This is equivalent to adding a repository with the repoid and the baseurl. You can reference the repository with the id, for example, with --repoid.
Example: tdnf repofrompath=local,file:///usr/src/photon/RPMS --repoid=local install lsof to install packages from usr/src/photon/RPMS (after using createrepo /usr/src/photon/RPMS).
You can use this multiple times to add multiple repositories.
–repoid id, –repo id
Enables you to select a particular repository based on its ID. For example, --repoid=photon is equivalent to --disablerepo=* --enablerepo=photon. You can specify the repository multiple times.
–releasever
Enables you to specify the release version of the distribution. If installed, the version is taken from the package that provides the system-release unless configured otherwise. Setting this is useful while installing the distribution when you use --installroot.
–skip-broken
Allows skipping failures if a package is not available or has broken dependencies.
–testonly
Tests RPM transactions. Note that this command does not install anything.
The following is an example that adds the short form of the assumeyes option to the install command:
tdnf -y install gcc
Upgrading:
gcc x86_64 5.3.0-1.ph1 91.35 M
The following is an example for the downloadonly option with the install command:
tdnf install --downloadonly less
Installing:
lessx86_64551-2.ph4 photon234.35k 239976
Total installed size: 234.35k 239976
tdnf will only download packages needed for the transaction
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading:
less117650 100%
Complete!
Packages have been downloaded to cache.
The following is an example for the downloaddir=dir option with the install command:
tdnf install --downloadonly --downloaddir=/tmp less
Installing:
lessx86_64551-2.ph4 photon234.35k 239976
Total installed size: 234.35k 239976
tdnf will only download packages needed for the transaction
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading:
less117650 100%
Complete!
Packages have been downloaded to /tmp.
root [ /build/build ]# ls -l /tmp/less-551-2.ph4.x86_64.rpm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 117650 Feb 22 18:43 /tmp/less-551-2.ph4.x86_64.rpm
2.10 - Configuration Options
You can use the configuration file to set and modify the tdnf configuration. The tdnf configuration file is located in the following directory: /etc/tdnf/tdnf.conf
The following table lists the configuration options that you can set in the tdnf configuration file:
Configuration
Description
cachedir
Type: string Default value: /var/cache/tdnf This is the location of the cache directory. The cache directory stores the metadata. After downloading the RPMs, the cache directory also stores the RPMs temporarily.
clean_requirements_on_remove
Type: boolean Default value: false Available from tdnf 3.3.1 onwards.
This option determines whether the automatically installed dependencies are removed when a package is removed.
distroarchpkg
Type: distroarchpkg Default value: x86_64
The architecture of the distribution.
distroverpkg
Type: string Default value: system-release
excludepkgs
Type: list Default value: none
The list of packages that you want to exclude from any operations. Packages in this list are not installed, updated, or downgraded.
gpgcheck
Type: boolean Default: false
This option determines whether the packages are checked for their gpg signature.
gpgcheck
Type: boolean Default value: false
This option determines whether the packages are checked for their gpg signature.
installonly_limit
Type: integer Currently not implemented. This option limits the number of concurrently install only packages.
keepcache
Type: boolean Default value: false
This option determines whether to keep the downloaded packages after installation.
minversions
Type: list Default: none
This option refers to the list of packages with a minimum version number. When you set the minimum version number, packages are not downgraded below that version. Example: minversions=tdnf=3.1.5 foo=1.2.3. This can also be configured with the .conf extension files located in the directory named minversions.d. The directory is the same as the directory of the configuration file (usually, /etc/tdnf/minversions.d). Example: mkdir -p /etc/tdnf/minversions.d echo tdnf=3.1.5 > /etc/tdnf/minversions.d/tdnf.conf
noplugins
When you set this option, plugins are disabled.
pluginpath
Type: string Default value: /usr/lib/tdnf-plugins (or the modified value at the time of build with SYSTEM_LIBDIR option)
There are other configurations that you can set in the subdirectories of /etc/tdnf.
Package Locks
You can configure to lock packages in the following directory: /etc/tdnf/locks.d. You cannot remove, upgrade, or downgrade a locked package. You can create multiple files with multiple lines. Each line can contain a package name.
Note: A locked package is considered locked only after it is installed. If a package is not installed, the features of a locked package do not apply.
Minimal Versions
You can configure a minimum version for a package in the following directory: /etc/tdnf/minversions.d. You can create multiple files with multiple lines in them. Each line can contain a package name. The package name must include a version number, and an = symbol must separate the name and version number.
You can also configure this option in the main configuration file as mentioned in the table previously.
3 - Managing Services with 'systemd'
Photon OS manages services with systemd. By using systemd, Photon OS adopts a contemporary Linux standard to bootstrap the user space and concurrently start services. This is an architecture that differs from traditional Linux systems such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
A traditional Linux system contains an initialization system called SysVinit. With SLES 11, for instance, the SysVinit-style init programs control how the system starts up and shuts down. Init implements system runlevels. A SysVinit runlevel defines a state in which a process or service runs.
In contrast to a SysVinit system, systemd defines no such runlevels. Instead, systemd uses a dependency tree of targets to determine which services to start when. Combined with the declarative nature of systemd commands, systemd targets reduce the amount of code needed to run a command, leaving you with code that is easier to maintain and probably faster to execute. For an overview of systemd, see systemd System and Service Manager and the man page for systemd.
On Photon OS, you must manage services with systemd and systemctl, its command-line utility for inspecting and controlling the system, and not the deprecated commands of init.d.
To view a description of all the loaded and active units, run the systemctl command without any options or arguments:
systemctl
To see all the loaded, active, and inactive units and their description, run the following command:
systemctl --all
To see all the unit files and their current status but no description, run thie following command:
systemctl list-unit-files
The grep command filters the services by a search term, a helpful tactic to recall the exact name of a unit file without looking through a long list of names. Example:
To control services on Photon OS, use systemctl command.
For example, instead of running the /etc/init.d/ssh script to stop and start the OpenSSH server on a init.d-based Linux system, run the following systemctl commands on Photon OS:
systemctl stop sshd
systemctl start sshd
The systemctl tool includes a range of commands and options for inspecting and controlling the state of systemd and the service manager. For more information, see the systemctl man page.
3.3 - Creating a Startup Service
Use systemd to create a startup service.
The following example shows you how to create a systemd startup service that changes the maximum transmission unit (MTU) of the default Ethernet connection, eth0.
Concatenate the following block of code into a file:
Set the service to auto-start when the system boots:
cd /lib/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/
ln -s ../eth0.service eth0.service
3.4 - Disabling the Photon OS httpd.service
If your application or appliance includes its own HTTP server, you must turn off and disable the HTTP server that comes with Photon OS so that it does not conflict with your own HTTP server.
To stop it and disable it, run the following commands as root:
Before you install Sendmail, you should set the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of your Photon OS machine.
By default, Sendmail is not installed with either the minimal or full version of Photon OS. When you install Sendmail, it provides Photon OS with a systemd service file that typically enables Sendmail. If the service is not enabled after installation, you must enable it.
Sendmail resides in the Photon extras repository. You can install it with tdnf after setting the machine’s FQDN.
Procedure
Check whether the FQDN of the machine is set by running the hostnamectl status command:
hostnamectl status
Static hostname: photon-d9ee400e194e
Icon name: computer-vm
Chassis: vm
Machine ID: a53b414142f944319bd0c8df6d811f36
Boot ID: 1f75baca8cc249f79c3794978bd82977
Virtualization: vmware
Operating System: VMware Photon/Linux
Kernel: Linux 4.4.8
Architecture: x86-64
Note
In the results above, the FQDN is not set. The Photon OS machine only has a short name. If the FQDN were set, the hostname would be in its full form, typically with a domain name.
If the machine does not have an FQDN, set one by running hostnamectl set-hostname new-name, replacing new-name with the FQDN that you want. For example:
To manage security on Photon OS, the Linux auditing service auditd is enabled and active by default on the full version of Photon OS.
The following command shows the security status:
systemctl status auditd
* auditd.service - Security Auditing Service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/auditd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Fri 2016-04-29 15:08:50 UTC; 1 months 9 days ago
Main PID: 250 (auditd)
CGroup: /system.slice/auditd.service
`-250 /sbin/auditd -n
To help improve security, the auditd service can monitor file changes, system calls, executed commands, authentication events, and network access. After you implement an audit rule to monitor an event, the aureport tool generates reports to display information about the events.
You can use the auditctl utility to set a rule that monitors the sudoers file for changes:
auditctl -w /etc/sudoers -p wa -k sudoers_changes
This rule specifies that the auditd service must watch (-w) the /etc/sudoers file to log permissions changes (-p) to the write access (w) or attributes (a) of the file and to identify them in logs as sudoers_changes. The auditing logs appear in /var/log/audit/audit.log. You can list the auditing rules as follows:
auditctl -l
-w /etc/sudoers -p wa -k sudoers_changes
For more information on the Linux Audit Daemon, see the auditd man page:
man auditd
For more information on setting auditing rules and options, see the auditctl man page:
man auditctl
For more information on viewing reports on audited events, see the aureport man page:
man aureport
3.7 - Analyzing systemd Logs with journalctl
The journalctl tool queries the contents of the systemd journal.
The following command displays the messages that systemd generated the last time the machine started:
journalctl -b
The following command reveals the messages for the systemd service unit specified by the -u option:
journalctl -u auditd
In the above example, auditd is the system service unit.
For more information, see the journalctl man page by running the following command on Photon OS:
man journalctl
3.8 - Migrating Scripts to systemd
Although systemd maintains compatibility with init.d scripts, as a best practice, you must adapt the scripts that you want to run on Photon OS to systemd to avoid potential problems.
Such a conversion standardizes the scripts, reduces the footprint of your code, makes the scripts easier to read and maintain, and improves their robustness on a systemd system.
4 - Configure Wireless Networking
You can configure wireless networking in Photon OS. Connect to an open network or a WPA2 protected network using wpa_cli and configure systemd-networkd to assign an IP address to the network.
The network service, which is enabled by default, starts when the system boots.
5.1 - Commands to Manage Network Service
You manage the network service by using systemd commands, such as systemd-networkd, systemd-resolvd, and networkctl.
To check the status of the network service, run the following command:
systemctl status systemd-networkd
Output
* systemd-networkd.service - Network Service
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-networkd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Fri 2016-04-29 15:08:51 UTC; 6 days ago
Docs: man:systemd-networkd.service(8)
Main PID: 291 (systemd-network)
Status: "Processing requests..."
CGroup: /system.slice/systemd-networkd.service
`-291 /lib/systemd/systemd-networkd
Because Photon OS relies on systemd to manage services, you must use the systemd suite of commands and not the deprecated init.d commands or other deprecated commands to manage networking.
5.2 - Using the Network Configuration Manager
The network-config-manager nmctl allows to configure and introspect the state of the network links as seen by systemd-networkd. nmctl can be used to query and configure links for Address, Routes, Gateways and also hostname, DNS, NTP or Domain. nmctl uses sd-bus, libudev APIs to interact with systemd, systemd-networkd, systemd-resolved, systemd-hostnamed, and systemd-timesyncd via dbus. nmctl uses networkd verbs to explain output. nmctl can generate configurations for required network links from YAML description. It also understands kernel command line specified in dracut network configuration format and can generate systemd-networkd configuration while the system boots and will persist between reboots.
Note: See systemd.network for more information.
nmctl is used to configure:
Static IPv4 and IPv6 Address, Routes, Gateway
DHCP type (IPv4/IPv6), DHCP4 Client Identifier, UseMTU/UseDNS/UseDomains/UseNTP/UseRoutes.
LLDP, Link Local Addressing, IPv4LLRoute, LLMNR
DNS, Domains and NTP
Link MAC, MTU
Create netdevs, vlan, vxlan, bridge, bond, veth, macvlan/macvtap, ipvlap/ipvtap, veth, tunnels(ipip, sit, gre, sit, vti), wireguard
Hostname
Can delete and view nftables table, chains and rules.
You can use nmctl to generate network configurations from the following:
YAML file: nmctl can generate configurations for required network links from YAML description. Configuration written to disk under /etc/systemd/network will persist between reboots. When network-config-manager-yaml-generator.service is enabled it reads YAML files from /etc/network-config-manager/yaml and generates systemd-networkd configuration files.
nmctl uses similar format as defined by different YAML format.
nmctl can generate WPA Supplicant configuration from YAML file. When a YAML file with wifi configuration is found, it generates a configuration file found in /etc/network-config-manager/wpa_supplicant_photon_os.conf which is understood by wpa_supplicant.
Dracut kernel command line network configuration: nmctl understands kernel command line specified in dracut’s network configuration format and can generate systemd-networkd’s configuration while the system boots and will persist between reboots.
Network
ip={dhcp|on|any|dhcp6|auto6}
dhcp|on|any: get ip from dhcp server from all links. If root=dhcp, loop
sequentially through all links (eth0, eth1, ...) and use the first with a valid
DHCP root-path.
auto6: IPv6 autoconfiguration
dhcp6: IPv6 DHCP
ip=<link>:{dhcp|on|any|dhcp6|auto6}
dhcp|on|any|dhcp6: get ip from dhcp server on a specific link
auto6: do IPv6 autoconfiguration
This parameter can be specified multiple times.
ip=<client-IP>:[ <server-id>]:<gateway-IP>:<netmask>:<client_hostname>:<link>:{none|off}
explicit network configuration.
ifname=<link>:<MAC>
Assign network device name <link> (ie eth0) to the NIC with MAC <MAC>. Note
letters in the MAC-address must be lowercase! Note: If you use this option you must
specify an ifname= argument for all links used in ip= or fcoe= arguments. This
parameter can be specified multiple times.
nameserver=<IP>[nameserver=<IP> ...]
specify nameserver(s) to use
cat /proc/cmdline
BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.19.52-2.ph3-esx root=PARTUUID=ebf01b6d-7e9c-4345-93f4-122f44eb2726
init=/lib/systemd/systemd rcupdate.rcu_expedited=1 rw systemd.show_status=0 quiet noreplace-smp
cpu_init_udelay=0 net.ifnames=0 plymouth.enable=0 systemd.legacy_systemd_cgroup_controller=yes
ip=dhcp
network-config-manager-generator.service is a oneshot type systemd service unit which runs while the system boots. It parses the kernel command line and generates networkd config in /etc/systemd/network:
It creates symlink /etc/systemd/system/network.target.wants/network-config-manager-generator.service → /usr/lib/systemd/system/network-config-manager-generator.service.
5.3 - Use 'ip' and 'ss' Commands
Use the ip and ss commands to view a list of network interfaces and information for IP addresses.
Although the ifconfig command and the netstat command work on Photon OS, VMware recommends that you use the ip or ss commands. The ipconfig and netstat commands are deprecated.
For example, to display a list of network interfaces, run the ss command instead of netstat. To display information for IP addresses, run the ip addr command instead of ifconfig -a.
Examples are as follows:
USE THIS IPROUTE COMMAND INSTEAD OF THIS NET-TOOL COMMAND
ip addr ifconfig -a
ss netstat
ip route route
ip maddr netstat -g
ip link set eth0 up ifconfig eth0 up
ip -s neigh arp -v
ip link set eth0 mtu 9000 ifconfig eth0 mtu 9000
Using the ip route version of a command instead of the net-tools version often provides more complete and accurate information on Photon OS. Examples are as follows:
ip neigh
198.51.100.2 dev eth0 lladdr 00:50:56:e2:02:0f STALE
198.51.100.254 dev eth0 lladdr 00:50:56:e7:13:d9 STALE
198.51.100.1 dev eth0 lladdr 00:50:56:c0:00:08 DELAY
arp -a
? (198.51.100.2) at 00:50:56:e2:02:0f [ether] on eth0
? (198.51.100.254) at 00:50:56:e7:13:d9 [ether] on eth0
? (198.51.100.1) at 00:50:56:c0:00:08 [ether] on eth0
5.4 - Configuring Network Interfaces
Network configuration files for systemd-networkd reside in /etc/systemd/network and /usr/lib/systemd/network. Example:
root@photon-rc [ ~ ]# ls /etc/systemd/network/
99-dhcp-en.network
By default, when Photon OS starts, it creates a DHCP network configuration file, or rule, which appears in /etc/systemd/network, the highest priority directory for network configuration files with the lowest priority filename:
Network configuration files can also appear in the system network directory, /usr/lib/systemd/network, as the results of the following search illustrate:
In the above search, the /usr/lib/systemd/network directory contains several network configuration files. Photon OS applies the configuration files in lexicographical order specified by the file names without regard for the network configuration directory in which the file resides unless the file name is the same. Photon OS processes files with identical names by giving precedence to files in the /etc directory over the other directory. Thus, the settings in /etc/systemd/network override those in /usr/lib/systemd/network. Once Photon OS matches an interface in a file, Photon OS ignores the interface if it appears in files processed later in the lexicographical order.
Each .network file contains a matching rule and a configuration that Photon OS applies when a device matches the rule. Set the matching rule and the configuration as sections containing vertical sets of key-value pairs according to the information in systemd network configuration.
To configure Photon OS to handle a networking use case, such as setting a static IP address or adding a name server, create a configuration file with a .network extension and place it in the /etc/systemd/network directory.
After you create a network configuration file with a .network extension, you must run the chmod command to set the new file’s mode bits to 644.
Before you set a static IP address, obtain the name of your Ethernet link by running the following command:
networkctl
IDX LINK TYPE OPERATIONAL SETUP
1 lo loopback carrier unmanaged
2 eth0 ether routable configured
In the results of the command, you can see the name of an Ethernet link, eth0.
To create a network configuration file that systemd-networkd uses to establish a static IP address for the eth0 network interface, execute the following command as root:
Note: The advantage of using reload and reconfigure is that the settings of other interfaces are not disturbed and only the settings of the specific interface are reloaded and reconfigured.
For more information, see the man page for systemd-networkd: man systemd.network
5.6 - Turning Off DHCP
By default, when Photon OS first starts, it creates a DHCP network configuration file or rule, which appears in /etc/systemd/network, the highest priority directory for network configuration files with the lowest priority filename:
To turn off DHCP for all Ethernet interfaces, change the value of DHCP from yes to no, save the changes, and then restart the systemd-networkd service:
The advantage of using reload and reconfigure is that the settings of other interfaces are not disturbed and only the settings of the specific interface are reloaded and reconfigured.
If you create a configuration file with a higher priority filename (e.g. 10-static-en.network), it is not necessary but still recommended to turn off DHCP.
You can also check the status of a specific interface:
networkctl status <interface_name>/<index_number>
(eth0 is an example)
❯ networkctl status eth0
● 2: eth0
Link File: /usr/lib/systemd/network/99-default.link
Network File: /etc/systemd/network/50-dhcp-en.network
State: routable (configured)
Online state: online
Type: ether
Path: pci-0000:0b:00.0
Driver: vmxnet3
Vendor: VMware
Model: VMXNET3 Ethernet Controller
Alternative Names: eno1
enp11s0
ens192
Hardware Address: 00:50:56:ba:43:98 (VMware, Inc.)
MTU: 1500 (min: 60, max: 9000)
QDisc: fq_codel
IPv6 Address Generation Mode: eui64
Number of Queues (Tx/Rx): 1/1
Auto negotiation: no
Speed: 10Gbps
Duplex: full
Port: tp
Address: 192.168.1.8/24 (DHCPv4 via 192.168.1.1)
fe80::250:56ff:feba:4398
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
DNS: 192.168.1.1
192.168.1.2
192.168.1.3
NTP: 192.168.1.1
192.168.1.2
192.168.1.3
192.168.1.4
Activation Policy: up
Required For Online: yes
DHCP4 Client ID: IAID:0xb6220feb/DUID
May 04 10:37:14 photon systemd-networkd[625]: eth0: found matching network '/etc/systemd/network/50-dhcp-en.network', based on potentially unpredictable interface name.
May 04 10:37:14 photon systemd-networkd[625]: eth0: Configuring with /etc/systemd/network/50-dhcp-en.network.
May 04 10:37:14 photon systemd-networkd[625]: eth0: Link UP
May 04 10:37:14 photon systemd-networkd[625]: eth0: Gained carrier
May 04 10:37:14 photon systemd-networkd[625]: eth0: found matching network '/etc/systemd/network/50-dhcp-en.network', based on potentially unpredictable interface name.
5.7 - Adding a DNS Server
Photon OS uses systemd-resolved to resolve domain names, IP addresses, and network names for local applications. The systemd-resolved daemon automatically creates and maintains the /etc/resolv.conf file, into which systemd-resolved places the IP address of the DNS server. You must not modify the /etc/resolv.conf file.
Note: If you want to implement a local resolver like bind instead of systemd-resolved, stop the systemd-resolved service and disable it.
If you open the default /etc/resolv.conf file after you deploy Photon OS, it looks like this:
root@photon-rc [ ~ ]# cat /etc/resolv.conf
# This file is managed by systemd-resolved(8). Do not edit.
#
# Third party programs must not access this file directly, but
# only through the symlink at /etc/resolv.conf. To manage
# resolv.conf(5) in a different way, replace the symlink by a
# static file or a different symlink.
nameserver 198.51.100.2
To add a DNS server, insert a DNS key into the Network section of the static network configuration file, for example, /etc/systemd/network/10-eth0-static.network and set it to the IP address of your DNS server:
Note: To apply the changes made to /etc/systemd/network/*.network files, perform the following:
Restart systemd-networkd and systemd-resolved services by running the following commands:
systemctl restart systemd-networkd
systemctl restart systemd-resolved
Or you can reload and reconfigure the settings by running the following commands:
networkctl reloadnetworkctl reconfigure *interface_name/index_number*
Note: The advantage of using reload and reconfigure is that the settings of other interfaces are not disturbed and only the settings of the specific interface are reloaded and reconfigured.
If your machine is working with DHCP, you can add a DNS server by modifying the /etc/systemd/resolved.conf--a method.
You can optionally activate the local DNS stub resolver of systemd-resolved by adding dns and resolve to the /etc/nsswitch.conf file. To do so, make a backup copy of the /etc/nsswitch.conf file and then execute the following command as root:
sed -i 's/^hosts.*$/hosts: files resolve dns/' /etc/nsswitch.conf
If your machine contains multiple NICs, it is recommend that you create a .network configuration file for each network interface. The following scenario demonstrates how to set one wired network interface to use a static IP address and another wired network interface to use a dynamic IP address obtained through DHCP.
Note: The following configurations are examples and you must change the IP addresses and other information to match your network and requirements.
First, create the .network file for the static Ethernet connection in /etc/systemd/network. A best practice is to match the exact name of the network interface, which is eth0 in this example. This example file also includes a DNS server for the static IP address. As a result, the configuration sets the UseDNS key to false in the DHCP column so that Photon OS ignores the DHCP server for DNS for this interface.
Second, create the .network file for the second network interface, which is eth1 in this example. This configuration file sets the eth1 interface to an IP address from DHCP and sets DHCP as the source for DNS lookups. Setting the DHCP key to yes acquires an IP address for IPv4 and IPv6. To acquire an IP address for IPv4 only, set the DHCP key to ipv4.
How to configure two gateways for two different NIC ?
This is an IP routing policy feature of kernel and is supported by systemd-networkd. You have to add two routes. One is for the subnet so that the IP address can find its gateway. The other route is for specifying the default gateway for that interface. Finally, we add policy route rules for that IP address that we want to use that table. This will not only ensure that the IP address you are trying to communicate with on that one interface can respond properly, but it will also ensure that you do not route information between subnets.
5.9 - Clearing the Machine ID of a Cloned Instance for DHCP
Photon OS uses the contents of /etc/machine-id to determine the DHCP unique identifier (duid) that is used for DHCP requests. If you use a Photon OS instance as the base system for cloning, to create additional Photon OS instances, you must clear the machine-id with this command:
echo -n > /etc/machine-id
When the value is cleared, machine-id can be regenerated by calling systemd-machine-id-setup.
When you run Photon OS on a virtual machine or a bare-metal machine, the Ethernet network interface name might shift from one device to another if you add or remove a card and reboot the machine. For example, a device named eth2 might become eth1 after you remove a NIC and restart the machine.
You can prevent interface names from reordering by turning on predictable network interface names. The naming schemes that Photon OS uses can then assign fixed, predictable names to network interfaces even after you add or remove cards or other firmware and the restart the system.
When you enable predictable network interface names, you can use one of the following options to assign persistent names to network interfaces:
Apply the slot name policy to set the name of networking devices in the ens format with a statically assigned PCI slot number.
Apply the mac name policy to set the name of networking devices in the enx format a unique MAC address.
Apply the path name policy to set the name of networking devices in the enpXsY format derived from a device connector’s physical location.
Though Photon OS supports the onboard name policy to set the name of networking devices from index numbers given by the firmware in the eno format, the policy might result in nonpersistent names.
The option to choose depends on your use case and your unique networking requirements. For example, when you clone virtual machines and require the MAC addresses to be different from one another but the interface name to be the same, consider using ens to keep the slot the same after system reboots.
Alternatively, if the cloning function supports enx, you can use it to set a MAC address which persists after reboots.
Perform the following steps to turn on predictable network interface names:
Make a backup copy of the following file in case you need to restore it later:
To turn on predictable network interface names, edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg to remove the following string:
net.ifnames=0Item
The string appears near the bottom of the file in the menuentry section:
menuentry "Photon" {linux "/boot/"$photon_linux root=$rootpartition net.ifnames=0 $photon_cmdline
if [ "$photon_initrd" ]; then
initrd "/boot/"$photon_initrd
fi}# End /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
Edit out net.ifnames=0, but make no other changes to the file, and then save it.
Specify the types of policies that you want to use for predictable interface names by modifying the NamePolicy option in /lib/systemd/network/99-default.link. The file contents are as follows:
To use the ens or enx option, the slot policy or the mac policy can be added to the space-separated list of policies that follow the NamePolicy option in the default link file, /lib/systemd/network/99-default.link. The order of the policies matters. Photon OS applies the policy listed first before proceeding to the next policy if the first one fails.
For example:
/lib/systemd/network/99-default.link
[Link]
NamePolicy=slot mac kernel database
MACAddressPolicy=persistent
With the name policy specified in the above example, you might still have an Ethernet-style interface name if the two previous policies, slot and mac, fail.
5.11 - Inspecting the Status of Network Links with 'networkctl'
You can inspect information about network connections by using the networkctl command. This can help you configure networking services and troubleshoot networking problems.
You can progressively add options and arguments to the networkctl command to move from general information about network connections to specific information about a network connection.
networkctl Command Without Options
Run the networkctl command without options to default to the list command:
networkctl
IDX LINK TYPE OPERATIONAL SETUP
1 lo loopback carrier unmanaged
2 eth0 ether routable configured
3 docker0 ether routable unmanaged
11 vethb0aa7a6 ether degraded unmanaged
4 links listed.
’networkctl status’ Command
Run networkctl with the status command to display the following information:
root@photon-rc [ ~ ]# > networkctl status
State: routable
Address: 10.197.103.56 on eno1
172.17.0.1 on docker0
fe80::20c:29ff:fe44:f92c on eno1
Gateway: 10.197.103.253 (Cisco Systems, Inc) on eno1
DNS: 10.142.7.1
10.132.7.1
10.166.17.90
NTP: 10.128.152.81
10.166.1.120
10.188.26.119
10.84.55.42
You can see that there are active network links with IP addresses for not only the Ethernet connection but also a Docker container.
’networkctl status’ Command With Network Link Option
You can add a network link, such as the Ethernet connection, as the argument of the status command to show specific information about the link:
root@photon-rc [ ~ ]# networkctl status ens33
* 2: ens33
Link File: /usr/lib/systemd/network/99-default.link
Network File: /usr/lib/systemd/network/10-eth.network
Type: ether
State: routable (configured)
Alternative Names: enp2s1
Path: pci-0000:02:01.0
Driver: e1000
Vendor: Intel Corporation
Model: 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) (PRO/1000 MT Single Port Adapter)
HW Address: 00:0c:29:5f:d1:39 (VMware, Inc.)
MTU: 1500 (min: 46, max: 16110)
QDisc: fq_codel
IPv6 Address Generation Mode: eui64
Queue Length (Tx/Rx): 1/1
Auto negotiation: yes
Speed: 1Gbps
Duplex: full
Port: tp
Address: 172.16.85.225 (DHCP4 via 172.16.85.254)
fe80::20c:29ff:fe5f:d139
Gateway: 172.16.85.2 (VMware, Inc.)
DNS: 172.16.85.2
DHCP4 Client ID: IAID:0x2b9434c1/DUID
DHCP6 Client DUID: DUID-EN/Vendor:0000ab11d258482fc7eee6510000
Feb 26 10:19:44 photon systemd-networkd[650]: ens33: Link UP
Feb 26 10:19:44 photon systemd-networkd[650]: ens33: Gained carrier
Feb 26 10:19:45 photon systemd-networkd[650]: ens33: DHCPv4 address 172.16.85.225/24 via 172.16.85.2
Feb 26 10:19:46 photon systemd-networkd[650]: ens33: Gained IPv6LL
’networkctl status’ Command With Docker Option
You can add a Docker container as the argument of the status command to show specific information about the container:
In the example above, the state of the Docker container is unmanaged because Docker handles managing the networking for the containers without using systemd-resolved or systemd-networkd. Docker manages the container connection by using its bridge drive.
You can set systemd-networkd to work in debug mode so that you can analyze log files with debugging information to help troubleshoot networking problems.
You can turn on network debugging by adding a drop-in file in /etc/systemd to customize the default systemd configuration in /usr/lib/systemd.
Procedure
Run the following command as root to create a directory with the name systemd-networkd.service.d, including the .d extension:
systemctl edit systemd-networkd.service
Add following configuration in the file override.conf to establish a systemd drop-in unit with a debugging configuration for the network service:
[Service]
Environment=SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL=debug
Reload the systemctl daemon and restart the systemd-networkd service for the changes to take effect:
5.13 - Installing packages for 'tcpdump' and 'netcat'
Photon OS includes the following networking tools:
tcpdump. A networking tool that captures and analyzes packets on a network interface. tcpdump is not available with the minimal version of Photon OS but available in the repository. The minimal version includes the iproute2 tools by default.
You can install tcpdump and its accompanying package libpcap, a C/C++ library for capturing network traffic, by using tdnf:
tdnf install tcpdump
netcat. A tool to send data over network connections with TCP or UDP. This tool is not included in either the minimal or the full version of Photon OS. But since netcat furnishes powerful options for analyzing, troubleshooting, and debugging network connections, you might want to install it. To install `netcat’, run the following command:
tdnf install netcat
5.14 - Mounting a Network File System
To mount a network file system, Photon OS requires nfs-utils. The nfs-utils package contains the daemon, userspace server, and client tools for the kernel Network File System (NFS). The tools include mount.nfs, umount.nfs, and showmount.
The nfs-utils package is installed by default in the full version of Photon OS but not in the minimal version. To install nfs-utils in the minimal version, run the following command as root:
tdnf install nfs-utils
For instructions on how to use nfs-utils to share files over a network, see Photon OS nfs-utils.
5.15 - Configuring a Secondary Network Interface using Cloud-Network
When you add a secondary network interface to a linux instance in the cloud environment, you need to configure the network parameters for the secondary interface in the linux instance. The configuration ensures that you do not face any routing issues while using the secondary network interface. Configuring the secondary network interface involves several manual processes that include configuring a new routing table, setting up rules in the routing table and so on.
cloud-network automates the whole manual process of configuring the secondary network interface. It configures the network parameters required for any network interfaces that you create or add to the linux instance. In a cloud environment, instances are set to public IPs and private IPs. If you add more than one private IP for the secondary network interface, the IP other than the one provided by DHCP cannot be fetched and configured for your virtual machine. The cloud-network project is designed to adapt the cloud-network environments such as Azure, GCP, and Amazon EC2. cloud-network fetches the metadata from the metadata server endpoint, parses the metadata, and then assigns IPs and routes. When cloud-network is installed, it automatically configures network interfaces in the cloud frameworks. It detects the available interfaces using netlink. Additionally, for all the interfaces, including the primary one, it looks for any secondary IP addresses from the metadata server endpoint and configures them on the interface, if any.
A local RESTful JSON server runs on the address 127.0.0.1:5209 and the instance metadata is saved on per link basis in the following directory: /run/cloud-network.
The network parameters in the cloud framework are checked periodically for any changes, and in case of a change, the interface is reconfigured accordingly.
The image below illustrates the communication of cloud-network and the instance metadata server:
Use Case: Making a secondary network interface work in a cloud instance.
This functionality is scattered across different scripts/tools that are cloud provider dependent. cloud-network provides a cloud-agnostic mechanism to retrieve the metadata like network parameters, and configure the interfaces. This means that there is no need to manually edit and update the configuration when there are changes in the network parameters. cloud-network automatically configures the interfaces since it has the metadata information.
The image below illustrates how cloud-network fetches the network parameters to configure the secondary network interface (eth1) in a cloud instance:
Installing Cloud Network Setup
Type the following command to install cloud network in your system:
tdnf install cloud-network-setup
Configuration
To manage the configuration, use the configuration file named cloud-network.toml located in the following directory: /etc/cloud-network/
[System] Section
You can set values for the following keys in the [System] section:
LogLevel= Specifies the log level. The key takes one of the following values: Trace, Debug, Info, Warning, Error, Fatal and Panic.
Default is info.
LogFormat= Specifies the log format. The key takes one of the following values:
text or JSON. Takes one of text or json, Default is text.
RefreshTimer= Specifies the time interval. The time interval indicates the amount of time taken to retrieve the data from the metadata endpoint.
[Network] Section
You can set values for the following keys in the [Network] section:
Listen=
Specifies the IP address and the port that the local REST API server listens. You can specify the IP address and the port in the following format ip:port. Defaults is 127.0.0.1:5209.
Supplementary= A whitespace-separated list of interfaces matching the device name. Specifies the interfaces you want to configure with a default gateway and routing policy rules for each IP address including the primary IP address. No default value is set for this key.
Note When there are multiple interfaces, the secondary interface becomes unreachable. When you set a value for Supplementary= key, the default route and routing policy rules are automatically configured.
The following example shows a sample configuration of the key values in the cloud-network.toml file:
After you set the configuration, use the sudo systemctl status cloud-network command to check the network status of the cloud-network service.
Following example shows the command output of the sudo systemctl status cloud-network command:
❯ > sudo systemctl status cloud-network
● cloud-network.service - Configures network in cloud enviroment
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/cloud-network.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Mon 2021-05-31 22:54:50 UTC; 3min 31s ago
Main PID: 19754 (cloud-network)
Tasks: 5 (limit: 4400)
Memory: 8.7M
CGroup: /system.slice/cloud-network.service
└─19754 /usr/bin/cloud-network
May 31 22:54:50 zeus-final-2 systemd[1]: Started Configures network in cloud enviroment.
cnctl
Use the cnctl CLI tool to view the metadata that is retrieved from the endpoint metadata server.
The Following examples show the output of the cnctl status command for the network and system:
❯ cnctl status network
Name: ens33
MAC Address: 00:0c:29:5f:d1:39
Public IP: 104.42.20.194
Private IP: 10.0.0.4/24 10.0.0.6/24 10.0.0.7/24
Subnet: 10.0.0.0
5.16 - Using Network Event Broker
network-event-broker is a daemon that configures network and executes scripts on network events such as systemd-networkd’s DBus events, dhclient lease gains, and so on.
network-event-broker also detects the following events:
An IP address is added/removed/modified
A link is added or removed
In the /etc/network-event-broker directory, network-event-broker creates the link state directories such as carrier.d, configured.d, degraded.d, no-carrier.d, routable.d and manager state directory such as manager.d . You can also keep the executable scripts in these directories.
Use Case: Running command when a new address is acquired via DHCP.
systemd-networkd: systemd-networkd’s scripts are executed when the daemon receives the relevant event from systemd-networkd.
May 14 17:08:13 Zeus cat[273185]: OperationalState="routable"
May 14 17:08:13 Zeus cat[273185]: LINK=ens33
dhclient: For dhclient, scripts are executed in the routable.d directory when dhclient modifies the /var/lib/dhclient/dhclient.leases file and lease information is passed to the scripts as environmental arguments.
Environment variables such as LINK, LINKINDEX= and DHCP lease information DHCP_LEASE= are passed to the scripts.
Configuration
To manage the network-event-broker configuration, use the configuration file named network-broker.toml located in the following directory: /etc/network-broker/
[System] section
You can set values for the following keys in the [System] section:
LogLevel= Specifies the log level. The key takes one of the following values: info, warn, error, debug and fatal. Default is info.
Generator= Specifies the network event generator source. The key takes one of the following values: systemd-networkd or dhclient. Default is systemd-networkd.
[Network] section
You can set values for the following keys in the [Network] section:
Links= A whitespace-separated list of links whose events should be monitored. No default value is set for this key.
RoutingPolicyRules= A whitespace-separated list of links for which you want to configure the routing policy rules per address. When you set this configuration, network-event-broker automatically adds the to and from routing policy rules in another routing table (ROUTE_TABLE_BASE = 9999 + ifindex). When these addresses are removed, the routing policy rules are dropped. No default value is set for this key.
UseDNS= Specifies whether you want to send the DNS server details to systemd-resolved. The key takes one of the following values: true, false. When set to true, the DNS server details are sent to systemd-resolved via DBus. This is applicable only to the DHClient. Default is false.
UseDomain= Specifies whether you want to send the DNS domain details to systemd-resolved. The key takes one of the following values: true, false. When set to true, the DNS domain details are sent to systemd-resolved via DBus. This is applicable only to the DHClient. Default is false.
UseHostname= Specifies whether you want to send the host name to systemd-hostnamed. The key takes one of the following values: true, false. When set to true, the host name is sent to systemd-hostnamed via DBus. This is applicable only to the DHClient. Default is false.
The following example shows a sample configuration of the key values in the network-broker.toml file:
5.17 - Configuring a Network Using Network Configuration Manager
You can use network-configuration-manager to configure a network in Photon OS. The YAML-based configuration system in network-config-manager makes the network configuration easy and simple.
The following sections in the document demonstrate the configuration of a network in Photon OS using network-config-manager.
You can find the YAML network configuration files at the following location:
/etc/network-config-manager/yaml/
When you install network-configuration-manager, it generates the network-config-manager configuration file for systemd-networkd named 99-dhcp.yaml.example.
Perform the following steps to configure static or dynamic IP addressing in Photon OS:
To find the name of the active network interfaces that you want to configure, execute the following command:
❯ ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 00:0c:29:5f:d1:39 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
altname enp2s1
inet 192.168.1.4/24 metric 1024 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global dynamic ens33
valid_lft 82465sec preferred_lft 82465sec
inet6 fe80::20c:29ff:fe5f:d139/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
Note the name of the interface that you want to configure using network-config-manager.
To find the network-configuration-manager default configuration file, execute the following command:
❯ ls /etc/network-config-manager/yaml
To view the content of the network-config-manager network configuration file, execute the following command:
❯ cat /etc/network-config-manager/yaml/*.yaml
Open the configuration file in an editor. For example, if you use vim editor, execute the following command to open the configuration file in an editor:
❯ sudo vim /etc/network-config-manager/yaml/99-dhcp.yaml
Use the following syntax to update the configuration file as per your networking needs:
Note that for static IP addressing, add the IP address, Gateway, and DNS details. For dynamic IP addressing, you need not add these details as it is fetched from the DHCP server.
The following table describes the properties used in the syntax to update the configuration file.
Properties
Description
device: |
Name of the interface.
dhcp4: |
yes or no depending upon dynamic or static IP addressing
addresses: |
IP address of the device in prefix notation.
routes: to: destination via: |
gateway IP address to connect to an outside network
nameservers: |
Address of DNS name servers
Note: It is recommended that you use spaces for indentation instead of tabs in the YAML configuration file. If you use a tab instead of spaces for indentation, you might encounter errors.
Configuring static IP address in Photon OS
To manually configure an IP address, use the previously mentioned file syntax in this topic, and add the IP address, Gateway, and DNS server details.
The following is a sample configuration for the static IP addressing:
To get the IP address from the DHCP server, use the previously mentioned file syntax in this topic. You need not add the IP address, Gateway, and DNS server details here.
The following is a sample configuration for the dynamic IP addressing:
❯ ip r show dev eth0
172.16.0.0/24 via 192.168.1.100 proto static
6 - Prioritize eth0 Route Over WLAN
You can prioritise the eth0 route over the WLAN route. Perform the following steps:
Modify the /etc/systemd/network/99-dhcp-en.network file and add the following content:
[DHCP]
RouteMetric=512
Restart systemd-networkd.
7 - Configuring Photon Real-Time Operating System for Real-Time Applications
Photon Real-Time (RT) Operating System (OS) (and the Linux kernel PREEMPT_RT patchset that it is based on) is optimized to support low-latency real-time scheduling and minimize the OS jitter as observed by real-time applications. However, to get the most out of Photon RT OS, it is must to have a proper system configuration. To run low-latency real time applications effectively, the sources of jitter have to be identified and eliminated across all layers of the underlying system, spanning the BIOS / firmware, the hypervisor, and the guest operating system (Photon RT).
BIOS/Firmware
Tuning a system for real time operation starts from the lowest layers of the software stack, namely the System BIOS or Platform Firmware. The goal is to configure the settings for the following functions:
Maximize Performance
Ex: Set CPU, memory and device power management modes to maximum performance, disable CPU idle states
Minimize System Management Interrupts
Ex: Disable options such as Processor Power and Utilization Monitoring, memory Pre-Failure Notification, and so on
Platform vendors often publish low-latency tuning guides for their BIOS/firmware. Refer documentation to learn about the recommended low-latency settings specific to your platform.
Deploying Real-Time Applications on Photon Real-Time Operating System
A general strategy to deploy real-time applications on Photon RT is described as follows:
Partition CPUs between the OS and the RT workload:
Among the available CPUs in the system, isolate a subset of CPUs, designated to run the RT workload. By default, the Linux scheduler will only run tasks on non-isolated CPUs, leaving the isolated CPUs to those tasks that are explicitly bound to them. Thus, all the housekeeping tasks of the OS will execute on non-isolated CPUs (with a few exceptions, such as per-CPU kernel threads). Then bind the RT workload to the isolated CPUs.
Steer unrelated interrupts away from the CPUs running the RT workload:
Linux supports the ability to affine most interrupts to specific CPUs in the system. By using this mechanism, interrupts that are not relevant to the real-time workload can be affined to non-isolated CPUs, thus avoiding the jitter caused by interrupt handling latency on the isolated CPUs.
This strategy provides two important benefits:
It limits OS interference with the RT workload.
It protects the OS services from getting starved by the CPU-intensive RT tasks.
This configuration can be achieved using a combination of kernel command-line options, and user space packages, as discussed in the following sections.
Kernel Command-Line Parameters
CPU isolation
isolcpus=X,Y-Z (Ex: isolcpus=2,4-5)
Interrupt affinity
irqaffinity=X,Y-Z (Ex: irqaffinity=0-1,3) [ Usually it is the inverse of isolcpus.]
RCU callbacks
rcu_nocbs=X,Y-Z [ Usually it is same as isolcpus. ]
rcu_nocb_poll=1
NOHZ (Eliminating the periodic timer)
nohz=onnohz_full=X,Y-Z [ Usually it is same as isolcpus. ]
CPU idle
idle=halt or idle=pollintel_idle.max_cstate=0 cpuidle.off=1
Tuned is a system tuning daemon that offers several profiles to tailor the OS to various usecases, including a ‘realtime’ profile for low-latency workloads.
The realtime tuned profile can be applied as shown below:
tdnf install tuned
systemctl enable tuned
systemctl start tuned
Add isolcpus to /etc/tuned/realtime-variables.conf (by uncommenting the isolated_cores= parameter):
$ cat /etc/tuned/realtime-variables.conf
Examples:
# isolated_cores=2,4-7
Note: The cores configured as isolated in tuned should be consistent with isolcpus in the kernel command-line.
tuned-adm profile realtime
Stalld configuration
The stalld daemon monitors the system for starved tasks and revives them by giving them a temporary boost using the SCHED_DEADLINE policy. stalld offers fine-grained controls to give starved tasks a user-specified amount of CPU time.
The stalld configuration file is /etc/sysconfig/stalld.
The key parameters are Starving Threshold (THRESH), Boost Period (BP), Boost Runtime (BR), and Boost Duration (BD).
The mode of operation is as follows:
If a task is starved for at least THRESH seconds, it is scheduled using SCHED_DEADLINE scheduling policy, so that it will run at least BR nanoseconds in every BP nanoseconds time period, and this repeats up to BD seconds, after which the task gets back its original scheduler policy/priority settings.
Real Time Scheduling Policies
The Linux kernel offers several scheduling policies to support various applications, among which the real time policies are highlighted below:
SCHED_FIFO (First-In First-Out Real Time Scheduling)
Priority Range: 1 to 99 (highest)
Algorithm: The scheduler runs the highest-priority runnable task in the SCHED_FIFO scheduling class, until it yields (blocks/waits) the CPU voluntarily.
SCHED_RR (Round-Robin Real Time Scheduling)
Priority Range: 1 to 99 (highest)
Algorithm: The scheduler runs the highest-priority SCHED_RR task, and time-slices between equal-priority SCHED_RR tasks in configurable intervals.
SCHED_DEADLINE ( Earliest Deadline First Real Time Scheduling)
Key parameters: Runtime, Period and Deadline, which can be configured on a per-task basis.
Algorithm: The scheduler gives a SCHED_DEADLINE task at least Runtime amount of time on the CPU in every Period time period, before Deadline time is up.
Real Time Throttling
The Linux kernel offers proc file system (procfs) controls to influence real-time task scheduling and throttling.
The RT throttling algorithm is as follows:
All real-time tasks are throttled to run up to runtime microseconds, in every period microseconds. The remaining time in period microseconds is used to run non-RT tasks in the system.
runtime and period values can be configured by writing to the files listed as follows:
/proc/sys/kernel/sched_rt_runtime_us
Default: 95% (950000)
Range: -1 to (INT_MAX -1) [ -1 implies no limit, i.e., no throttling ]
/proc/sys/kernel/sched_rt_period_us
Default: 1s (1000000)
Range: 1 to INT_MAX
Note: See Command Line Reference for the commands for manipulating real-time properties of processes.
8 - Containers
A container is a process that runs on the Photon OS host with its own isolated application, file system, and networking.
Photon OS includes the open source version of Docker. With Docker, Photon OS becomes a Linux run-time host for containers, that is, a Linux cloud container.
The full version of Photon OS includes Kubernetes so you can manage clusters of containers.
8.1 - Docker Containers
On Photon OS, the Docker daemon is enabled by default. To view the status of the daemon, run the following command:
systemctl status docker
Docker is loaded and running by default on the full version of Photon OS. On the minimal version, it is loaded but not running by default. To start it, run the following command:
systemctl start docker
To obtain information about Docker, run the following command as root:
docker info
After Docker is enabled and started, you can create a container. For example, run the following docker command as root to create a container running Ubuntu 14.04 with an interactive terminal shell:
docker run -i -t ubuntu:14.04 /bin/bash
Photon OS also enables you to run a docker container that runs Photon OS:
docker run -i -t photon /bin/bash
8.2 - Docker Rootless Support
Run the Docker daemon as a non-root user (Rootless mode)
The Rootless mode allows you to run the Docker daemon and containers as a non-root user. This mitigates the potential vulnerabilities in the daemon and the container runtime.
As long as the prerequisites are met, rootless mode does not require root privileges even during the installation of the Docker daemon.
After its introduction in Docker Engine v19.03 as an experimental feature, the rootless mode was available in Docker Engine v20.10 as a more stable feature.
This feature is available in Photon OS 4.0 and above versions starting from the docker-20.10.14-1 version (in Ph4).
Prerequisites:
You must install newuidmap and newgidmap on the host. - Provided by the shadow package in Photon
/etc/subuid and /etc/subgid should contain at least 65,536 subordinate UIDs/GIDs for the user. In the following example, the user called testuser has 65,536 subordinate UIDs/GIDs (100000-165535).
You can install the pre-required packages using the following command:
tdnf install -y shadow fuse slirp4netns libslirp
Photon 3 or above with docker-20.10.14-1 version (this version is specific to Ph4. For higher versions please refer spec file in the Photon source).
Usage:
You can perform the following tasks with the respective commands for them:
Install docker-rootless using the following command:
tdnf install -y docker-rootless
Use the following command to add a new user:
useradd -m test_user
Use the following command to set a password for the new user:
passwd test_user
Use the following command to log in as the user you created:
`ssh test_user@localhost`
Run the following command:
dockerd-rootless-setuptool.sh --help`
The above command shows something like the following output:
test_user@photon [ ~ ]$ dockerd-rootless-setuptool.sh --help
Usage: /usr/bin/dockerd-rootless-setuptool.sh [OPTIONS] COMMAND
A setup tool for Rootless Docker (dockerd-rootless.sh).
Documentation: https://docs.docker.com/go/rootless/
Options:
-f, --force Ignore rootful Docker (/var/run/docker.sock)
--skip-iptables Ignore missing iptables
Commands:
check Check prerequisites
install Install systemd unit (if systemd is available) and show how to manage the service
uninstall Uninstall systemd unit
Run the following command, and then check and fix the errors and warnings, if any:
dockerd-rootless-setuptool.sh`
Run the following commands:
a. echo "test_user:100000:65536" >> /etc/subuid
b. echo "test_user:100000:65536" >> /etc/subgid
c. echo "kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone = 1" >> /etc/sysctl.d/50-rootless.conf
d. chmod 644 /etc/subuid /etc/subgid /etc/sysctl.d/50-rootless.conf
e. sysctl --system
After you run the above commands, the dockerd-rootless-setuptool.sh check shows the following output:
test_user@photon [ ~ ]$ dockerd-rootless-setuptool.sh check
[INFO] Requirements are satisfied
After the Requirements are satisfied message appears, run the following command:
dockerd-rootless-setuptool.sh install
Carefully, go through the output messages of the above command and ensure that everything is fine. Follow the instructions that appear, if any.
Add the following to your .bashrc or .bash_profile:
Now, you can run docker run -it photon as a regular user.
Limitations:
Exposing Network Ports
Be aware that port numbers below 1024 are called privileged ports and are not available for rootless users. So, you need to use the unprivileged ports such as 8080, and so on. If you want to run an HTTP server, you need to run docker run -p 8080:80. However, if you really need to expose privileged ports, you can do that by adjusting sysctl /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_unprivileged_port_start or by setting CAP_NET_BIND SERVICE capability on the binary rootlesskit.
Limiting Resources such as CPU, Memory
Limiting resources with cgroup-related docker run flags such as --cpus, --memory, --pids-limit is supported only while running with cgroup v2 and systemd.
If docker info shows none as Cgroup Driver, the conditions are not satisfied. When these conditions are not satisfied, rootless mode ignores the cgroup-related docker run flags.
8.3 - Kubernetes
The Kubernetes package provides several services: kube-apiserver, kube-scheduler, kube-controller-manager, kubelet, kube-proxy. These services are managed by systemd. Their configuration resides in a central location: /etc/kubernetes.
8.4 - Support for distributed builds using Kubernetes
The distributed system using Kubernetes allows the build system to utilize the maximum CPU power across a kubernetes cluster (pods) for faster build process.
Prerequisites
Ensure that the NFS server is running
Ensure that you have the Kubernetes cluster ready that has access to the NFS server
Ensure that you have installed Kubernetes package and have kubeconfig accessible in the build VM.
Triggering Distributed Photon Builds
Perform the following steps in the Photon OS repository:
Update the 'common/data/distributed_build_options.json' configuration file . The following parameters need to be filled:
command→ target to run like 'make packages' or 'make packages-minimal' or 'make toolchain-stage-1' or so on.
Note: Keep the command with flag 'SCHEDULER_SERVER=enable'.
nfs-server-ip→ IP address of the nfs server
pods→ number of builder/worker pods you want such as 10 or 20. The default value is 1.
nfs-server-path-> path of the nfs mount. For example,/mnt/NFS_PATH/MY_DIR
Run make distributed-build.
Note:
This process will make use of the kubeconfig file present under the home directory and start building packages over the specified cluster.
It creates one Master pod and multiple worker pods (numbers defined in config.json).
The master pod runs the scheduler while the worker or the builder pods build the packages.
Distributed Builder monitors the build mob and deletes everything when build has either completed successfully or failed.
The master starts the scheduler server to schedule the packages that have to be built.
The worker makes REST calls to scheduler server.get package and notify after the build.
The distributed build also builds cloud images.
9 - Changing the Locale
You can change the locale if the default locale does not meet your requirements.
To find the locale, run the the localectl command:
localectl
System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
VC Keymap: n/a
X11 Layout: n/a
To change the locale, choose the languages that you want from /usr/share/locale/locale.alias, add them to /etc/locale-gen.conf, and then regenerate the locale list by running the following command as root:
locale-gen.sh
Finally, run the following command to set the new locale, replacing the example (en_US.UTF-8) with the locale that you require:
See which keymaps are currently available on your system:
localectl list-keymaps
If the response to that command is the all-too-common Couldn't find any console keymaps, install the key tables files and utilities:
tdnf install kbd
You should now be able to find a keymap matching your keyboard. As an example, here I’m searching for the German keyboard layout (so I’m expecting something with de in the name) used in Switzerland:
de_CH-latin1 seems to be what we’re looking for, so change your current layout to that keymap:
localectl set-keymap de_CH-latin1
and confirm that the change has been made:
localectl
System Locale: LANG=de_CH.UTF-8
VC Keymap: de_CH-latin1
X11 Layout: n/a
Note: Photon OS comes with a minimal set of locales by default. If you need a full set of locales, you need to install the glibc-i18n package using the following command:
tdnf install -y glibc-i18n
10 - Cloud-Init on Photon OS
The minimal and full versions of Photon OS include the cloud-init service as a built-in component. Cloud-init is a set of Python scripts that initialize cloud instances of Linux machines. The cloud-init scripts configure SSH keys and run commands to customize the machine without user interaction. The commands can set the root password, create a hostname, configure networking, write files to disk, upgrade packages, run custom scripts, and restart the system.
10.1 - Cloud-Init Overview
cloud-init is a multi-distribution package that handles early initialization of a cloud instance.
In-depth documentation for cloud-init is available here:
Both the full version of and the minimal version of Photon OS support cloud-init.
Supported capabilities
Photon OS supports the following cloud-init capabilities:
run commands: execute a list of commands with output to console.
configure ssh keys: add an entry to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys for the configured user.
install package: install additional packages on first boot.
configure networking: update /etc/hosts, hostname, etc.
write files: write arbitrary files to disk.
add tdnf repository: add a tdnf repository to /etc/yum.repos.d.
create groups and users: add groups and users to the system and set properties for them.
run tdnf upgrade: upgrade all packages.
reboot: reboot or power off when done with cloud-init.
Getting Started
The Amazon Machine Image of Photon OS has an ec2 datasource turned on by default so an ec2 configuration is accepted.
However, for testing, the following methods provide ways to do cloud-init with a standalone instance of Photon OS.
Using a Seed ISO
This will be using the nocloud data source. In order to initialize the system in this way, an ISO file needs to be created with a meta-data file and an user-data file as shown below:
Reboot the machine and the hostname will be set to testhost.
Frequencies
Cloud-init modules have predetermined frequencies. Based on the frequency setting, multiple runs will yield different results. For the scripts to always run, remove the instances directory before rebooting.
rm -rf /var/lib/cloud/instances
Module Frequency Info
Name
Frequency
disable_ec2_metadata
Always
users_groups
Instance
write_files
Instance
update_hostname
Always
final_message
Always
resolv_conf
Instance
growpart
Always
update_etc_hosts
Always
power_state_change
Instance
phone_home
Instance
10.2 - Deploy Photon OS With 'cloud-init'
You can deploy Photon OS with cloud-init in the following ways:
As a stand-alone Photon machine
In Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, called EC2
In the Google cloud through the Google Compute Engine, or GCE
In a VMware Vsphere private cloud
When a cloud instance of Photon OS starts, cloud-init requires a data source. The data source can be an EC2 file for Amazon’s cloud platform, a seed.iso file for a stand-alone instance of Photon OS, or the internal capabilities of a system for managing virtual machines, such as VMware vSphere or vCenter. Cloud-init also includes data sources for OpenStack, Apache CloudStack, and OVF. The data source comprises two parts:
Metadata
User data
The metadata gives the cloud service provider instructions on how to implement the Photon OS machine in the cloud infrastructure. Metadata typically includes the instance ID and the local host name.
The user data contains the commands and scripts that Photon OS executes when it starts in the cloud. The user data commonly takes the form of a shell script or a YAML file containing a cloud configuration. The cloud-init overview and cloud-init documentation contains information about the types of data sources and the formats for metadata and user data.
On Photon OS, cloud-init is enabled and running by default. You can use the following command to check the status:
systemctl status cloud-init
The Photon OS directory that contains the local data and other resources for cloud-init is /var/lib/cloud.
Photon OS stores the logs for cloud-init in the /var/log/cloud-init.log file.
The following sections demonstrate how to use cloud-init to customize a stand-alone Photon OS machine, instantiate a Photon OS machine in the Amazon EC2 cloud, and deploy a virtual machine running Photon OS in vSphere. Each section uses a different combination of the available options for the metadata and the user data that make up the data source. Specifications, additional options, and examples appear in the cloud-init documentation.
10.3 - Customizing Guest OS using Cloud-Init
A guest operating system is an operating system that runs inside a virtual machine. You can install a guest operating system in a virtual machine and control guest operating system customization for virtual machines created from vApp templates.
When you customize your guest OS you can set up a virtual machine with the operating system that you want.
Procedure
Perform the following steps before cloning or customizing the guest operating system:
Ensure that disable_vmware_customization is set to false in the /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg file.
Set manage_etc_hosts: true in the /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg file.
Make a backup of the 99-disable-networking-config.cfg file and delete the file from /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d folder after backup.
Clone the VM or customize the guest operating system.
After you clone your VM or customize the guest operating system, perform the following steps:
Ensure that disable_vmware_customization is set to true in the /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg file in the newly created VM and the VM from where cloning was initiated.
Remove manage_etc_hosts: true from the /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg file in the newly created VM and the VM from where cloning was initiated.
Add a copy of the backed up file 99-disable-networking-config.cfg to its original folder /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d in the newly created VM and the VM from where cloning was initiated.
Note:
The disable_vmware_customization flag in /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d file decides which customization workflow to be initiated.
Setting this to false invokes the Cloud-Init GOS customization workflow.
Setting this to true invokes the traditional GOSC script based customization workflow.
When the manage_etc_hosts flag is set to true, Cloud-Init can edit the /etc/hosts file with the updated values.
When the flag is set to true Cloud-Init edits the /etc/hosts file, even when there is no cloud config metadata available. Remove this entry once the Cloud-Init GOS customization is done, to stop Cloud-Init from editing /etc/hosts file and set a fallback configuration.
The 99-disable-networking-config.cfg file is packaged as part of Cloud-Init RPM in photon and it prevents Cloud-Init from configuring the network. Delete this file before starting the Cloud-Init customization and then paste the backup of the file in the /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/ folder once the cloud-init workflow is complete. It is important to replace this file after Cloud-Init customization to avoid removal of network configuration in the Cloud-Init instance.
Result
Cloud-Init guest OS customization is now enabled.
10.4 - Creating a Stand-Alone Photon Machine With cloud-init
Cloud-init can customize a Photon OS virtual machine by using the nocloud data source. The nocloud data source bundles the cloud-init metadata and user data into an ISO that acts as a seed when you boot the machine. The seed.iso delivers the metadata and the user data without requiring a network connection.
Procedure
Create the metadata file with the following lines in the YAML format and name it meta-data:
instance-id:iid-local01local-hostname:cloudimg
Create the user data file with the following lines in YAML and name it user-data:
#cloud-confighostname:testhostpackages:- vim
Generate the ISO that will serve as the seed. The ISO must have the volume ID set to cidata. In the following example, the ISO is generated on an Ubuntu 14.04 computer containing the files named meta-data and user-data in the local directory:
Optionally, check the ISO that you generated on Ubuntu by transferring the ISO to the root directory of your Photon OS machine and then running the following command:
cloud-init --file seed.iso --debug init
After running the cloud-init command above, check the cloud-init log file:
more /var/log/cloud-init.log
Attach the ISO to the Photon OS virtual machine as a CD-ROM and reboot it so that the changes specified by seed.iso take effect. In this case, cloud-init sets the hostname and adds the vim package.
10.5 - Customizing a Photon OS Machine on EC2
You can upload an ami image of Photon OS to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and customize the Photon OS machine by using cloud-init with an EC2 data source. The Amazon machine image version of Photon OS is available as a free download at the location packages.vmware.com/photon.
The cloud-init service is commonly used on EC2 to configure the cloud instance of a Linux image. On EC2, cloud-init sets the .ssh/authorized_keys file to let you log in with a private key from another computer, that is, a computer besides the workstation that you are already using to connect with the Amazon cloud.
Example
The cloud-config user-data file that appears in the following example contains abridged SSH authorized keys to show you how to set them.
Prerequisites
To work with EC2, obtain Amazon accounts for both AWS and EC2 with valid payment information. If you execute the below examples, you will be charged by Amazon. You must replace the <placeholders> for access keys and other account information in the examples with your account information.
Import the cloud-config data. In the following command, the --user-data-file option instructs cloud-init to import the cloud-config data in user-data.txt. The command assumes you have uploaded the user-data.txt file and created the keypair mykeypair and the security group photon-sg.
Run the following commands to terminate the machine. It is important to shut down the machine because Amazon charges you while the host is running down.
With Photon OS, you can also build cloud images on Google Compute Engine and other cloud providers. For more information, see Compatible Cloud Images.
10.6 - Running a Photon OS Machine on GCE
Photon OS comes in a preconfigured image ready for Google Cloud Engine.
Example
The example in this section shows how to create a Photon OS instance on Google Cloud Engine with and without cloud-init user data.
Prerequisites
You must have set up a GCE account and are ready to pay Google for its cloud services. The GCE-ready version of Photon OS is a free image and is free. You can download Photon OS for GCE from https://packages.vmware.com/photon/5.0/GA/gce/.
The GCE-ready image of Photon OS contains packages and scripts that prepare it for the Google cloud to save you time as you implement a compute cluster or develop cloud applications. The GCE-ready version of Photon OS adds the following packages to the packages installed with the minimal version:
Use the following commands to create an instance of Photon OS from the Photon GCE image without using cloud-init. In the commands, you must replace <bucket-name> with the name of your bucket and the path to the Photon GCE tar file.
To create a new instance of a Photon OS machine and configure it with a cloud-init user data file, replace the gcloud compute instances create command in the example above with the following command. Before running this command, you must upload your user-data file to Google’s cloud infrastructure and replace <path-to-userdata-file> with its path and file name.
This section describes the security policy of Photon OS.
11.1 - Default Firewall Settings
The design of Photon OS emphasizes security. On the minimal and full versions of Photon OS, the default security policy turns on the firewall and drops packets from external interfaces and applications. As a result, you might need to add rules to iptables to permit forwarding, allow protocols like HTTP, and open ports. You must configure the firewall for your applications and requirements.
The default iptables on the full version have the following settings:
For more information on how to change the settings, see the man page for iptables.
Although the default iptables policy accepts SSH connections, the sshd configuration file on the full version of Photon OS is set to reject SSH connections. See Permitting Root Login with SSH.
If you are unable to ping a Photon OS machine, check the firewall rules. To verify if the rules allow connectivity for the port and protocol, change the iptables commands by using lsof commands to see the processes listening on ports:
lsof -i -P -n
11.2 - Default Permissions and umask
The umask on Photon OS is set to 0027.
When you create a new file with the touch command as root, the default on Photon OS is to set the permissions to 0640–which translates to read-write for user, read for group, and no access for others. Here’s an example:
Because the mkdir command uses the umask to modify the permissions placed on newly created files or directories, you can see umask at work in the permissions of the new directory. Its default permissions are set at 0750 after the umask subtracts 0027 from the full set of open permissions, 0777.
Similarly, a new file begins as 0666 if you were to set umask to 0000. But because umask is set by default to 0027, a new file’s permissions are set to 0640.
So be aware of the default permissions on the directories and files that you create. Some system services and applications might require permissions other than the default. The systemd network service, for example, requires user-defined configuration files to be set to 644, not the default of 640. Thus, after you create a network configuration file with a .network extension, you must run the chmod command to set the new file’s mode bits to 644. For example:
chmod 644 10-static-en.network
For more information on permissions, see the man pages for stat, umask, and acl.
11.3 - Disabling TLS 1.0 to Improve Transport Layer Security
Photon OS includes GnuTLS to help secure the transport layer. GnuTLS is a library that implements the SSL and TLS protocols to secure communications.
On Photon OS, SSL 3.0, which contains a known vulnerability, is disabled by default.
However, TLS 1.0, which also contains known vulnerabilities, is enabled by default.
To turn off TLS 1.0, perform the following steps:
Create a directory named /etc/gnutls.
In /etc/gnutls create a file named default-priorities.
In the default-priorities file, specify GnuTLS priority strings that remove TLS 1.0 and SSL 3.0 but retain TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2.
After adding a new default-priorities file or after modifying it, you must restart all applications, including SSH, with an open TLS session for the changes to take effect.
The following is an example of a default-priorities file that contains GnuTLS priorities to disable TLS 1.0 and SSL 3.0: console cat /etc/gnutls/default-priorities SYSTEM=NONE:!VERS-SSL3.0:!VERS-TLS1.0:+VERS-TLS1.1:+VERS-TLS1.2:+AES-128-CBC:+RSA:+SHA1:+COMP-NULL
In this example, the priority string imposes system-specific policies. The NONE keyword means that no algorithms, protocols, or compression methods are enabled, so that you can enable specific versions individually later in the string. The priority string then specifies that SSL version 3.0 and TLS version 1.0 be removed, as marked by the exclamation point. The priority string then enables, as marked by the plus sign, versions 1.1 and 1.2 of TLS. The cypher is AES-128-CBC. The key exchange is RSA. The MAC is SHA1. And the compression algorithm is COMP-NULL.
On Photon OS, you can verify the system-specific policies in the default-priorities file as follows:
Concatenate the default-priorities file to check its contents:
Zstandard (zstd) is a fast compression algorithm that provides high compression ratios. Photon OS offers support for the zstd compression and allows you to define which compression algorithm you want.
By using the zstd compression, the following benefits are seen:
Faster installation of RPMs and the overall system
Faster builds
Reduction in the size of artifacts created
13 - Kernel Live Patching
Photon OS supports Kernel Live Patching updates to the kernel in the RT, AWS, and generic kernel flavors. With this feature, you can modify the currently running operating system without rebooting. For example, you can apply security fixes without interrupting or pausing running processes to upgrade the operating system.
Kernel Live Patching is supported on the x86 architecture, but not on the ARM architecture. Kernel Live Patching is also supported on other architectures, such as s390 and ppc64le, which are not compatible with Photon OS.
Kernel Live Patching is supported on the following Photon OS versions:
Photon 5.0+ - all versions
Photon 4.0 - 5.10.118-2 and later
Photon 3.0 - 4.19.247-2 and later
Installing packages
Kernel Live Patching in Photon OS is supported with kpatch. Kernel Live Patching capabilities are split into three subpackages:
kpatch - basic loading, unloading, etc. of livepatch modules only
kpatch-build - manually build livepatch modules
kpatch-utils - tools to automate livepatch module building for Photon OS
You can install all packages by using the tdnf command:
tdnf install kpatch kpatch-build kpatch-utils
Building livepatch modules
To build livepatch modules, first install the kpatch-utils package through tdnf. Livepatch building functionality can be accessed through the auto_livepatch.sh tool. This tool can cross-build livepatch modules for any version of Photon OS, as well as package livepatch modules into rpm packages.
Note: If necessary, you can use kpatch-build alone to build livepatch modules for Photon, but it lacks much of the functionality of the auto_livepatch.sh tool.
Details on how to use the tool are listed below:
auto_livepatch.sh [options] -p [list of patch files]
Options:
-k: Specifies the kernel version. If not set, uses uname -r
-p: Patch file list. Need at least one patch file listed here
-n: Output file name. Will be default if not specified.
-o: Output directory. Will be default if not specified.
-R: Disable replace flag (replace flag is on by default)
–export-debuginfo: Saves debug files after module is built.
-d: Use specified file contents as the module’s description field
–rpm: Package the module inside of an rpm.
–rpm-version: Set the version number for the rpm.
–rpm-release: Set the release number for the rpm.
–rpm-desc: Set a separate description for the rpm. Input is a file.
-h/–help: Prints help message and exits
Examples
The following examples show the syntax for various use case scenarios:
Simplest Usage - Build livepatch for current kernel.
You can use the following commands for the loading, unloading, and installing scenarios.
Loading:
kpatch load livepatch_module.ko
Unloading:
kpatch unload livepatch_module
Livepatches will be loaded on boot if they are installed through the kpatch install command:
kpatch install livepatch_module.ko
kpatch install will not load the module into the running kernel though, it will only be loaded on boot. To load a livepatch immediately, you must run kpatch load.
Note: The systemd kpatch service might fail to load livepatch modules on boot. You should verify that the kpatch service ran successfully. You can verify by running the systemctl status kpatch command, or by checking the logs at dmesg/journalctl.
To remove a livepatch from the list of livepatches to be loaded on boot, run:
kpatch uninstall livepatch_module
As livepatches can be packaged into RPMs with auto_livepatch.sh, loading livepatch RPMs is done like any other rpm - with tdnf. Livepatch modules will be both installed (to be loaded on boot) and loaded into the running kernel.
tdnf install livepatch.rpm
Uninstallation works like with any other rpm. You can uninstall by using the tdnf command.
Inspecting livepatch information
You can run the following commands to retrieve useful information:
lsmod - list currently loaded kernel modules. Loaded livepatch modules should appear here alongside regular kernel modules.
Photon OS (4.0 and later) supports atomic replace/cumulative updates of livepatch modules. This means that when you load in a new livepatch, it disables all of the older livepatch modules and only uses the new code. This is to avoid any conflicts that could arise from multiple livepatches interacting or modifying the same pieces of code. For more information, see https://docs.kernel.org/livepatch/cumulative-patches.html.
Therefore, if you want to load more than one livepatch at one time, all of the patches must be consolidated into a single livepatch module. When loaded, the old module will be disabled and the new one will be enabled.
Note: Photon 3.0 does not automatically disable all older livepatches, so it is recommended to do this manually before loading the new cumulative patch.
14 - Photon RPM OSTree: a simple guide
14.1 - Introduction
RPM-OSTree Overview
OSTree is a tool to manage bootable, immutable, versioned filesystem trees. Unlike traditional package managers like rpm or dpkg that know how to install, uninstall, configure packages, OSTree has no knowledge of the relationship between files. But when you add rpm capabilities on top of OSTree, it becomes RPM-OSTree, meaning a filetree replication system that is also package-aware.
The idea behind it is to use a client/server architecture to keep your Linux installed machines (physical or VM) in sync with the latest bits, in a predictable and reliable manner. To achieve that, OSTree uses a git-like repository that records the changes to any file and replicate them to any subscriber.
A system administrator or an image builder developer takes a base Linux image, prepares the packages and other configuration on a server box, executes a command to compose a filetree that the host machines will download and then incrementally upgrade whenever a new change has been committed.
You may read more about OSTree here.
Why use RPM-OSTree in Photon?
There are several important benefits:
Reliable, efficient: The filetree replication is simple, reliable and efficient. It will only transfer deltas over the network. If you have deployed two almost identical bootable images on same box (differing just by several files), it will not take twice the space. The new tree will have a set of hardlinks to the old tree and only the different files will have a separate copy stored to disk.
Atomic: the filetree replication is atomic. At the end of a deployment, you are either booting from one deployment, or the other. There is no “partial deployed bootable image”. If anything bad happens during replication or deployment- power loss, network failure, your machine boots from the old image. There is even a tool option to cleanup old deployed (successfully or not) image.
Manageable: You are provided simple tools to figure out exactly what packages have been installed, to compare files, configuration and package changes between versions.
Predictable, repeatable: A big headache for a system administrator is to maintain a farm of computers with different packages, files and configuration installed in different order, that will result in exponential set of test cases. With RPM-OStree, you get identical, predictable installed systems.
As drawbacks, I would mention:
Some applications configured by user on host may have compatibility issues if they save configuration or download into read only directories like /usr.
People not used with “read only” file systems will be disappointed that they could no longer use RPM, yum, tdnf to install whatever they want. Think of this as an “enterprise policy”. They may circumvent this by customizing the target directory to a writable directory like /var or using rpm to install packages and record them using a new RPM repository in a writable place.
Administrators need to be aware about the directories re-mapping specific to OSTree and plan accordingly.
Photon with RPM-OSTree installation profiles
Photon takes advantage of RPM-OSTree and offers several installation choices:
Photon RPM-OSTree server - used to compose customized Photon OS installations and to prepare updates. I will call it for short ‘server’.
Photon RPM-OSTree host connected to a default online server repository via http or https, maintained by VMware Photon OS team, where future updates will be published. This will create a minimal installation profile, but with the option to self-upgrade. I will call it for short ‘default host’.
Photon RPM-OSTree host connected to a custom server repository. It requires a Photon RPM-OSTree Server installed in advance. I will call it for short ‘custom host’.
Terminology
In this section, the term OSTree refers to the general use of this technology, the format of the repository or replication protocol.
The term RPM-OSTree emphasizes the layer that adds RedHat Package Manager compatibility on both ends - at server and at host. However, since Photon OS is an RPM-based Linux, there are places in the documentation and even in the installer menus where OSTree may be used instead of RPM-OSTree when the distinction is not obvious or does not matter in that context.
When ostree and rpm-ostree are encountered, they refer to the usage of the specific Unix commands.
Finally, Photon RPM-OSTree is the application or implementation of the RPM-OStree system into Photon OS, materialized into two options: Photon Server and Photon Host (or client). Server or Host may be used with or without the Photon and/or RPM-OStree qualifier, but it means the same thing.
Sample code
Codes samples used throughout the book are small commands that can be typed at shell command prompt and do not require downloading additional files. As an alternative, one can remote connect via ssh, so cut & paste sample code from outside sources or copy files via scp will work. See the Photon Administration guide to learn how to enable ssh.
The samples assume that the following VMs have been installed - see the steps in the next chapters:
A default host VM named photon-host-def.
Two server VMs named photon-srv1 and photon-srv2.
Two custom host VMs named photon-host-cus1 and photon-host-cus2, connected each to the corresponding server during install.
If you want to install your own server and experiment with customizing packages for your Photon hosts, then read Installing a Photon RPM-OSTree server onwards. There are references to the concepts discussed throughout the book, if you need to understand them better.
RPM OSTree in Photon OS
This section is relevant to RPM OSTree in Photon OS.
Photon OS supports the following features:
Upgrade
Rollback
Remote, compose, and rebase server
Installation and uninstallation of packages with URL
Installation and uninstallation of packages from default repos
Automatic updates
14.2 - Installing a host against default server repository
RPM-OSTree Host default server repo installation option in Photon OS will setup a profile similar to Photon Minimal, with the added benefit of being able to self-upgrade.
Who is this for?
The RPM-OSTree ‘default host’ is the easiest way to deploy a Photon RPM-OSTree host from ISO/cdrom, without the need to deploy and maintain an RPM-OSTree server. It is targeted at the user who relies on VMware Photon OS team to keep his or her system up-to-date, configured to get its updates from the official Photon OSTree repository.
This is also the fastest way to install a host, as we’ve included in the ISO/cdrom an identical copy of the Photon “starter” RPM-OSTree repository that is published online by VMware Photon OS team. So rather than pulling from the online repository, the installer pulls the repo from cdrom, which saves bandwidth and also reduces to zero the chances of failing due to a networking problem. After successful installation, any updates are going to be pulled from the official online repository, when Photon OS team will make them available.
Note: It is also possible to install an RPM-OSTree host against the official online repo via PXE boot, without the benefit of fast, local pull from cdrom. This will be covered in the PXE boot/kickstart chapter, as it requires additional configuration.
Installing the ISO
User will first download Photon OS ISO file that contains the installer, which is able to deploy any of the supported Photon installation profiles.
There are some steps common to all Photon installation profiles, starting with adding a VM in VMware Fusion, Workstation or ESXi, selecting the OS family, then customizing for disk size, CPU, memory size, network interface etc. (or leaving the defaults) and selecting the ISO image as cdrom. The installer will launch, that will go through disk partitioning and accepting the license agreement screens, followed by selecting an installation profile.
These steps are described at the page linked below, so I won’t repeat them, just that instead of setting up a Photon Minimal profile, we will install a Photon OSTree host:
Continue with setting up a host name like photon1-def and a root password, re-confirm.
Then, select “Default OSTree Server” and continue.
When installation is over, the VM will reboot and will show in grub VMWare Photon/Linux 5.0_minimal (ostree), which will reassure that it’s booting from an OSTree image!
Now that we have a fresh installed host (either as default or custom), we can better explain the OStree concepts and see them in action.
Querying the deployed filetrees
The first thing to do is to run a command that tells us what is installed on the machine and when. Since it’s a fresh install from the CD, there is only one bootable filetree image deployed.
5.0_minimal is not the Linux Photon OS release version, nor daily build, but rather a human readable, self-incrementing version associated with every commit that brings file/package updates. Think of this as version 0. The following versions are going to be 5.0_minimal.1, 5.0_minimal.2, 5.0_minimal.3 and so on.
Commit ID
The ID listed is actually the first 5 bytes (10 hex digits) of the commit hash. If you want to see the verbose mode, use the -v option.
To see the list of options available with the rpm-ostree command, use the -h option.
root@photon-7c2d910d79e9 [ ~ ]# rpm-ostree -h
Usage:
rpm-ostree [OPTION…] COMMAND
Builtin Commands:
compose Commands to compose a tree
cleanup Clear cached/pending data
db Commands to query the RPM database
deploy Deploy a specific commit
rebase Switch to a different tree
rollback Revert to the previously booted tree
status Get the version of the booted system
upgrade Perform a system upgrade
reload Reload configuration
usroverlay Apply a transient overlayfs to /usr
cancel Cancel an active transaction
initramfsEnable or disable local initramfs regeneration
install Overlay additional packages
uninstallRemove overlayed additional packages
override Manage base package overrides
resetRemove all mutations
refresh-md Generate rpm repo metadata
kargsQuery or modify kernel arguments
Help Options:
-h, --help Show help options
Application Options:
--versionPrint version information and exit
OSname
The OS Name identifies the operating system installed. All bootable filetrees for the same OS will share the /var directory, in other words applications installed in one booted image into this directory will be available in all other images. If a new set of images are created for a different OS, they will receive a fresh copy of /var that is not shared with the previous OS images for the initial OS. In other words, if a machine is dual boot for different operating systems, they will not share each other’s /var content, however they will still merge 3-way /etc.
Refspec
The Refspec is a branch inside the repo, expressed in a hierarchical way. In this case, it’s the default branch that will receive package updates for the Photon OS 1.0 Minimal installation profile on Intel platforms. There could be other branches in the future, for example photon/3.0/x86_64/full that will match the Full installation profile (full set of packages installed). Think of Refspec as the head of the minimal branch (just like in git) at the origin repo. On the replicated, local repo at the host, minimal is a file that contains the latest commit ID known for that branch.
Why are there two ‘photon’ directory levels in the remotes path? The photon: prefix in the Refspec listed by rpm-ostree status corresponds to the first photon directory in the remotes path and is actually the name given to the remote that the host is connected to, which points to an http or https URL. We’ll talk about remotes later, but for now think of it as a namespace qualifier. The second photon is part of the Refspec path itself.
Deployments
We’ve used so far rpm-ostree. The same information can be obtained running an ostree command:
But where is this information stored? As you may have guessed, the local repo stores the heads of the deployed trees - the most recent commitment ID, just like Git does:
Based on that, it could find the root of the deployment that it boots from. The actual filetree is deployed right here:
root@photon-7c2d910d79e9 [ ~ ]# ls -l /ostree/deploy/photon/deploy/965c1abeb048e1a8ff77e9cd34ffccc5e3356176cda3332b4ff0e7a6c66b661f.0
total 36
lrwxrwxrwx 2 root root7 Feb 23 05:43 bin -> usr/bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 1 1970 boot
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 1 1970 dev
drwxr-xr-x 45 root root 4096 Feb 23 06:08 etc
lrwxrwxrwx 2 root root8 Feb 23 05:43 home -> var/home
lrwxrwxrwx 3 root root7 Feb 23 05:43 lib -> usr/lib
lrwxrwxrwx 3 root root7 Feb 23 05:43 lib64 -> usr/lib
lrwxrwxrwx 2 root root9 Feb 23 05:43 media -> run/media
lrwxrwxrwx 2 root root7 Feb 23 05:43 mnt -> var/mnt
lrwxrwxrwx 2 root root7 Feb 23 05:43 opt -> var/opt
lrwxrwxrwx 2 root root 14 Feb 23 05:43 ostree -> sysroot/ostree
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 1 1970 proc
lrwxrwxrwx 2 root root 12 Feb 23 05:43 root -> var/roothome
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 1 1970 run
lrwxrwxrwx 2 root root8 Feb 23 05:43 sbin -> usr/sbin
lrwxrwxrwx 2 root root7 Feb 23 05:43 srv -> var/srv
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 1 1970 sys
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Feb 23 05:44 sysroot
lrwxrwxrwx 2 root root 11 Feb 23 05:43 tmp -> sysroot/tmp
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 4096 Jan 1 1970 usr
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4096 Feb 23 05:44 var
So how is a deployment linked to a specific branch, originating from a remote repo? Well, there is a file next to the deployed filetree root directory with the same name and .origin suffix, that contains exactly this info:
Fast forwarding a bit, if there is a new deployment due to an upgrade or rebase, a new filetree will be added at the same level, and a new .origin file will tie it to the remote branch it originated from.
The photon directory in the path is the actual OSname. Multiple deployments of same OS will share a writable /var folder.
root@photon-7c2d910d79e9 [ ~ ]# ls -l /ostree/deploy/photon/var/
total 52
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Feb 23 05:44 cache
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 23 05:44 home
drwxr-xr-x. 17 root root 4096 Feb 23 05:44 lib
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 23 05:44 local
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 11 Feb 23 05:44 lock -> ../run/lock
drwxr-xr-x. 4 root root 4096 Feb 23 05:44 log
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 23 05:44 mail
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 23 05:44 mnt
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Feb 23 05:44 opt
drwx------ 4 root root 4096 Feb 23 06:09 roothome
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root6 Feb 23 05:44 run -> ../run
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Feb 23 05:44 spool
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 23 05:44 srv
drwxrwxrwt. 5 root root 4096 Feb 23 06:08 tmp
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 4096 Feb 23 05:44 usrlocal
14.4 - Querying for Commit File and Package Metadata
There are several ostree and rpm-ostree commands that list file or package data based on either the Commit ID, or Refspec. If Refspec is passed as a parameter, it’s the same as passing the most recent commit ID (head) for that branch.
Commit history
For a host that is freshly installed, there is only one commit in the history for the only branch.
This commit has no parent; if there was an older commit, it would have been listed too. We can get the same listing (either nicely formatted or raw variant data) by passing the Commit ID. Just the first several hex digits will suffice to identify the commit ID. We can either request to be displayed in a pretty format, or raw - the actual C struct.
This command lists the file relations between the original source Linux Photon filetree and the deployed filetree. The normal columns include file type type (regular file, directory, link), permissions in chmod octal format, userID, groupID, file size, file name.
By default, only the top folders are listed, but -R will list recursively. Instead of listing over 10,000 files, let’s filter to just all files that contain ‘rpm-ostree’, ‘rpmostree’ or ‘RpmOstree’, that must belong to rpm-ostree package itself.
atomic is really an alias for rpm-ostree command. The last file treefile.json is not installed by the rpm-ostree package, it is actually downloaded from the server, as we will see in the next chapter. For now, let us notice “osname” : “photon”, “ref” : “photon/1.0/x86_64/minimal”, “automatic_version_prefix” : “1.0_minimal”, that matches what we have known so far, and also the “documentation” : false setting, that explains why there are no manual files installed for rpm-ostree, and in fact for any package.
root@photon-host [ /usr/share/rpm-ostree ]# ls -l /usr/share/man/man1
total 0
Listing configuration changes
To diff the current /etc configuration versus default /etc (from the base image), this command will show the Modified, Added and Deleted files:
root@photon-7c2d910d79e9 [ ~ ]# ostree admin config-diff
M ssh/sshd_config
M udev/hwdb.bin
M fstab
M machine-id
M gshadow
M hosts
M shadow
A ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
A ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub
A ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key
A ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key.pub
A ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key
A ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key.pub
A ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key
A ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key.pub
A hostname
A group-
A locale.conf
A .pwd.lock
A gshadow-
A shadow-
A resolv.conf
A .updated
Listing packages
The following is the rpm-ostree command that lists all the packages for that branch, extracted from RPM database.
We are able to use the query option of rpm to make sure any package have been installed properly. The files list should match the previous file mappings in 4.2, so let’s check package rpm-ostree. As we’ve seen, manual files listed here are actually missing, they were not installed.
Why am I unable to install, upgrade or uninstall packages?
The OSTree host installer needs the server URL or the server repository.
When you perform the installation using the repo, the install packages are located under the layer package. When you install with the URL, the packages are located under the local packages.
You can use the rpm-ostree uninstall command to uninstall only the layered and local packages but not the base packages. To modify the base packages, you can use the rpm-ostree override command.
When you run rpm-ostree upgrade, the command will only upgrade packages based on the commit available in the server.
If you’ve used yum, dnf (and now tdnf for Photon) in RPM systems or apt-get in Debian based Unix, you understand what “install” is for packages and the subtle difference between “update” and “upgrade”.
OSTree and RPM-OSTree don’t distinguish between them and the term “upgrade” has a slightly different meaning - to bring the system in sync with the remote repo, to the top of the Refspec (branch), just like in Git, by pulling the latest changes.
In fact, ostree and rpm-ostree commands support a single “upgrade” verb for a file image tree and a package list in the same refspec (branch). rpm-ostree upgrade will install a package if it doesn’t exist, will not touch it if it has same version in the new image, will upgrade it if the version number is higher and it may actually downgrade it, if the package has been downgraded in the new image. I wish this operation had a different name, to avoid any confusion.
The reverse operation of an upgrade is a “rollback” and fortunately it’s not named “downgrade” because it may upgrade packages in the last case describe above.
As we’ll see in a future chapter, a jump to a different Refspec (branch) is also supported and it’s named “rebase”.
Incremental upgrade
To check if there are any updates available, one would execute:
It is good idea to check periodically for updates.
To check if there are any new updates without actually applying them, we will pass the –check-diff flag, that would list the different packages as added, modified or deleted - if such operations were to happen.
Let us look at the status. The new filetree version .1 has the expected Commit ID and a newer timestamp, that is actually the server date/time when the image has been generated, not the time/date when it was downloaded or installed at the host. The old image has a star next to it, showing that’s the image the system is booted currently into.
Now let’s type reboot. Grub will list the new filetree as the first image, marked with a star, as the default bootable image. If the keyboard is not touched and order is not changed, grub will timeout and will boot into that image.
Let’s look again at the status. It’s identical, just that the star is next to the newer image, to show it’s the current image it has booted from.
A fresh upgrade for a new version will delete the older, original image and bring a new one, that will become the new default image. The previous ‘default’ image will move down one position as the backup image.
Listing file differences
Now we can look at what files have been Added, Modified, Deleted due to the addition of those three packages and switching of the boot directories, by comparing the two commits.
root@photon-7c2d910d79e9 [ ~ ]# ostree diff 820b 965c
M /usr/bin/VGAuthService
M /usr/bin/[
M /usr/bin/asn1Coding
M /usr/bin/asn1Decoding
M /usr/bin/asn1Parser
M /usr/bin/attr
M /usr/bin/aulast
M /usr/bin/aulastlog
M /usr/bin/ausyscall
M /usr/bin/auvirt
M /usr/bin/b2sum
M /usr/bin/base32
M /usr/bin/base64
M /usr/bin/basename
M /usr/bin/basenc
M /usr/bin/bash
M /usr/bin/bc
M /usr/bin/bootctl
M /usr/bin/bsdcat
M /usr/bin/bsdcpio
M /usr/bin/bsdtar
M /usr/bin/busctl
M /usr/bin/bwrap
M /usr/bin/bzip2
M /usr/bin/bzip2recover
M /usr/bin/cal
M /usr/bin/captest
M /usr/bin/cat
M /usr/bin/certtool
M /usr/bin/certutil
M /usr/bin/chage
M /usr/bin/chattr
M /usr/bin/chcon
M /usr/bin/chfn
M /usr/bin/chgrp
M /usr/bin/chmem
M /usr/bin/chmod
M /usr/bin/choom
M /usr/bin/chown
M /usr/bin/chrt
M /usr/bin/chsh
M /usr/bin/cksum
M /usr/bin/clear
M /usr/bin/cloud-id
M /usr/bin/cloud-init
M /usr/bin/col
M /usr/bin/colcrt
M /usr/bin/colrm
M /usr/bin/column
M /usr/bin/comm
M /usr/bin/coredumpctl
M /usr/bin/cp
M /usr/bin/cpio
M /usr/bin/csplit
M /usr/bin/curl
M /usr/bin/curl-config
M /usr/bin/cut
M /usr/bin/cvtsudoers
M /usr/bin/date
M /usr/bin/dbus-cleanup-sockets
M /usr/bin/dbus-daemon
M /usr/bin/dbus-launch
M /usr/bin/dbus-monitor
M /usr/bin/dbus-run-session
M /usr/bin/dbus-send
M /usr/bin/dbus-test-tool
M /usr/bin/dbus-update-activation-environment
M /usr/bin/dbus-uuidgen
M /usr/bin/dc
M /usr/bin/dd
M /usr/bin/debuginfod
M /usr/bin/debuginfod-find
M /usr/bin/deltainfoxml2solv
M /usr/bin/derb
M /usr/bin/df
M /usr/bin/dir
M /usr/bin/dircolors
M /usr/bin/dirmngr
M /usr/bin/dirmngr-client
M /usr/bin/dirname
M /usr/bin/dmesg
M /usr/bin/du
M /usr/bin/dumpsexp
M /usr/bin/dumpsolv
M /usr/bin/echo
M /usr/bin/eject
M /usr/bin/env
M /usr/bin/eu-addr2line
M /usr/bin/eu-ar
M /usr/bin/eu-elfclassify
M /usr/bin/eu-elfcmp
M /usr/bin/eu-elfcompress
M /usr/bin/eu-elflint
M /usr/bin/eu-findtextrel
M /usr/bin/eu-nm
M /usr/bin/eu-objdump
M /usr/bin/eu-ranlib
M /usr/bin/eu-readelf
M /usr/bin/eu-size
M /usr/bin/eu-stack
M /usr/bin/eu-strings
M /usr/bin/eu-strip
M /usr/bin/eu-unstrip
M /usr/bin/expand
M /usr/bin/expiry
M /usr/bin/expr
M /usr/bin/factor
M /usr/bin/faillog
M /usr/bin/fallocate
M /usr/bin/false
M /usr/bin/file
M /usr/bin/filecap
M /usr/bin/fincore
M /usr/bin/find
M /usr/bin/findmnt
M /usr/bin/finger
M /usr/bin/flex
M /usr/bin/flock
M /usr/bin/fmt
M /usr/bin/fold
M /usr/bin/free
M /usr/bin/fusermount
M /usr/bin/gawk
M /usr/bin/gawk-5.1.0
M /usr/bin/gdbm_dump
M /usr/bin/gdbm_load
M /usr/bin/gdbmtool
M /usr/bin/genbrk
M /usr/bin/gencat
M /usr/bin/gencfu
M /usr/bin/gencnval
M /usr/bin/gendict
M /usr/bin/gendiff
M /usr/bin/genrb
M /usr/bin/getconf
M /usr/bin/getent
M /usr/bin/getfattr
M /usr/bin/getopt
M /usr/bin/gnutls-cli
M /usr/bin/gnutls-cli-debug
M /usr/bin/gnutls-serv
M /usr/bin/gpasswd
M /usr/bin/gpg
M /usr/bin/gpg-agent
M /usr/bin/gpg-connect-agent
M /usr/bin/gpg-error
M /usr/bin/gpg-wks-server
M /usr/bin/gpgconf
M /usr/bin/gpgparsemail
M /usr/bin/gpgscm
M /usr/bin/gpgsm
M /usr/bin/gpgsplit
M /usr/bin/gpgtar
M /usr/bin/gpgv
M /usr/bin/grep
M /usr/bin/groups
M /usr/bin/grub2-editenv
M /usr/bin/grub2-file
M /usr/bin/grub2-fstest
M /usr/bin/grub2-glue-efi
M /usr/bin/grub2-menulst2cfg
M /usr/bin/grub2-mkimage
M /usr/bin/grub2-mklayout
M /usr/bin/grub2-mknetdir
M /usr/bin/grub2-mkpasswd-pbkdf2
M /usr/bin/grub2-mkrelpath
M /usr/bin/grub2-mkrescue
M /usr/bin/grub2-mkstandalone
M /usr/bin/grub2-render-label
M /usr/bin/grub2-script-check
M /usr/bin/grub2-syslinux2cfg
M /usr/bin/gss-client
M /usr/bin/guile
M /usr/bin/gzip
M /usr/bin/hardlink
M /usr/bin/head
M /usr/bin/hexdump
M /usr/bin/hmac256
M /usr/bin/hostid
M /usr/bin/hostname
M /usr/bin/hostnamectl
M /usr/bin/iconv
M /usr/bin/icuinfo
M /usr/bin/id
M /usr/bin/infocmp
M /usr/bin/install
M /usr/bin/installcheck
M /usr/bin/ionice
M /usr/bin/ipcmk
M /usr/bin/ipcrm
M /usr/bin/ipcs
M /usr/bin/irqtop
M /usr/bin/isosize
M /usr/bin/join
M /usr/bin/journalctl
M /usr/bin/js78
M /usr/bin/json-glib-format
M /usr/bin/json-glib-validate
M /usr/bin/kadmin
M /usr/bin/kbxutil
M /usr/bin/kdestroy
M /usr/bin/kernel-install
M /usr/bin/kill
M /usr/bin/kinit
M /usr/bin/klist
M /usr/bin/kmod
M /usr/bin/kpasswd
M /usr/bin/kswitch
M /usr/bin/ktutil
M /usr/bin/kvno
M /usr/bin/last
M /usr/bin/lastlog
M /usr/bin/ldapcompare
M /usr/bin/ldapdelete
M /usr/bin/ldapexop
M /usr/bin/ldapmodify
M /usr/bin/ldapmodrdn
M /usr/bin/ldappasswd
M /usr/bin/ldapsearch
M /usr/bin/ldapurl
M /usr/bin/ldapwhoami
M /usr/bin/libtool
M /usr/bin/link
M /usr/bin/ln
M /usr/bin/locale
M /usr/bin/localectl
M /usr/bin/localedef
M /usr/bin/locate
M /usr/bin/logger
M /usr/bin/login
M /usr/bin/loginctl
M /usr/bin/logname
M /usr/bin/look
M /usr/bin/ls
M /usr/bin/lsattr
M /usr/bin/lsblk
M /usr/bin/lscpu
M /usr/bin/lsipc
M /usr/bin/lsirq
M /usr/bin/lslocks
M /usr/bin/lslogins
M /usr/bin/lsmem
M /usr/bin/lsns
M /usr/bin/lua
M /usr/bin/luac
M /usr/bin/lz4
M /usr/bin/lzmadec
M /usr/bin/lzmainfo
M /usr/bin/m4
M /usr/bin/makeconv
M /usr/bin/makedb
M /usr/bin/mcookie
M /usr/bin/md5sum
M /usr/bin/mergesolv
M /usr/bin/mesg
M /usr/bin/mkdir
M /usr/bin/mkfifo
M /usr/bin/mkinitrd
M /usr/bin/mknod
M /usr/bin/mktemp
M /usr/bin/modulemd-validator
M /usr/bin/more
M /usr/bin/mount
M /usr/bin/mountpoint
M /usr/bin/mpicalc
M /usr/bin/mt
M /usr/bin/mv
M /usr/bin/namei
M /usr/bin/netcap
M /usr/bin/netstat
M /usr/bin/nettle-hash
M /usr/bin/nettle-lfib-stream
M /usr/bin/nettle-pbkdf2
M /usr/bin/networkctl
M /usr/bin/newgidmap
M /usr/bin/newgrp
M /usr/bin/newrole
M /usr/bin/newuidmap
M /usr/bin/nice
M /usr/bin/nl
M /usr/bin/nohup
M /usr/bin/nproc
M /usr/bin/nsenter
M /usr/bin/numfmt
M /usr/bin/ocsptool
M /usr/bin/od
M /usr/bin/openssl
M /usr/bin/ostree
M /usr/bin/passwd
M /usr/bin/paste
M /usr/bin/pathchk
M /usr/bin/pcregrep
M /usr/bin/pcretest
M /usr/bin/pgrep
M /usr/bin/pidof
M /usr/bin/pinentry-curses
M /usr/bin/pinentry-tty
M /usr/bin/ping
M /usr/bin/pinky
M /usr/bin/pk-example-frobnicate
M /usr/bin/pk12util
M /usr/bin/pkaction
M /usr/bin/pkcheck
M /usr/bin/pkcs1-conv
M /usr/bin/pkexec
M /usr/bin/pkg-config
M /usr/bin/pkgdata
M /usr/bin/pkill
M /usr/bin/pkttyagent
M /usr/bin/pmap
M /usr/bin/portablectl
M /usr/bin/pr
M /usr/bin/printenv
M /usr/bin/printf
M /usr/bin/prlimit
M /usr/bin/ps
M /usr/bin/pscap
M /usr/bin/psktool
M /usr/bin/ptx
M /usr/bin/pwd
M /usr/bin/pwdx
M /usr/bin/pwmake
M /usr/bin/pwscore
M /usr/bin/pydoc3
M /usr/bin/python3
M /usr/bin/readlink
M /usr/bin/realpath
M /usr/bin/rename
M /usr/bin/renice
M /usr/bin/repo2solv
M /usr/bin/repomdxml2solv
M /usr/bin/resolvectl
M /usr/bin/rev
M /usr/bin/rm
M /usr/bin/rmdir
M /usr/bin/rofiles-fuse
M /usr/bin/rpcgen
M /usr/bin/rpm
M /usr/bin/rpm-ostree
M /usr/bin/rpm2archive
M /usr/bin/rpm2cpio
M /usr/bin/rpmdb
M /usr/bin/rpmdb2solv
M /usr/bin/rpmgraph
M /usr/bin/rpmkeys
M /usr/bin/rpmmd2solv
M /usr/bin/rpms2solv
M /usr/bin/runcon
M /usr/bin/sclient
M /usr/bin/scp
M /usr/bin/script
M /usr/bin/scriptlive
M /usr/bin/scriptreplay
M /usr/bin/secon
M /usr/bin/sed
M /usr/bin/seq
M /usr/bin/setarch
M /usr/bin/setfattr
M /usr/bin/setsid
M /usr/bin/setterm
M /usr/bin/sexp-conv
M /usr/bin/sftp
M /usr/bin/sha1sum
M /usr/bin/sha224sum
M /usr/bin/sha256sum
M /usr/bin/sha384sum
M /usr/bin/sha512sum
M /usr/bin/shred
M /usr/bin/shuf
M /usr/bin/sim_client
M /usr/bin/slabtop
M /usr/bin/sleep
M /usr/bin/sort
M /usr/bin/split
M /usr/bin/srptool
M /usr/bin/ssh
M /usr/bin/ssh-add
M /usr/bin/ssh-agent
M /usr/bin/ssh-keygen
M /usr/bin/ssh-keyscan
M /usr/bin/stat
M /usr/bin/stdbuf
M /usr/bin/stty
M /usr/bin/su
M /usr/bin/sudo
M /usr/bin/sudoreplay
M /usr/bin/sum
M /usr/bin/sync
M /usr/bin/systemctl
M /usr/bin/systemd-analyze
M /usr/bin/systemd-ask-password
M /usr/bin/systemd-cat
M /usr/bin/systemd-cgls
M /usr/bin/systemd-cgtop
M /usr/bin/systemd-delta
M /usr/bin/systemd-detect-virt
M /usr/bin/systemd-escape
M /usr/bin/systemd-hwdb
M /usr/bin/systemd-id128
M /usr/bin/systemd-inhibit
M /usr/bin/systemd-machine-id-setup
M /usr/bin/systemd-mount
M /usr/bin/systemd-notify
M /usr/bin/systemd-path
M /usr/bin/systemd-repart
M /usr/bin/systemd-run
M /usr/bin/systemd-socket-activate
M /usr/bin/systemd-stdio-bridge
M /usr/bin/systemd-tmpfiles
M /usr/bin/systemd-tty-ask-password-agent
M /usr/bin/tabs
M /usr/bin/tac
M /usr/bin/tail
M /usr/bin/taskset
M /usr/bin/tee
M /usr/bin/test
M /usr/bin/testsolv
M /usr/bin/tic
M /usr/bin/timedatectl
M /usr/bin/timeout
M /usr/bin/tload
M /usr/bin/toe
M /usr/bin/top
M /usr/bin/touch
M /usr/bin/tput
M /usr/bin/tr
M /usr/bin/tracepath
M /usr/bin/traceroute6
M /usr/bin/true
M /usr/bin/truncate
M /usr/bin/tset
M /usr/bin/tsort
M /usr/bin/tty
M /usr/bin/uconv
M /usr/bin/udevadm
M /usr/bin/ul
M /usr/bin/ulockmgr_server
M /usr/bin/umount
M /usr/bin/uname
M /usr/bin/unexpand
M /usr/bin/uniq
M /usr/bin/unlink
M /usr/bin/unshare
M /usr/bin/unzck
M /usr/bin/updateinfoxml2solv
M /usr/bin/uptime
M /usr/bin/userdbctl
M /usr/bin/users
M /usr/bin/utmpdump
M /usr/bin/uuclient
M /usr/bin/uuidgen
M /usr/bin/uuidparse
M /usr/bin/vdir
M /usr/bin/vim
M /usr/bin/vmhgfs-fuse
M /usr/bin/vmstat
M /usr/bin/vmtoolsd
M /usr/bin/vmware-checkvm
M /usr/bin/vmware-hgfsclient
M /usr/bin/vmware-namespace-cmd
M /usr/bin/vmware-rpctool
M /usr/bin/vmware-toolbox-cmd
M /usr/bin/vmware-vgauth-cmd
M /usr/bin/vmware-vgauth-smoketest
M /usr/bin/vmware-vmblock-fuse
M /usr/bin/vmware-xferlogs
M /usr/bin/w
M /usr/bin/wall
M /usr/bin/watch
M /usr/bin/watchgnupg
M /usr/bin/wc
M /usr/bin/wdctl
M /usr/bin/whereis
M /usr/bin/which
M /usr/bin/who
M /usr/bin/whoami
M /usr/bin/xargs
M /usr/bin/xmlcatalog
M /usr/bin/xmllint
M /usr/bin/xmlsec1
M /usr/bin/xmlwf
M /usr/bin/xsltproc
M /usr/bin/xz
M /usr/bin/xzdec
M /usr/bin/yat2m
M /usr/bin/yes
M /usr/bin/zck
M /usr/bin/zck_delta_size
M /usr/bin/zck_gen_zdict
M /usr/bin/zck_read_header
M /usr/bin/zckdl
M /usr/bin/zstd
M /usr/bin/rpm-ostree-server/mkostreerepo
M /usr/etc/ld.so.cache
M /usr/etc/photon-release
M /usr/etc/shadow
M /usr/etc/sudoers
M /usr/etc/cloud/cloud.cfg
M /usr/etc/iproute2/rt_protos
M /usr/etc/pam.d/vmtoolsd
M /usr/etc/systemd/journald.conf
M /usr/etc/systemd/logind.conf
M /usr/etc/systemd/networkd.conf
M /usr/etc/systemd/resolved.conf
M /usr/etc/systemd/system.conf
M /usr/etc/systemd/user.conf
M /usr/etc/udev/hwdb.bin
M /usr/etc/udev/udev.conf
M /usr/etc/udev/rules.d/99-vmware-hotplug.rules
M /usr/etc/vmware-tools/tools.conf.example
M /usr/etc/vmware-tools/vgauth.conf
M /usr/include/sudo_plugin.h
M /usr/lib/e2initrd_helper
M /usr/lib/ld-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/libBrokenLocale-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/libDeployPkg.so.0.0.0
M /usr/lib/libSegFault.so
M /usr/lib/libacl.so.1.1.2253
M /usr/lib/libanl-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/libarchive.so.13.4.3
M /usr/lib/libasm-0.181.so
M /usr/lib/libassuan.so.0.8.3
M /usr/lib/libattr.so.1.1.2448
M /usr/lib/libaudit.so.1.0.0
M /usr/lib/libauparse.so.0.0.0
M /usr/lib/libblkid.so.1.1.0
M /usr/lib/libbz2.so.1.0.8
M /usr/lib/libc-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/libcap-ng.so.0.0.0
M /usr/lib/libcap.so.2.43
M /usr/lib/libcom_err.so.2.1
M /usr/lib/libcord.so.1.4.0
M /usr/lib/libcrack.so.2.9.0
M /usr/lib/libcrypt-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.1.1
M /usr/lib/libcurl.so.4
M /usr/lib/libdb-5.3.so
M /usr/lib/libdbus-1.so.3.29.0
M /usr/lib/libdebuginfod-0.181.so
M /usr/lib/libdevmapper.so.1.02
M /usr/lib/libdhcp.a
M /usr/lib/libdhcpctl.a
M /usr/lib/libdl-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/libdnet.1.0.1
M /usr/lib/libdw-0.181.so
M /usr/lib/libe2p.so.2.3
M /usr/lib/libelf-0.181.so
M /usr/lib/libexpat.so.1.6.11
M /usr/lib/libexslt.so.0.8.20
M /usr/lib/libext2fs.so.2.4
M /usr/lib/libfdisk.so.1.1.0
M /usr/lib/libffi.so.7.1.0
M /usr/lib/libfl.so.2.0.0
M /usr/lib/libformw.so.6.2
M /usr/lib/libfreebl3.chk
M /usr/lib/libfreebl3.so
M /usr/lib/libfreeblpriv3.chk
M /usr/lib/libfreeblpriv3.so
M /usr/lib/libfuse.so.2.9.9
M /usr/lib/libgc.so.1.4.3
M /usr/lib/libgcc_s.so.1
M /usr/lib/libgccpp.so.1.4.0
M /usr/lib/libgcrypt.so.20.2.6
M /usr/lib/libgdbm.so.6.0.0
M /usr/lib/libgdbm_compat.so.4.0.0
M /usr/lib/libgio-2.0.so.0.6600.1
M /usr/lib/libgirepository-1.0.so.1.0.0
M /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0.6600.1
M /usr/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so.0.6600.1
M /usr/lib/libgmp.so.10.4.0
M /usr/lib/libgnutls.so.30.28.1
M /usr/lib/libgnutlsxx.so.28.1.0
M /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.so.0.6600.1
M /usr/lib/libgpg-error.so.0.30.0
M /usr/lib/libgpgme.so.11.23.0
M /usr/lib/libgssapi_krb5.so.2.2
M /usr/lib/libgssrpc.so.4.2
M /usr/lib/libgthread-2.0.so.0.6600.1
M /usr/lib/libguestlib.so.0.0.0
M /usr/lib/libguile-2.0.so.22.8.1
M /usr/lib/libguilereadline-v-18.so.18.0.0
M /usr/lib/libhgfs.so.0.0.0
M /usr/lib/libhistory.so.7.0
M /usr/lib/libhogweed.so.6.0
M /usr/lib/libicui18n.so.67.1
M /usr/lib/libicuio.so.67.1
M /usr/lib/libicutest.so.67.1
M /usr/lib/libicutu.so.67.1
M /usr/lib/libicuuc.so.67.1
M /usr/lib/libip4tc.so.2.0.0
M /usr/lib/libip6tc.so.2.0.0
M /usr/lib/libipq.so.0.0.0
M /usr/lib/libjson-c.so.5.1.0
M /usr/lib/libjson-glib-1.0.so.0.600.0
M /usr/lib/libk5crypto.so.3.1
M /usr/lib/libkadm5clnt_mit.so.11.0
M /usr/lib/libkadm5srv_mit.so.11.0
M /usr/lib/libkdb5.so.9.0
M /usr/lib/libkmod.so.2.3.5
M /usr/lib/libkrad.so.0.0
M /usr/lib/libkrb5.so.3.3
M /usr/lib/libkrb5support.so.0.1
M /usr/lib/libksba.so.8.12.0
M /usr/lib/liblber-2.4.so.2.11.1
M /usr/lib/libldap-2.4.so.2.11.1
M /usr/lib/libldap_r-2.4.so.2.11.1
M /usr/lib/libltdl.so.7.3.1
M /usr/lib/liblua.so.5.3.4
M /usr/lib/liblz4.so.1.9.2
M /usr/lib/liblzma.so.5.2.5
M /usr/lib/libm-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/libmagic.so.1.0.0
M /usr/lib/libmemusage.so
M /usr/lib/libmenuw.so.6.2
M /usr/lib/libmetalink.so.3.1.0
M /usr/lib/libmicrohttpd.so.12.56.0
M /usr/lib/libmodulemd.so.2
M /usr/lib/libmount.so.1.1.0
M /usr/lib/libmozjs-78.so
M /usr/lib/libmpfr.so.6.1.0
M /usr/lib/libmspack.so.0.1.0
M /usr/lib/libmvec-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/libncursesw.so.6.2
M /usr/lib/libnettle.so.8.0
M /usr/lib/libnpth.so.0.1.2
M /usr/lib/libnsl-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/libnsl.so.2.0.1
M /usr/lib/libnspr4.so
M /usr/lib/libnss3.so
M /usr/lib/libnss_altfiles.so.2
M /usr/lib/libnss_compat-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/libnss_db-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/libnss_dns-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/libnss_files-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/libnss_hesiod-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/libnss_myhostname.so.2
M /usr/lib/libnss_mymachines.so.2
M /usr/lib/libnss_resolve.so.2
M /usr/lib/libnss_systemd.so.2
M /usr/lib/libnssckbi-testlib.so
M /usr/lib/libnssckbi.so
M /usr/lib/libnssdbm3.chk
M /usr/lib/libnssdbm3.so
M /usr/lib/libnsssysinit.so
M /usr/lib/libnssutil3.so
M /usr/lib/libomapi.a
M /usr/lib/libopts.so.25.17.1
M /usr/lib/libostree-1.so.1.0.0
M /usr/lib/libpam.so.0.85.1
M /usr/lib/libpam_misc.so.0.82.1
M /usr/lib/libpamc.so.0.82.1
M /usr/lib/libpanelw.so.6.2
M /usr/lib/libpcre.so.1.2.12
M /usr/lib/libpcre16.so.0.2.12
M /usr/lib/libpcre32.so.0.0.12
M /usr/lib/libpcrecpp.so.0.0.2
M /usr/lib/libpcreposix.so.0.0.7
M /usr/lib/libpkcs11testmodule.so
M /usr/lib/libplc4.so
M /usr/lib/libplds4.so
M /usr/lib/libpolkit-agent-1.so.0.0.0
M /usr/lib/libpolkit-gobject-1.so.0.0.0
M /usr/lib/libpopt.so.0.0.0
M /usr/lib/libprocps.so.8.0.2
M /usr/lib/libpsl.so.5.3.3
M /usr/lib/libpthread-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/libpwquality.so.1.0.2
M /usr/lib/libpython3.so
M /usr/lib/libreadline.so.7.0
M /usr/lib/librepo.so.0
M /usr/lib/libresolv-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/librpmostree-1.so.1.0.0
M /usr/lib/librt-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/libsasl2.so.3.0.0
M /usr/lib/libseccomp.so.2.5.0
M /usr/lib/libselinux.so.1
M /usr/lib/libsemanage.so.1
M /usr/lib/libsepol.so.1
M /usr/lib/libsmartcols.so.1.1.0
M /usr/lib/libsmime3.so
M /usr/lib/libsoftokn3.chk
M /usr/lib/libsoftokn3.so
M /usr/lib/libsolv.so.0
M /usr/lib/libsolvext.so.0
M /usr/lib/libsoup-2.4.so.1.11.0
M /usr/lib/libsoup-gnome-2.4.so.1.11.0
M /usr/lib/libsqlite3.so.0.8.6
M /usr/lib/libss.so.2.0
M /usr/lib/libssh2.so.1.0.1
M /usr/lib/libssl.so.1.1
M /usr/lib/libssl3.so
M /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6
M /usr/lib/libsystemd.so.0
M /usr/lib/libtasn1.so.6.5.6
M /usr/lib/libthread_db-1.0.so
M /usr/lib/libtirpc.so.3.0.0
M /usr/lib/libudev.so.1
M /usr/lib/libulockmgr.so.1.0.1
M /usr/lib/libunistring.a
M /usr/lib/libunistring.so.2.1.0
M /usr/lib/libutil-2.32.so
M /usr/lib/libuuid.so.1.3.0
M /usr/lib/libverto.so.0.0
M /usr/lib/libvgauth.so.0.0.0
M /usr/lib/libvmtools.so.0.0.0
M /usr/lib/libwrap.a
M /usr/lib/libwrap.so.0.7.6
M /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2.9.10
M /usr/lib/libxmlsec1-nss.so.1.2.30
M /usr/lib/libxmlsec1-openssl.so.1.2.30
M /usr/lib/libxmlsec1.so.1.2.30
M /usr/lib/libxslt.so.1.1.34
M /usr/lib/libxtables.so.12
M /usr/lib/libyaml-0.so.2.0.9
M /usr/lib/libz.so.1.2.11
M /usr/lib/libzck.so.1.1.7
M /usr/lib/libzstd.so.1.4.5
M /usr/lib/bash/basename
M /usr/lib/bash/dirname
M /usr/lib/bash/fdflags
M /usr/lib/bash/finfo
M /usr/lib/bash/head
M /usr/lib/bash/id
M /usr/lib/bash/ln
M /usr/lib/bash/logname
M /usr/lib/bash/mkdir
M /usr/lib/bash/mypid
M /usr/lib/bash/pathchk
M /usr/lib/bash/print
M /usr/lib/bash/printenv
M /usr/lib/bash/push
M /usr/lib/bash/realpath
M /usr/lib/bash/rmdir
M /usr/lib/bash/seq
M /usr/lib/bash/setpgid
M /usr/lib/bash/sleep
M /usr/lib/bash/strftime
M /usr/lib/bash/sync
M /usr/lib/bash/tee
M /usr/lib/bash/truefalse
M /usr/lib/bash/tty
M /usr/lib/bash/uname
M /usr/lib/bash/unlink
M /usr/lib/bash/whoami
M /usr/lib/cloud-init/ds-identify
M /usr/lib/dracut/dracut-install
M /usr/lib/dracut/dracut-version.sh
M /usr/lib/dracut/skipcpio
M /usr/lib/engines-1.1/afalg.so
M /usr/lib/engines-1.1/capi.so
M /usr/lib/engines-1.1/padlock.so
M /usr/lib/gawk/filefuncs.so
M /usr/lib/gawk/fnmatch.so
M /usr/lib/gawk/fork.so
M /usr/lib/gawk/inplace.so
M /usr/lib/gawk/intdiv.so
M /usr/lib/gawk/ordchr.so
M /usr/lib/gawk/readdir.so
M /usr/lib/gawk/readfile.so
M /usr/lib/gawk/revoutput.so
M /usr/lib/gawk/revtwoway.so
M /usr/lib/gawk/rwarray.so
M /usr/lib/gawk/time.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/ANSI_X3.110.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/ARMSCII-8.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/ASMO_449.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/BIG5.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/BIG5HKSCS.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/BRF.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP10007.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP1125.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP1250.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP1251.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP1252.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP1253.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP1254.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP1255.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP1256.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP1257.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP1258.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP737.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP770.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP771.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP772.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP773.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP774.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP775.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CP932.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CSN_369103.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/CWI.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/DEC-MCS.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EBCDIC-AT-DE-A.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EBCDIC-AT-DE.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EBCDIC-CA-FR.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EBCDIC-DK-NO-A.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EBCDIC-DK-NO.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EBCDIC-ES-A.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EBCDIC-ES-S.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EBCDIC-ES.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EBCDIC-FI-SE-A.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EBCDIC-FI-SE.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EBCDIC-FR.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EBCDIC-IS-FRISS.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EBCDIC-IT.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EBCDIC-PT.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EBCDIC-UK.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EBCDIC-US.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/ECMA-CYRILLIC.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EUC-CN.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EUC-JISX0213.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EUC-JP-MS.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EUC-JP.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EUC-KR.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/EUC-TW.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/GB18030.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/GBBIG5.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/GBGBK.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/GBK.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/GEORGIAN-ACADEMY.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/GEORGIAN-PS.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/GOST_19768-74.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/GREEK-CCITT.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/GREEK7-OLD.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/GREEK7.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/HP-GREEK8.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/HP-ROMAN8.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/HP-ROMAN9.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/HP-THAI8.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/HP-TURKISH8.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM037.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM038.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1004.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1008.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1008_420.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1025.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1026.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1046.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1047.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1097.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1112.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1122.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1123.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1124.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1129.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1130.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1132.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1133.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1137.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1140.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1141.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1142.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1143.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1144.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1145.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1146.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1147.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1148.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1149.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1153.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1154.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1155.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1156.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1157.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1158.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1160.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1161.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1162.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1163.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1164.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1166.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1167.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM12712.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1364.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1371.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1388.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1390.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM1399.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM16804.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM256.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM273.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM274.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM275.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM277.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM278.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM280.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM281.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM284.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM285.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM290.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM297.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM420.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM423.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM424.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM437.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM4517.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM4899.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM4909.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM4971.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM500.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM5347.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM803.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM850.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM851.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM852.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM855.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM856.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM857.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM858.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM860.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM861.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM862.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM863.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM864.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM865.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM866.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM866NAV.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM868.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM869.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM870.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM871.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM874.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM875.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM880.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM891.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM901.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM902.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM903.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM9030.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM904.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM905.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM9066.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM918.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM921.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM922.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM930.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM932.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM933.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM935.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM937.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM939.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM943.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IBM9448.so
M /usr/lib/gconv/IEC_P27-1.so
Listing package differences
We can also look at package differences, as you expect, using the right tool for the job.
If we want to go back to the previous image, we can rollback. The order of the images will be changed, so the old filetree will become the default bootable image. If -r option is passed, the rollback will continue with a reboot.
In fact, we can repeat the rollback operation as many times as we want before reboot. On each execution, it’s going to change the order. It will not delete any image. However, an upgrade will keep the current default image and will eliminate the other image, whichever that is. So if Photon installation rolled back to an older build, an upgrade will keep that, eliminate the newer version and will replace it with an even newer version at the next upgrade.
To remove layered packages installed from a repository, use
rpm-ostree uninstall <pkg>
To remove layered packages installed from a local package, you must specify the full NEVRA of the package.
For example:
rpm-ostree uninstall ltrace-0.7.91-16.fc22.x86_64
To uninstall a package that is a part of the base layer, use
rpm-ostree override remove <pkg>
For example:
rpm-ostree override remove firefox
Deleting a deployed filetree
It is possible to delete a deployed tree. You won’t need to do that normally, as upgrading to a new image will delete the old one, but if for some reason deploying failed (loss of power, networking issues), you’ll want to delete the partially deployed image. The only supported index is 1. (If multiple bootable images will be supported in the future, a larger than one, zero-based index of the image to delete will be supported). You cannot delete the default bootable filetree, so passing 0 will result in an error.
root@photon-7c2d910d79e9 [ ~ ]# rpm-ostree rollback
Moving '820b584a6f90bf6b9b8cb6aad8c093064b88d0ab686be8130baa03d68917ad88.0' to be first deployment
Transaction complete; bootconfig swap: yes; deployment count change: 0
Run "systemctl reboot" to start a reboot
If we were to upgrade again, it would bring these packages back, but let’s just check the differences.
Let’s assume that after a while, VMware releases version 2 that removes sudo and adds bison and tar. Now, an upgrade will skip version 1 and go directly to 2. Let’s first look at what packages are pulled (notice sudo missing, as expected), then upgrade with reboot option.
After reboot, let’s check the booting filetrees, the current dir for the current filetree and look at commit differences:
root@photon-7c2d910d79e9 [ ~ ]# rpm-ostree status
State: idle
Deployments:
● ostree://photon:photon/5.0/x86_64/minimal
Version: 5.0_minimal (2020-11-04T02:21:47Z)
Commit: 820b584a6f90bf6b9b8cb6aad8c093064b88d0ab686be8130baa03d68917ad88
ostree://photon:photon/5.0/x86_64/minimal
Version: 5.0_minimal (2021-02-20T07:15:43Z)
Commit: 965c1abeb048e1a8ff77e9cd34ffccc5e3356176cda3332b4ff0e7a6c66b661f
root@photon-7c2d910d79e9 [ ~ ]# ostree admin config-diff --print-current-dir
/ostree/deploy/photon/deploy/820b584a6f90bf6b9b8cb6aad8c093064b88d0ab686be8130baa03d68917ad88.0
root@photon-host-cus1 [ ~ ]# rpm-ostree db diff 8b4b e663
ostree diff commit old: rollback deployment (8b4b9d4ec033d1eb816711bfdda595d1013fecbe5cd340f6a619cdc9d83a3bf2)
ostree diff commit new: booted deployment (e663b2872efa01d80e4c34c823431472beb653373af32de83c7d2480316b8a6a)
root@photon-host-cus1 [ ~ ]# rpm-ostree db diff 82bc 092e
error: Refspec '82bc' not found
Interesting fact: The metadata for commit 82bc has been removed from the local repo.
Tracking parent commits
OSTree will display limited commit history - maximum 2 levels, so if you want to traverse the history even though it may not find a commitment by its ID, you can refer to its parent using ‘^’ suffix, grandfather via ‘^^’ and so on. We know that 82bc is the parent of 092e:
root@photon-host-def [ ~ ]# rpm-ostree db diff 092e^ 092e
error: No such metadata object 82bca728eadb7292d568404484ad6889c3f6303600ca8c743a4336e0a10b3817.commit
error: Refspec '82cb' not found
root@photon-host-def [ ~ ]# rpm-ostree db diff 092e^^ 092e
error: No such metadata object 82bca728eadb7292d568404484ad6889c3f6303600ca8c743a4336e0a10b3817.commit
So commit 092e knows who its parent is, but its metadata is no longer in the local repo, so it cannot traverse further to its parent to find an existing grandfather.
Resetting a branch to a previous commit
We can reset the head of a branch in a local repo to a previous commit, for example corresponding to version 0 (3.0_minimal).
14.7 - Installing a Photon RPM-OStree host against a custom server repository
Organizations that maintain their own OSTree servers create custom image trees suited to their needs from which hosts can be deployed and upgraded. One single server may make available several branches to install, for example “base”, “minimal” and “full”. Or, if you think in terms of Windows OS SKUs - “Home”, “Professional” or “Enterprise” edition.
So in fact there are two pieces of information the OSTree host installer needs - the server URL and the branch ref. Also, there are two ways to pass this info - manually via keyboard, when prompted and automated, by reading from a config file.
Manual install of a custom host
Installing a Photon RPM-OSTree host that will pull from a server repository of your choice is very similar to the way we installed the host against the default server repo in this document.
We will follow the same steps, selecting “Photon OSTree Host”, and after assigning a host name like photon-host and a root password, this time we will click on “Custom RPM-OSTree Server”.
An additional screen will ask for the URL of server repo - just enter the IP address or fully qualified domain name of the server installed in the previous step.
Once this is done and the installation finished, reboot and you are ready to use it.
You may verify - just like in this document - that you can get an rpm-ostree status. The value for the CommitID should be identical to the host that installed from default repo, if the server has been installed fresh, from the same ISO.
Automated install of a custom host via kickstart
Photon supports automated install that will not interact with the user, in other words installer will display its progress, but will not prompt for any keys to be clicked, and will boot at the end of installation.
If not familiar with the way kickstart works, visit Kickstart Support in Photon OS. The kickstart json config for OSTree is similar to minimal or full, except for these settings that should sound familiar:
If the server is a future version of Photon OS, say Photon OS 5.0, and the administrator composed trees for the included json files, the ostree_repo_ref will take either value: photon/5.0/x86_64/base, photon/5.0/x86_64/minimal, or photon/5.0/x86_64/full.
In most situations, kickstart file is accessed via http from PXE boot. That enables booting from network and end to end install of hosts from pre-defined server URL and branch without assistance from user.
Verify that the automatic update feature has been enabled:
$ rpm-ostree status -v
State: idle
AutomaticUpdates: stage; rpm-ostreed-automatic.timer: last run 16min ago
On the server machine, perform another commit on the base tree.
Automatic updates are now enabled and will automatically update the host system.
14.9 - File Oriented Server Operations
In this section, we will checkout a filetree into a writable directory structure on disk, make several file changes and commit the changes back into the repository. Then we will download this commit and apply at the host. As you may have guessed, this chapter is mostly about OSTree - the base technology. I’ve not mentioned anything about packages, although it is quite possible to install packages (after all, packages are made of files, right?) and commit without the help of rpm-ostree, but it’s too much of a headache and not worth the effort, since rpm-ostree does it simpler and better.
When would you want to do that? When you want for all your hosts to get an application or configuration customization that is not encapsulated as part of a package upgrade.
Starting a fresh OSTree repo
If you want to start fresh with your own branch and/or versioning scheme, you can delete the OSTree repo created during the Photon 3.0 RPM-OSTree server install and re-create it empty.
A newer ostree feature, available in Photon OS 2.0 and higher, allows the OSTree server admin to create server summary metadata, that includes among other things the list of available branches and the list of static deltas, so they could be discovered by hosts. To create a summary, run this command after you committed for your branches:
root [ /srv/rpm-ostree ]# ostree summary -u "This is BigData's OSTree server, it has three branches"
Now that we have a Photon RPM-OSTree server up and running (if not, see how to install), we will learn how to provide the desired set of packages as input and instruct rpm-ostree to compose a filetree, that will result in creation (or update) of an OSTree repo. The simplest way to explain is to take a look at the files installed by the Photon RPM-OSTree server during setup.
root [ ~ ]# cd /srv/rpm-ostree/
root [ /srv/rpm-ostree ]# ls -l
total 16
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7356 Aug 28 19:06 ostree-httpd.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1085 Aug 28 19:06 photon-base.json
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 35 Aug 28 19:06 photon-extras-ostree.repo -> /etc/yum.repos.d/photon-extras.repo
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 32 Aug 28 19:06 photon-iso-ostree.repo -> /etc/yum.repos.d/photon-iso.repo
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 Aug 28 19:06 photon-ostree.repo -> /etc/yum.repos.d/photon.repo
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 36 Aug 28 19:06 photon-updates-ostree.repo -> /etc/yum.repos.d/photon-updates.repo
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Aug 20 22:27 repo
JSON configuration file
How can we tell rpm-ostree what packages we want to include, where to get them from and how to compose the filetree? There is JSON file for that. Let’s take a look at photon-base.json used by the Photon OS team.
There are some mandatory settings, some optional. I’m only going to explain the most important ones for our use case.
osname and ref should be familiar, they have been explained in previous sections OSname and Refspec. Basicaly, we are asking rpm-ostree to compose a tree for photon OS and photon/3.0/x86_64/minimal branch.
packages is the list of packages that are to be added, in this case, in the “minimal” installation profile, on top of the packages already included by default. This is not quite the identical set of RPMS you get when you select the minimal profile in the ISO installer, but it’s pretty close and that’s why it’s been named the same.
Let’s add to the list three new packages: gawk, sudo and wget using vim photon-base.json
!!!Warning: do not remove any packages from the default list, even an “innocent” one, as it may bring the system to an unstable condition. During my testing, I’ve removed “which”; it turns out it was used to figure out the grub booting roots: on reboot, the system was left hanging at grub prompt.
RPMS repository
But where are these packages located? RPM-OStree uses the same standard RPMS repositories, that yum installs from.
Going back to our JSON file, repos is a multi-value setting that tells RPM-OSTree in what RPMS repositories to look for packages. In this case, it looks in the current directory for a “photon” repo configuration file, that is a .repo file starting with a [photon] section. There is such a file: photon-ostree.repo, that is in fact a link to photon.repo in /etc/yum.repos.d directory.
root [ /srv/rpm-ostree ]# cat /etc/yum.repos.d/photon.repo [photon]name=VMware Photon Linux 5.0(x86_64)baseurl=https://packages.vmware.com/photon/5.0/photon_release_$releasever_$basearchgpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/VMWARE-RPM-GPG-KEYgpgcheck=1enabled=1skip_if_unavailable=True
In this case, rpm-ostree is instructed to download its packages in RPM format from the VMware Photon Packages URL, which is the location of an online RPMS repo maintained by the VMware Photon OS team. To ensure those packages can be validated as being genuine and signed by VMware, the signature is checked against the official VMware public key.
noarch - where all packages that don’t depend on the architecture reside. Those may contain scripts, platform neutral source files, configuration.
x86_64 - platform dependent packages for Intel 32 and 64 bits CPUs.
repodata - internal repo management data, like a catalog of all packages, and for every package its name, id, version, architecture and full path file/directory list. There is also a compressed XML file containing the history of changelogs extracted from github, as packages in RPM format were built by Photon OS team members from sources.
Fortunately, in order to compose a tree, you don’t need to download the packages from the online repository (which is time consuming - in the order of minutes), unless there are some new ones or updated versions of them, added by the Photon team after shipping 1.0 version or the 1.0 Refresh. A copy of the starter RPMS repository (as of 1.0 shipping date) has been included on the CD-ROM and you can access it.
root [ /srv/rpm-ostree ]# mount /dev/cdrom
root [ /srv/rpm-ostree ]# ls /mnt/cdrom/RPMS
noarch repodata x86_64
All you have to do now is to replace the "repos": ["photon"] entry by "repos": ["photon-iso"], which will point to the RPMS repo on CD-ROM, rather than the online repo. This way, composing saves time, bandwidth and reduces to zero the risk of failure because of a networking issue.
root [ /srv/rpm-ostree ]# cat /etc/yum.repos.d/photon-iso.repo[photon-iso]name=VMWare Photon Linux ISO 5.0(x86_64)baseurl=file:///mnt/cdrom/RPMSgpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/VMWARE-RPM-GPG-KEYgpgcheck=1enabled=0skip_if_unavailable=True
There are already in current directory links created to all repositories in /etc/yum.repos.d, so they are found when tree compose command is invoked. You may add any other repo to the list and include packages found in that repo to be part of the image.
Composing a tree
After so much preparation, we can execute a tree compose. We have only added 3 new packages and changed the RPMS repo source. Assuming that the JSON file is editted, run the following:
root [ /srv/rpm-ostree ]# rpm-ostree compose tree --repo=repo photon-base.json
Previous commit: 2940e10c4d90ce6da572cbaeeff7b511cab4a64c280bd5969333dd2fca57cfa8
Downloading metadata [=========================================================================] 100%
Transaction: 117 packages
Linux-PAM-1.1.8-2.ph5.x86_64
attr-2.4.47-1.ph5.x86_64
...
gawk-4.1.0-2.ph5.x86_64
...
sudo-1.8.11p1-4.ph5.x86_64
...
wget-1.15-1.ph5.x86_64
which-2.20-1.ph5.x86_64
xz-5.0.5-2.ph5.x86_64
zlib-1.2.8-2.ph5.x86_64
Installing packages [==========================================================================] 100%
Writing '/var/tmp/rpm-ostree.TVO089/rootfs.tmp/usr/share/rpm-ostree/treefile.json'
Preparing kernel
Creating empty machine-id
Executing: /usr/bin/dracut -v --tmpdir=/tmp -f /var/tmp/initramfs.img 4.0.9 --no-hostonly
...
*** Including module: bash ***
*** Including module: kernel-modules ***
*** Including module: resume ***
*** Including module: rootfs-block ***
*** Including module: terminfo ***
*** Including module: udev-rules ***
Skipping udev rule: 91-permissions.rules
Skipping udev rule: 80-drivers-modprobe.rules
*** Including module: ostree ***
*** Including module: systemd ***
*** Including module: usrmount ***
*** Including module: base ***
/etc/os-release: line 1: Photon: command not found
*** Including module: fs-lib ***
*** Including module: shutdown ***
*** Including modules done ***
*** Installing kernel module dependencies and firmware ***
*** Installing kernel module dependencies and firmware done ***
*** Resolving executable dependencies ***
*** Resolving executable dependencies done***
*** Stripping files ***
*** Stripping files done ***
*** Store current command line parameters ***
*** Creating image file ***
*** Creating image file done ***
Image: /var/tmp/initramfs.img: 11M
========================================================================
Version: dracut-041-1.ph5
Arguments: -v --tmpdir '/tmp' -f --no-hostonly
dracut modules:
bash
kernel-modules
resume
rootfs-block
terminfo
udev-rules
ostree
systemd
usrmount
base
fs-lib
shutdown
========================================================================
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 0 Sep 1 00:52 .
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 5, 1 Sep 1 00:52 dev/console
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 1, 11 Sep 1 00:52 dev/kmsg
... (long list of files removed)
========================================================================
Initializing rootfs
Migrating /etc/passwd to /usr/lib/
Migrating /etc/group to /usr/lib/
Moving /usr to target
Linking /usr/local -> ../var/usrlocal
Moving /etc to /usr/etc
Placing RPM db in /usr/share/rpm
Ignoring non-directory/non-symlink '/var/tmp/rpm-ostree.TVO089/rootfs.tmp/var/lib/nss_db/Makefile'
Ignoring non-directory/non-symlink '/var/tmp/rpm-ostree.TVO089/rootfs.tmp/var/cache/ldconfig/aux-cache'
Ignoring non-directory/non-symlink '/var/tmp/rpm-ostree.TVO089/rootfs.tmp/var/log/btmp'
Ignoring non-directory/non-symlink '/var/tmp/rpm-ostree.TVO089/rootfs.tmp/var/log/lastlog'
Ignoring non-directory/non-symlink '/var/tmp/rpm-ostree.TVO089/rootfs.tmp/var/log/wtmp'
Moving /boot
Using boot location: both
Copying toplevel compat symlinks
Adding tmpfiles-ostree-integration.conf
Committing '/var/tmp/rpm-ostree.TVO089/rootfs.tmp' ...
photon/1.0/x86_64/minimal => c505f4bddb4381e8b5213682465f1e5bb150a18228aa207d763cea45c6a81bbe
We’ve omitted a large portion of the logging output, however you can see that the new filetree adds to the top of the previous (initial) commit 2940e10c4d and produces a new commit c505f4bddb. Our packages gawk-4.1.0-2.ph5.x86_64, sudo-1.8.11p1-4.ph5.x86_64 and wget-1.15-1.ph5.x86_64 have been added.
During compose, rpm-ostree checks out the file tree into its uncompressed form, applies the package changes, places the updated RPM repo into /usr/share/rpm and calls ostree to commit its changes back into the OSTree repo. If we were to look at the temp directory during this time:
root [ /srv/rpm-ostree ]# ls /var/tmp/rpm-ostree.TVO089/rootfs.tmp
bin dev lib media opt proc run srv sysroot usr
boot home lib64 mnt ostree root sbin sys tmp var
If we repeat the command, and there is no change in the JSON file settings and no change in metadata, rpm-ostree will figure out that nothing has changed and stop. You can force however to redo the whole composition.
root [ /srv/rpm-ostree ]# rpm-ostree compose tree --repo=repo photon-base.json
Previous commit: c505f4bddb4381e8b5213682465f1e5bb150a18228aa207d763cea45c6a81bbe
Downloading metadata [=========================================================================] 100%
No apparent changes since previous commit; use --force-nocache to override
This takes several minutes. Then why is the RPM-OSTree server installing so fast, in 45 seconds on my SSD? The server doesn’t compose the tree, it uses a pre-created OSTree repo that is stored on the CD-ROM. It comes of course at the expense of larger CD-ROM size. This OSTree repo is created from the same set of RPMS on the CD-ROM, so if you compose fresh, you will get the same exact tree, with same commit ID for the “minimal” ref.
Automatic version prefix
If you recall the filetree version explained earlier, this is where it comes into play. When a tree is composed from scratch, the first version (0) associated to the initial commit is going to get that human readable value. Any subsequent compose operation will auto-increment to .1, .2, .3 and so on. It’s a good idea to start a versioning scheme of your own, so that your customized Photon builds that may get different packages of your choice don’t get the same version numbers as the official Photon team builds coming from VMware’s OSTree Packages repository. There is no conflict, it’s just confusing to have same name for different commits coming from different repos. So if you work for a company named Big Data Inc., you may want to switch to a new versioning scheme “automatic_version_prefix”: “1.0_bigdata”.
Installing package updates
If you want to provide hosts with the package updates that VMware periodically releases, all that you need to do is to add the photon-updates.repo to the list of repos in photon-base.json and then re-compose the usual way.
"repos": ["photon", "photon-updates"],
Even though you may have not modified the “packages” section in the json file, the newer versions of existing packages will be included in the new image and then downloaded by the host the usual way. Note that upgrading a package shows differently than adding (+) or removing (-). You may still see packages added (or removed) though because they are new dependencies (or no longer dependencies) for the newer versions of other packages, as libssh2 in the example below.
Now if we want to see what packages have been updated and what issues have been fixed, just run at the host the command that we learned about in chapter 5.4.
root [ ~ ]# rpm-ostree db diff 56ef 396e
ostree diff commit old: 56e (56ef687f1319604b7900a232715718d26ca407de7e1dc89251b206f8e255dcb4)
ostree diff commit new: 396 (396e1116ad94692b8c105edaee4fa12447ec3d8f73c7b3ade4e955163d517497)
Upgraded:
bridge-utils-1.5-3.ph5.x86_64
* Mon Sep 12 2016 user1 <user1@vmware.com> 1.5-3
- Update patch to fix-2.
bzip2-1.0.6-6.ph5.x86_64
* Fri Oct 21 2016 user2 <user2@vmware.com> 1.0.6-6
- Fixing security bug CVE-2016-3189.
curl-7.51.0-2.ph5.x86_64
* Wed Nov 30 2016 user3 <user3@vmware.com> 7.51.0-2
- Enable sftp support.
* Wed Nov 02 2016 user4 <user4@vmware.com> 7.51.0-1
- Upgrade curl to 7.51.0
* Thu Oct 27 2016 user4 <user4@vmware.com> 7.47.1-4
- Patch for CVE-2016-5421
* Mon Sep 19 2016 user3 <user3@vmware.com> 7.47.1-3
- Applied CVE-2016-7167.patch.
docker-1.12.1-1.ph5.x86_64
* Wed Sep 21 2016 user3 <user3@vmware.com> 1.12.1-1
- Upgraded to version 1.12.1
* Mon Aug 22 2016 user1 <user1@vmware.com> 1.12.0-2
- Added bash completion file
* Tue Aug 09 2016 user4 <user4@vmware.com> 1.12.0-1
- Upgraded to version 1.12.0
* Tue Jun 28 2016 user4 <user4@vmware.com> 1.11.2-1
- Upgraded to version 1.11.2
...
Added:
libssh2-1.8.0-1.ph5.x86_64
Composing for a different branch
RPM-OSTree makes it very easy to create and update new branches, by composing using json config files that include the Refspec as the new branch name, the list of packages and the other settings we are now familiar with. Photon OS RPM-OSTRee Server installer adds two extra files photon-minimal.json and photon-full.json in addition to photon-base.json, that correspond almost identically to the minimal and full profiles installed via tdnf. It also makes ‘photon-base’ a smaller set of starter branch.
Of course, you can create your own config files for your branches with desired lists of packages. You may compose on top of the existing tree, or you can start fresh your own OSTRee repo, using your own customized versioning.
Note: The outputs listed above are only for reference. The version numbers in the outputs might vary from the actual outputs.
14.11 - Remotes
In Chapter 3 we talked about the Refspec that contains a photon: prefix, that is the name of a remote. When a Photon host is installed, a remote is added - which contains the URL for an OSTree repository that is the origin of the commits we are going to pull from and deploy filetrees, in our case the Photon RPM-OSTree server we installed the host from. This remote is named photon, which may be confusing, because it’s also the OS name and part of the Refspec (branch) path.
Listing remotes
A host repo can be configured to switch between multiple remotes to pull from, however only one remote is the “active” one at a time. We can list the remotes created so far, which brings back the expected result.
root@photon-7c2d910d79e9 [ ~ ]# ostree remote list
photon
We can inquiry about the URL for that remote name, which for the default host is the expected Photon OS online OSTree repo.
If same command is executed on the custom host we’ve installed, it’s going to reveal the URL of the Photon RPM-OSTree server connected to during setup.
You may wonder what is the purpose of gpg-verify=false in the config file, associated with the specific remote. This will instruct any host update to skip the signing verification for the updates that come from server, resulted from tree composed locally at the server, as they are not signed. Without this, host updating will fail.
There is a whole chapter about signing, importing keys and so on that I will not get into, but the idea is that signing adds an extra layer of security, by validating that everything you download comes from the trusted publisher and has not been altered. That is the case for all Photon OS artifacts downloaded from VMware official site. All OVAs and packages, either from the online RPMS repositories or included in the ISO file - are signed by VMware. We’ve seen a similar setting gpgcheck=1 in the RPMS repo configuration files that tdnf uses to validate or not the signature for all packages downloaded to be installed.
Switching repositories
Since mapping name/url is stored in the repo’s config file, in principle you can re-assign a different URL, connecting the host to a different server. The next upgrade will get the latest commit chain from the new server. If we edit photon-host-def’s repo config and replace the VMware Photon Packages URL by photon-srv1’s IP address, all original packages in the original 5.0_minimal version will be preserved, but any new package change (addition, removal, upgrade) added after that (in 5.0_minimal.1, 5.0_minimal.2) will be reverted and all new commits from photon-srv1 (that may have same version) will be applied. This is because the two repos are identical copies, so they have the same original commit ID as a common ancestor, but they diverge from there.
If the old and new repo have nothing in common (no common ancestor commit), this will undo even the original commit, so all commits from the new tree will be applied. A better solution would be to add a new remote that will identify where the commits come from.
Adding and removing remotes
A cleaner way to switch repositories is to add remotes that point to different servers. Let us add another server that we will refer to as photon2, along with (optional) the refspecs for branches that it provides (we will see later that in the newer OSTree versions, we don’t need to know the branch names, they could be queried at run-time).
If a host has been deployed from a specific branch and would like to switch to a different one, maybe from a different server, how would it know what branches are available? In git, you would run git remote show origin or git remote -a (although last command would not show all branches, unless you ran git fetch first).
In Photon OS, the hosts are able to query the server, if summary metadata has been generated, as we’ve seen in Creating summary metadata. This command lists all branches available for remote photon2.
14.12 - Running container applications between bootable images
In this chapter, we want to test a docker application and make sure that all the settings and downloads done in one bootable filetree are going to be saved into writable folders and be available in the other image, in other words after reboot from the other image, everything is available exactly the same way. We are going to do this twice: first, to verify an existing bootable image installed in parallel and then create a new one.
Downloading a docker container appliance
Photon OS comes with docker package installed and configured, but we expect that the docker daemon is inactive (not started). Configuration file /usr/lib/systemd/system/docker.service is read-only (remember /usr is bound as read-only).
root@sample-host-def [ ~ ]# systemctl status docker
* docker.service - Docker Daemon
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/docker.service; disabled)
Active: inactive (dead)
root@sample-host-def [ ~ ]# cat /usr/lib/systemd/system/docker.service
[Unit]
Description=Docker Application Container Engine
Documentation=https://docs.docker.com
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target
[Service]
Type=notify
# the default is not to use systemd for cgroups because the delegate issues still
# exists and systemd currently does not support the cgroup feature set required
#for containers run by docker
ExecStart=/usr/bin/dockerd
ExecReload=/bin/kill -s HUP $MAINPID
# Having non-zero Limit*s causes performance problems due to accounting overhead
# in the kernel. We recommend using cgroups to do container-local accounting.
LimitNOFILE=infinity
LimitNPROC=infinity
LimitCORE=infinity
# Uncomment TasksMax if your systemd version supports it.
# Only systemd 226 and above support this version.
#TasksMax=infinity
TimeoutStartSec=0
#set delegate yes so that systemd does not reset the cgroups of docker containers
Delegate=yes
#kill only the docker process, not all processes in the cgroup
KillMode=process
# restart the docker process if it exits prematurely
Restart=on-failure
StartLimitBurst=3
StartLimitInterval=60s
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Now let’s enable docker daemon to start at boot time - this will create a symbolic link into writable folder /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants to its systemd configuration, as with all other systemd controlled services.
To verify that the symbolic link points to a file in a read-only directory, try to make a change in this file using vim and save. you’ll get an error: /usr/lib/systemd/system/docker.service" E166: Can't open linked file for writing.
Finally, let’s start the daemon, check again that is active.
root@sample-host-def [ ~ ]# systemctl start docker
root@sample-host-def [ ~ ]# systemctl status -l docker
* docker.service - Docker Application Container Engine
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/docker.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Tue 2019-09-10 10:54:32 UTC; 14s ago
Docs: https://docs.docker.com
Main PID: 2553 (dockerd)
Tasks: 35 (limit: 4711)
Memory: 148.2M
CGroup: /system.slice/docker.service
|-2553 /usr/bin/dockerd
`-2566 docker-containerd --config /var/run/docker/containerd/containerd.toml
Sep 10 10:54:31 photon-76718dd2fa33 dockerd[2553]: time="2019-09-10T10:54:31.421759662Z" level=info msg="pickfirstBalancer: HandleSubConnStateChange: 0xc420312f90, CONNECTING" module=grpc
Sep 10 10:54:31 photon-76718dd2fa33 dockerd[2553]: time="2019-09-10T10:54:31.421935355Z" level=info msg="pickfirstBalancer: HandleSubConnStateChange: 0xc420312f90, READY" module=grpc
Sep 10 10:54:31 photon-76718dd2fa33 dockerd[2553]: time="2019-09-10T10:54:31.421980614Z" level=info msg="Loading containers: start."
Sep 10 10:54:31 photon-76718dd2fa33 dockerd[2553]: time="2019-09-10T10:54:31.886520281Z" level=info msg="Default bridge
(docker0) is assigned with an IP address 172.17.0.0/16. Daemon option --bip can be used to set a preferred IP address"
Sep 10 10:54:32 photon-76718dd2fa33 dockerd[2553]: time="2019-09-10T10:54:32.027763113Z" level=info msg="Loading containers: done."
Sep 10 10:54:32 photon-76718dd2fa33 dockerd[2553]: time="2019-09-10T10:54:32.468277184Z" level=info msg="Docker daemon"
commit=6d37f41 graphdriver(s)=overlay2 version=18.06.2-ce
Sep 10 10:54:32 photon-76718dd2fa33 dockerd[2553]: time="2019-09-10T10:54:32.468441587Z" level=info msg="Daemon has completed initialization"
Sep 10 10:54:32 photon-76718dd2fa33 dockerd[2553]: time="2019-09-10T10:54:32.684925824Z" level=warning msg="Could not register builder git source: failed to find git binary: exec: \"git\": executable file not found in $PATH"
Sep 10 10:54:32 photon-76718dd2fa33 dockerd[2553]: time="2019-09-10T10:54:32.691070166Z" level=info msg="API listen on /var/run/docker.sock"
Sep 10 10:54:32 photon-76718dd2fa33 systemd[1]: Started Docker Application Container Engine.
We’ll ask docker to run Ubuntu Linux in a container. Since it’s not present locally, it’s going to be downloaded first from the official docker repository https://hub.docker.com/_/ubuntu/.
root@sample-host-def [ ~ ]# docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
root@sample-host-def [ ~ ]# docker run -it ubuntu
Unable to find image 'ubuntu:latest' locally
latest: Pulling from library/ubuntu
35c102085707: Pull complete
251f5509d51d: Pull complete
8e829fe70a46: Pull complete
6001e1789921: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:d1d454df0f579c6be4d8161d227462d69e163a8ff9d20a847533989cf0c94d90
Status: Downloaded newer image for ubuntu:latest
When downloading is complete, it comes to Ubuntu root prompt with assigned host name 7029a64e7aa3, that is actually the Container ID. Let’s verify it’s indeed the expected OS.
root@sample-host-def [ ~ ]# docker run -it ubuntu
Unable to find image 'ubuntu:latest' locally
latest: Pulling from library/ubuntu
d3a1f33e8a5a: Pull complete
c22013c84729: Pull complete
d74508fb6632: Pull complete
91e54dfb1179: Already exists
library/ubuntu:latest: The image you are pulling has been verified. Important: image verification is a tech preview feature and should not be relied on to provide security.
Digest: sha256:fde8a8814702c18bb1f39b3bd91a2f82a8e428b1b4e39d1963c5d14418da8fba
Status: Downloaded newer image for ubuntu:latest
root@7029a64e7aa3:/# cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="18.04.3 LTS (Bionic Beaver)"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS"
VERSION_ID="18.04"
HOME_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy"
VERSION_CODENAME=bionic
UBUNTU_CODENAME=bionic
root@7029a64e7aa3:/#
We’ll exit back to the Photon prompt and if it’s stopped, we will re-start it.
root@7029a64e7aa3:/# exit
exit
root@sample-host-def [ ~ ]# docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
7029a64e7aa3 ubuntu "/bin/bash" 6 minutes ago Exited (0) 11 seconds ago gifted_dijkstra
root@photon-host-cus1 [ ~ ]# docker start 7029a64e7aa3
7029a64e7aa3
root@photon-host-cus1 [ ~ ]# docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
7029a64e7aa3 ubuntu "/bin/bash" 7 minutes ago Up 21 seconds gifted_dijkstra
Rebooting into an existing image
Now let’s reboot the machine and select the other image. First, we’ll verify that the docker daemon is automatically started.
root@photon-host-cus1 [ ~ ]# systemctl status docker
* docker.service - Docker Application Container Engine
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/docker.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Tue 2019-09-10 10:54:32 UTC; 13min ago
Docs: https://docs.docker.com
Main PID: 2553 (dockerd)
Tasks: 55 (limit: 4711)
Memory: 261.3M
CGroup: /system.slice/docker.service
|-2553 /usr/bin/dockerd
...
Next, is the Ubuntu OS container still there?
root@photon-host-cus1 [ ~ ]# docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
7029a64e7aa3 ubuntu "/bin/bash" 9 minutes ago Up 2 minutes gifted_dijkstra
It is, so let’s start it, attach and verify that our file is persisted, then add another line to it and save, exit.
Let’s upgrade and replace the .0 image by a .4 build that contains git and also perl_YAML (because it is a dependency of git).
root@photon-host-cus1 [ ~ ]# rpm-ostree status
TIMESTAMP (UTC) VERSION ID OSNAME REFSPEC
* 2015-09-04 00:36:37 5.0_minimal 092e21d292 photon photon:photon/x86_64/minimal
2015-08-20 22:27:43 5.0_minimal 2940e10c4d photon photon:photon/x86_64/minimal
root@photon-host-cus1 [ ~ ]# rpm-ostree upgrade
Updating from: photon:photon/tp2/x86_64/minimal
43 metadata, 209 content objects fetched; 19992 KiB transferred in 0 seconds
Copying /etc changes: 5 modified, 0 removed, 19 added
Transaction complete; bootconfig swap: yes deployment count change: 0
Freed objects: 16.2 MB
Added:
git-2.1.2-1.ph5tp2.x86_64
perl-YAML-1.14-1.ph5tp2.noarch
Upgrade prepared for next boot; run "systemctl reboot" to start a reboot
root@photon-host-cus1 [ ~ ]# rpm-ostree status
TIMESTAMP (UTC) VERSION ID OSNAME REFSPEC
2015-09-06 18:12:08 5.0_minimal d16aebd803 photon photon:photon/x86_64/minimal
* 2015-09-04 00:36:37 5.0_minimal 092e21d292 photon photon:photon/x86_64/minimal
After reboot from 5.0_minimal. build, let’s check that the 3-way /etc merge succeeded as expected. The docker.service slink is still there, and docker demon restarted at boot.
root@photon-host-cus1 [ ~ ]# ls -l /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/docker.service
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Sep 6 12:50 /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/docker.service -> /usr/lib/systemd/system/docker.service
root@photon-host-cus1 [ ~ ]# systemctl status docker
* docker.service - Docker Daemon
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/docker.service; enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sun 2015-09-06 12:56:33 UTC; 1min 27s ago
Main PID: 292 (docker)
CGroup: /system.slice/docker.service
`-292 /bin/docker -d -s overlay
...
Let’s revisit the Ubuntu container. Is the container still there? is myfile persisted?
root@photon-host-cus1 [ ~ ]# docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
7029a64e7aa3 ubuntu "/bin/bash" 5 days ago Exited (0) 5 days ago gifted_dijkstra
55825c961f95 ubuntu "/bin/bash" 5 days ago Exited (127) 5 days ago distracted_shannon
root@photon-host-cus1 [ ~ ]# docker start 57dcac5d0490
root@57dcac5d0490:/# cat /home/myfile
Ubuntu file
booted into existing image
root@57dcac5d0490:/# echo "booted into new image" >> /home/myfile
14.13 - Install or rebase to Photon OS
Photon OS 5.0 provides full RPM-OSTree functionality, it lets the user drive it, rather than provide a pre-defined solution as part of the installation.
The number of packages included in the RPMS repo in Photon OS 5.0 increased significantly, compared to 1.0. To keep the ISO at reasonable size, the previous versions no longer include the compressed ostree.repo file, that helped optimize both the server and host install in 1.0 or 1.0 Rev2. That decision affected the OSTree features we ship out of the box. Customer could achieve the same results by several additional simple steps, that will be explained in this chapter. In addition, there is a new way to create a host raw image at server.
Composing your own RPM-OSTree Server
You can compose your own RPM-OSTRee server in the following two ways:
If kickstart sounds too complicated and we still want to go the UI way there is a workaround that requires an extra step. Also, if you have an installed Photon 1.0 or 1.0 Rev2 that you want to carry to 5.0, you need to rebase it. Notice that we didn’t say “upgrade”.
Practically, the OSTree repo will switch to a different branch on a different server, following the new server’s branch versioning scheme. The net result is that the lots of packages will get changed to newer versions listed in the newer OSTree repo, which has been composed from a newer Photon OS 5.0 RPMS repo. Again, we didn’t say “upgraded”, neither the rebase command output, that lists “changed” packages. Some obsolete packages will be removed, new packages will be added, either because they didn’t exist in older repo, or because the new config file includes them. The OS name is the same (Photon), so the content in /var and /etc will be transferred over.
To install fresh, deploy a Photon OS host default, as described in the section Installing A Host Against the Default Server Repository. Of course, if you already have an existing Photon OS 4.0 host that you want to move to 5.0, skip this step.
Edit /ostree/repo/config and substitute the url, providing the IP address for the Photon OS RPM-OSTree server installed above. This was explained in the “Switching Repositories” section of the Remotes document. Ostree should confirm that is the updated server IP for the “photon” remote.
You may now reboot to the new Photon OS 5.0 image.
Creating a host raw image
It is now possible to run at server a script that is part of RPM-OStree package, to create a host raw mage.
15 - Support for SELinux
SELinux is a labelling system to implement MAC(mandatory access control) for subjects(user, process) over objects (files, dirs, sockets) and to protect the confidentiality of objects. It is a policy driven system where rules can be mapped to the labels which have been given to subjects, objects. It is an extra level of security provided on top of Linux normal file ownership/permissions.
Photon OS offersx support for SELinux. The support covers a minimal set of policies for the container runtime case and it is referred to as the default policy. It is a Multi-Category Security (MCS) policy. So the files on the filesystem can be labeled with multiple categories.The MCS policy is actively used by container runtime as runc/containerd/docker/kubernetes to assign the per-container category.
The default policy in Photon OS does not use user, role (RBAC) and level (MLS) fields of the file labels.It operates only with the context and category fields. It consists of several modules loaded with priority as 100. The user-defined policy can overwrite default modules by using the higher priority.
Enabling SELinux
To enable SELinux on Photon OS:
Install default policy and its dependencies. Initial filesystem labeling will be done as RPM post action.
tdnf install -y selinux-policy
Enable SELinux security model in kernel by adding 2 kernel parameters:
security=selinux
selinux=1
Ensure that you reboot after adding the kernel parameters.
After reboot, the system runs in SELinux permissive mode. To confirm, check the journal:
journalctl -b0 | grep -i selinux
Feb 26 21:42:09 photon-machine kernel: SELinux: Initializing.
Feb 26 21:42:09 photon-machine kernel: SELinux: policy capability ...
Feb 26 21:42:09 photon-machine kernel: audit: type=1403 audit(1589406128.920:2): auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 lsm=selinux res=1
Feb 26 21:42:09 photon-machine systemd[1]: Successfully loaded SELinux policy in 322.475ms.
Switch SELinux to enforcing mode
The three methods to toggle enforcing mode are as follows:
Run the setenforce 1 command (libselinux-utils rpm), Enforcing mode will be set immediately, but it is not preserved on reboot.
Edit the /etc/selinux/config file to set SELINUX=enforcing and reboot.
Add the enforcing=1 kernel parameter and reboot.
Developing Customized Policy
Photon OS provides an ability to develop customized additional policy on top of existing default policy.
The following example is for adding the sys_admin capability policy:
You can see that the agetty process running in the getty_t context tries to change the capability of getty_t target to obtain sys_admin. To view the capability that getty_t can obtain:
Binary policy blob to be loaded to kernel on every boot
/etc/selinux/default/policy/policy.32
List of file labels used by the policy
/etc/selinux/default/contexts/files/file_contexts
Troubleshooting Compilation Error
If compilation fails by any reason and it complains on some line number in the .cil file. You can run the pp compiler to get the plain text cil output.
The pmd-nextgen package contains the photon-mgmtd tool. photon-mgmtd is a high-performing, open-source, lightweight, pluggable REST API gateway designed with stateless architecture. photon-mgmtd is written in Go and built with performance in mind. It facilitates real-time configuration, performance analysis, and health monitoring of systems, networks, services, and applications.
photon-mgmtd is optimized to provide the following benefits:
The proactive monitoring and analytics features help the administrator to efficiently collect analytical data for performance and health management of systems.
For remote access, you can use the platform-independent REST APIs via any application on any Operating system. For example, you can use applications such as Curl/Chrome/Postman on any operating system such as Linux/iOS/Android/Windows and so on.
Minimal data transfer using JSON.
Plugin based architecture for easier operation.
16.1 - Features
The following table lists the photon-mgmtd features details:
Feature
Details
systemd
Information, services (start, stop, restart, status), service properties such as CPUShares
see information from /proc fs
netstat, netdev, memory and much more
16.2 - Installing photon-mgmtd
You can install photon-mgmtd using the pmd-nextgen package. The pmd-nextgen package is included in your Photon OS 4.0 Rev 2 distribution. To install pmd-nextgen, run the following command:
To configure photon-mgmtd, use the mgmt.toml file located in the following directory: /etc/photon-mgmt/
You can set values for the following keys in the [System] section:
LogLevel=
Specifies the log level. The key takes one of the following:
values: Trace, Debug, Info, Warning, Error, Fatal and Panic.
Default is info.
UseAuthentication=
Specifies whether a user needs authentication. This is a boolean key and takes the following values: true, false.
Default is true.
You can set values for the following keys in the [Network] section:
Listen=
Specifies the IP address and port that the REST API server listens to.
When enabled, the default is 127.0.0.1:5208.
ListenUnixSocket=
Specifies whether you want the server to listen on a unix domain socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock. This is a boolean key and takes the following values: true, false.
Default is true.
Note: When you enable both ListenUnixSocket= and Listen=, server listens on the unix domain socket by default.
❯ sudo cat /etc/photon-mgmt/mgmt.toml
[System]
LogLevel="info"
UseAuthentication="false"
[Network]
ListenUnixSocket="true"
❯ sudo systemctl status photon-mgmtd.service
● photon-mgmtd.service - A REST API based configuration management microservice gateway
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/photon-mgmtd.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Thu 2022-01-06 16:32:19 IST; 4s ago
Main PID: 230041 (photon-mgmtd)
Tasks: 6 (limit: 15473)
Memory: 2.9M
CPU: 7ms
CGroup: /system.slice/photon-mgmtd.service
└─230041 /usr/bin/photon-mgmtd
Jan 06 16:32:19 Zeus systemd[1]: photon-mgmtd.service: Passing 0 fds to service
Jan 06 16:32:19 Zeus systemd[1]: photon-mgmtd.service: About to execute /usr/bin/photon-mgmtd
Jan 06 16:32:19 Zeus systemd[1]: photon-mgmtd.service: Forked /usr/bin/photon-mgmtd as 230041
Jan 06 16:32:19 Zeus systemd[1]: photon-mgmtd.service: Changed failed -> running
Jan 06 16:32:19 Zeus systemd[1]: photon-mgmtd.service: Job 56328 photon-mgmtd.service/start finished, result=done
Jan 06 16:32:19 Zeus systemd[1]: Started photon-mgmtd.service - A REST API based configuration management microservice gateway.
Jan 06 16:32:19 Zeus systemd[230041]: photon-mgmtd.service: Executing: /usr/bin/photon-mgmtd
Jan 06 16:32:19 Zeus photon-mgmtd[230041]: time="2022-01-06T16:32:19+05:30" level=info msg="photon-mgmtd: v0.1 (built go1.18beta1)"
Jan 06 16:32:19 Zeus photon-mgmtd[230041]: time="2022-01-06T16:32:19+05:30" level=info msg="Starting photon-mgmtd... Listening on unix domain socket='/run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock' in HTTP mode pid=103575">
How to Configure Users?
Unix domain socket
When you add users to the photon-mgmt group, they can access the unix socket.
Use the following command to add a user:
# usermod -a -G photon-mgmt exampleusername
16.4 - photon-mgmtd API
Use photon-mgmtd REST-APIs to manage, control, configure, and monitor services remotely.
You can use photon-mgmtd to manage the following:
Services
System
Network
User, Group, Host
16.4.1 - Service Management
POST Method
To manage the available services and take actions on the services, execute a POST request in the following format:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock --request POST --data '{"action":"{command}”,”unit”:”{unit}"}' http://localhost/api/v1/service/systemd
The following table lists the parameters:
Parameter
Description
Unit
The name of the service you want to manage.
Action Commands
The action you want to take on the service. Start, stop, restart, try-restart, reload-or-restart, reload, enable, disable, mask, unnmask, kill
Example:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock --request POST --data '{"action":"start","unit":"nginx.service"}' http://localhost/api/v1/service/systemd
Response:
{
"success":true,
"message":"",
"errors":""
}
Example:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock --request POST --data '{"action":"stop","unit":"nginx.service"}' http://localhost/api/v1/service/systemd
Response:
{
"success":true,
"message":"",
"errors":""
}
GET Method:
Status of all the services:
The systemctl list-unit-files command lists all the services available in the system.
To fetch the list of services listed in the list-unit files, execute a GET request in the following format:
The name of the service for which you want to get the status.
Example:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock http://localhost:5208/api/v1/service/systemd/nginx.service/status | jq % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 514 100 514 0 0 38298 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 39538
The name of the service for which you want to fetch the properties.
Example:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock http://localhost/api/v1/service/systemd/nginx.service/propertyall | jq % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 9652 0 9652 0 0 1058k 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 1178k
Configuration Details
To receive the configuration details, execute a GET request in the following format:
To fetch the complete system information, execute a GET request in the following format:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock --request GET http://localhost/api/v1/system/describe
Example:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock --request GET http://localhost/api/v1/system/describe | jq % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 5588 0 5588 0 0 42133 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 42015
CPU Information
To fetch information related to CPU, execute a GET request in the following format:
You can use the pmctl tool to fetch the sysctl configuration details. The following section lists the commands related to various use cases of sysctl configuration.
sysctl Configuration Details
To fetch all the sysctl configuration details in the system, use the following command in the pmctl tool:
pmctl status sysctl
Specific Variable Configuration in sysctl
To fetch a specific variable configuration in the sysctl configuration, use the following command in the pmctl tool:
pmctl status sysctl k <InputKey>
or
pmctl status sysctl key <InputKey>
Example:
>pmctl status sysctl k fs.file-max
fs.file-max: 9223372036854775807
Variable Configuration in sysctl
To fetch all the variable configuration in the sysctl configuration based on the input pattern, use the following command in the pmctl tool:
pmctl status sysctl p <InputPatern>
or
pmctl status sysctl pattern <InputPatern>
Example:
pmctl status sysctl p net.ipv6.route.gc{
"net.ipv6.route.gc_elasticity":"9",
"net.ipv6.route.gc_interval":"30",
"net.ipv6.route.gc_min_interval":"0",
"net.ipv6.route.gc_min_interval_ms":"500",
"net.ipv6.route.gc_thresh":"1024",
"net.ipv6.route.gc_timeout":"60"
}
Add or Update Variable Configuration in sysctl
To add or Update a variable configuration in the sysctl configuration, use the following command in the pmctl tool.
pmctl sysctl u -k <InputKey> -v <InputValue> -f <InputFile>
or
pmctl sysctl update key <InputKey> value <InputValue> filename <InputFile>
Examples:
pmctl sysctl u -k fs.file-max -v 65566 -f 99-sysctl.conf
pmctl sysctl u -k fs.file-max -v 65566
Remove Variable Configuration in sysctl
To remove a variable configuration in the sysctl configuration, use the following command in the pmctl tool:
To load sysctl configuration files, execute a POST request in the following format:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock --request POST --data '{"apply":true,"files":["<fileName>","<fileName>"]}' http://localhost/api/v1/system/sysctl/load
Example:
>curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock --request POST --data '{"apply":true,"files":["99-sysctl.conf","75-sysctl.conf"]}' http://localhost/api/v1/system/sysctl/load
16.4.3 - Network Management
GET Method
Network Details
To fetch complete network details, execute a GET request in the following format:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock --request GET http://localhost/api/v1/network/describe | jq % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 5238 0 5238 0 0 88919 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 90310
root@photon [ ~/4.0/photon ]# curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock http://localhost/api/v1/network/netlink/route | jq % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 1407 100 1407 0 0 996k 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 1374k
To fetch the network DNS status, use the following command in pmctl:
>pmctl status network dns
Global
DNS: 8.8.8.1 8.8.8.2
DNS Domains: test3.com test4.com . localdomain . localdomain
Link 2 (ens33)
Current DNS Server: 172.16.61.2
DNS Servers: 172.16.61.2
Link 3 (ens37)
Current DNS Server: 172.16.61.2
DNS Servers: 172.16.61.2
Network iostat Status
To fetch the network iostat status, use the following command in pmctl:
>pmctl network remove-netdev ipvlan1 dev ens37 kind ipvlan
Configure link using pmctl
Use the following commands to configure links using the pmctl command.
Configure Link MACAddress
pmctl link set-mac dev <deviceName> macpolicy <MACAddressPolicy> macaddr <MACAddress>
Example:
>pmctl link set-mac dev eth0 macpolicy none macaddr 00:a0:de:63:7a:e6
Configure Link Name
pmctl link set-name dev <deviceName> namepolicy <NamePolicy> name <Name>
Example:
>pmctl link set-name dev ens37 namepolicy mac,kernel,database,onboard,keep,slot,path
Configure Link AlternativeNames
pmctl link set-name dev <deviceName> altnamespolicy <AlternativeNamesPolicy> altname <AlternativeName>
Example:
>pmctl link set-alt-name dev ens37 altnamespolicy mac,database,onboard,slot,path
Configure Link ChecksumOffload
pmctl link set-csum-offload dev <deviceName> rco <ReceiveCheksumOffload> tco <TransmitChecksumOffload>
Example:
>pmctl link set-csum-offload dev ens37 rxco true txco true
Configure Link TCPSegmentationOffload
pmctl link set-tcp-offload dev <deviceName> tcpso <TCPSegmentationOffload> tcp6so <TCP6SegmentationOffload>
Example:
>pmctl link set-tcp-offload dev ens37 tcpso true tcp6so true
Configure Link GenericOffload
pmctl link set-generic-offload dev <deviceName> gso <GenericSegmentationOffload> gro <GenericReceiveOffload> grohw <GenericReceiveOffloadHardware> gsomaxbytes <GenericSegmentOffloadMaxBytes> gsomaxseg <GenericSegementOffloadMaxSegments>
Example:
>pmctl link set-generic-offload dev ens37 gso true gro true grohw false gsomaxbytes 65536 gsomaxseg 65535
Configure Link VLANTAG
pmctl link set-vlan-tags dev <deviceName> rxvlanctaghwacl <ReceiveVLANCTAGHardwareAcceleration> txvlanctaghwacl <TransmitVLANCTAGHardwareAcceleration> rxvlanctagfilter <ReceiveVLANCTAGFilter> txvlanstaghwacl <TransmitVLANSTAGHardwareAcceleration>
Example:
>pmctl link set-vlan-tags dev ens37 rxvlanctaghwacl true txvlanctaghwacl false rxvlanctagfilter true txvlanstaghwacl true
Configure Link Channels
pmctl link set-channel dev <deviceName> rxch <RxChannels> txch <TxChannels> oth <OtherChannels> coch <CombinedChannels>
Example:
>pmctl link set-channel dev ens37 rxch 1024 txch 2045 och 45678 coch 32456
Configure Link Buffers
pmctl link set-buffer dev <deviceName> rxbufsz <RxBufferSize> rxmbufsz <RxMiniBufferSize> rxjbufsz <RxJumboBufferSize> txbufsz <TxBufferSize>
Example:
>pmctl link set-buffer dev ens37 rxbufsz 100009 rxmbufsz 1998 rxjbufsz 10999888 txbufsz 83724
Configure Link Queues
pmctl link set-queue dev <deviceName> rxq <ReceiveQueues> txq <TransmitQueues> txqlen <TransmitQueueLength>
Example:
>pmctl link set-queue dev ens37 rxq 4096 txq 4096 txqlen 4294967294
Configure Link FlowControls
pmctl link set-flow-ctrl dev <deviceName> rxfctrl <RxFlowControl> txfctrl <TxFlowControl> anfctrl <AutoNegotiationFlowControl>
Example:
>pmctl link set-flow-ctrl dev ens37 rxfctrl true txfctrl true anfctrl true
Configure Link UseAdaptiveCoalesce
pmctl link set-adpt-coalesce dev <deviceName> uarxc <UseAdaptiveRxCoalesce> uatxc <UseAdaptiveTxCoalesce>
Example:
>pmctl link set-adpt-coalesce dev ens37 uarxc true uatxc true
Configure Link ReceiveCoalesce
pmctl link set-rx-coalesce dev <deviceName> rxcs <RxCoalesceSec> rxcsirq <RxCoalesceIrqSec> rxcslow <RxCoalesceLowSec> rxcshigh <RxCoalesceHighSec>
Example:
>pmctl link set-rx-coalesce dev ens37 rxcs 23 rxcsirq 56 rxcslow 5 rxcshigh 76788
Configure Link TransmitCoalesce
pmctl link set-tx-coalesce dev <deviceName> txcs <TxCoalesceSec> txcsirq <TxCoalesceIrqSec> txcslow <TxCoalesceLowSec> txcshigh <TxCoalesceHighSec>
Example:
>pmctl link set-tx-coalesce dev ens37 txcs 23 txcsirq 56 txcslow 5 txcshigh 76788
Configure Link ReceiveMaxCoalescedFrames
pmctl link set-rx-coald-frames dev <deviceName> rxcmf <RxMaxCoalescedFrames> rxcmfirq <RxMaxCoalescedIrqFrames> rxcmflow <RxMaxCoalescedLowFrames> rxcmfhigh <RxMaxCoalescedHighFrames>
Example:
>pmctl link set-rx-coald-frames dev ens37 rxmcf 23 rxmcfirq 56 rxmcflow 5 rxmcfhigh 76788
Configure Link TransmitMaxCoalescedFrames
pmctl link set-tx-coald-frames dev <deviceName> txcmf <TxMaxCoalescedFrames> txcmfirq <TxMaxCoalescedIrqFrames> txcmflow <TxMaxCoalescedLowFrames> txcmfhigh <TxMaxCoalescedHighFrames>
Example:
>pmctl link set-tx-coald-frames dev ens37 txmcf 23 txmcfirq 56 txmcflow 5 txmcfhigh 76788
Configure Link CoalescePacketRate
pmctl link set-coalesce-pkt dev <deviceName> cprlow <CoalescePacketRateLow> cprhigh <CoalescePacketRateHigh> cprsis <CoalescePacketRateSampleIntervalSec>
Example:
>pmctl link set-coalesce-pkt dev ens37 cprlow 1000 cprhigh 32456 cprsis 102
Configure Other Links
You can configure links for Alias, Description, port, duplex, and so on.
pmctl link set-link dev ens37 alias <Alias> desc <Description> mtub <MTUBytes> bits <BitsPerSecond> duplex <Duplex> auton <AutoNegotiation> wol <WakeOnLan> wolpassd <WakeOnLanPassword> port <Port> advertise <Advertise> lrxo <LargeReceiveOffload> ntf <NTupleFilter> ssbcs <StatisticsBlockCoalesceSec>
Example:
>pmctl link set-link dev ens37 alias ifalias desc configdevice mtub 10M bits 5G duplex full auton no wol phy,unicast,broadcast,multicast,arp,magic,secureon wolpassd cb:a9:87:65:43:21 port mii advertise 10baset-half,10baset-full,20000basemld2-full lrxo true ntf true ssbcs 1024
Ethtool status
To fetch the Ethtool Status, use the following command:
\#Get Ethtool all status
pmctl status ethtool <LINK>
Example:
>pmctl status ethtool ens37
\#Get Ethtool status based on action
pmctl status ethtool <LINK> <ACTION>
Example:
>pmctl status ethtool ens37 bus
16.4.4 - User, Group, and Host Management
POST Method
Add a Group
To add a group, execute a POST request in the following format:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock --request POST --data '{"Name":"photon","Gid":"1125"}' http://localhost/api/v1/system/group/add
The following table lists the parameter:
Parameter
Description
Gid
ID of the group that you want to add.
Name
Name of the group that you want to add.
Example:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock --request POST --data '{"Name":"photon","Gid":"1125"}' http://localhost/api/v1/system/group/add
To modify the name of a group, execute a PUT request in the following format:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock --request PUT --data '{"Name":"photon6","NewName":"photon33"}' http://localhost/api/v1/system/group/modify
Example:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock --request PUT --data '{"Name":"photon6","NewName":"photon33"}' http://localhost/api/v1/system/group/modify
GET Method
Host Details
To fetch the details of the host, execute a GET request in the following format:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock --request GET http://localhost/api/v1/system/hostname/describe
Example:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock --request GET http://localhost/api/v1/system/hostname/describe | jq % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 585 100 585 0 0 8374 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 8478
Login Status
You can use the pmctl tool to get login details of users. The following section lists the commands you can use to get the user details.
List Users
To list all the logged in users, use the following command in the pmctl tool:
>pmctl status login user
List Sessions
To list all the logged in sessions, use the following command in the pmctl tool:
>pmctl status login session
Get User based on UID
To get the status of users based on user ID, use pmctl command in the following format:
pmctl status login user <UID>
Example:
>pmctl status login user 2
Get Session based on ID
To get the status of logged in sessions based on the users ID, use the pmctl command in the following format:
pmctl status login session <ID>
Example:
>pmctl status login session 1000
Group Details Using pmctl tool
You can get the group details using commands in pmctl tools. The following section lists the commands you can use in the pmctl tool to get various group details.
Get all Group Details
To fetch all the group details, use the following command in the the pmctl tool.
>pmctl status group
Gid: 0
Name: root
Gid: 1
Name: daemon
Gid: 2
Name: bin
Gid: 3
Name: sys
Gid: 4
Name: adm
.
.
.
Gid: 1001
Name: photon-mgmt
Get specific Group Details
To fetch specific group details, use the following commands in the pmctl tool:
pmctl status group <GroupName>
or
pmctl status group <GroupName>
Example:
>pmctl status group photon-mgmt
Gid: 1001
Name: photon-mgmt
Add a new Group
To add a new group, use the following command in the pmctl tool:
pmctl group add <GroupName> <Gid>
or
pmctl group add <GroupName>
Remove a Group
To remove a group, us the followong command in the omctl tool:
pmctl group remove <GroupName> <Gid>
or
pmctl group remove <GroupName>
Group Details Using cURL command
The following section list the cURL commands that you can use to fetch the groups details.
Get all Group information
To fetch the group details, execute a GET request in the following format:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock --request GET http://localhost/api/v1/system/group/view
Get particuller Group information.
To fetch a specific group details, execute a GET request in the following format:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock --request GET http://localhost/api/v1/system/group/view/<GroupName>
User Details Using pmctl Tool
You can use the pmctl tool to get the user details. The following section lists the commands to get the user details.
Get all User Details
To get all the user details, use the following command in the pmctl tool:
>pmctl status user
User Name: root
Uid: 0
Gid: 0
GECOS: root
Home Directory: /root
User Name: daemon
Uid: 1
Gid: 1
GECOS: daemon
Home Directory: /usr/sbin
User Name: bin
Uid: 2
Gid: 2
GECOS: bin
Home Directory: /bin
User Name: sys
Uid: 3
Gid: 3
GECOS: sys
Home Directory: /dev
User Name: photon-mgmt
Uid: 1001
Gid: 1001
Home Directory: /home/photon-mgmt
Add a New User
To add a new user, use the following command in the pmctl tool:
pmctl user add <UserName> home-dir <HomeDir> groups <groupsList> uid <Uid> gid <Gid> shell <Shell> password <xxxxxxx>
or
pmctl user a <UserName> -d <HomeDir> -grp <groupsList> -u <Uid> -g <Gid> -s <Shell> -p <xxxxxxx>
Remove a User
To remove a user, use the following command in the pmctl tool:
pmctl user remove <UserName>
or
pmctl user r <UserName>
GET User Details
To fetch user details, execute a GET request in the following format:
curl --unix-socket /run/photon-mgmt/mgmt.sock --request GET http://localhost/api/v1/system/user/view
16.4.5 - Package Management
You can use the pmctl commands to manage the available packages and perform various actions on the packages. The following section lists the pmctl commands for various services related to package management.
List all packages
To list all the packages, use the following command in pmctl:
pmctl pkg list
Example:
>pmctl pkg list
List specific packages
To list a specific package, use the following command in pmctl:
pmctl pkg list <pkg>
Example:
>pmctl pkg list lsof
Package Details
To get the details of a specific package, use the following command in pmctl:
pmctl pkg info <pkg>
Example:
pmctl pkg info lsof
Download metadata
To download the package metadata, use the following command in pmctl:
pmctl pkg makecache
Example:
>pmctl pkg makecache
Clean cache
To clean the package cache, use the following command in pmctl:
pmctl pkg clean
Example:
>pmctl pkg clean
List repositories
To list the repositories, use the following command in pmctl:
pmctl pkg repolist
Example:
pmctl pkg repolist
Search packages
To search a specific package, use the following command in pmctl:
pmctl pkg search <pattern>
Example:
pmctl pkg search lsof
Get update info
To get the update details of the packages, use the following commands in pmctl:
To get the netstat details, use the following command in pmctl:
pmctl status proc netstat <PROTOCOL>
Example:
>pmctl status proc netstat tcp
Process status
To get the process status details, use the following command in pmctl:
pmctl status proc process <PID> <PROPERTY>
Example:
>pmctl status proc process 88157 pid-memory-percent
Protopidstat status
To get the protopidstat status details, use the following command in pmctl:
pmctl status proc protopidstat <PID> <PROTOCOL>
Example:
>pmctl status proc protopidstat 89502 tcp
16.5 - Writing a Plugin
photon-mgmtd is designed with a robust plugin-based architecture in mind. You can easily add and remove modules to photon-mgmtd. The plugins are separate modules with well-defined interfaces that make implementing application features easier. You can create custom versions of an application with minimal source code modifications.
You can perform the following steps to write a plugin:
Choose a namespace under plugins directory (systemd, system, proc) where you want to put your module.
Write the sub router. For example, plugins/systemd/
Write your module: module.go and module_router.go
Write RegisterRouterModule
Register RegisterRouterModule with the parent router.
For example, for login registered with RegisterRouterSystem under system namespace, write login.RegisterRouterLogin.
You can use the pmctl tool to view and configure system, network, and service status. The following example illustrates how to view the status:
Service status:
❯ pmctl service status nginx.service
Name: nginx.service
Description: The nginx HTTP and reverse proxy server
MainPid: 45732
LoadState: loaded
ActiveState: active
SubState: running
UnitFileState: disabled
StateChangeTimeStamp: Sun Oct 31 12:02:02 IST 2021
ActiveEnterTimestamp: Sun Oct 31 12:02:02 IST 2021
InactiveExitTimestamp: Sun Oct 31 12:02:02 IST 2021
ActiveExitTimestamp: 0
InactiveExitTimestamp: Sun Oct 31 12:02:02 IST 2021
Active: active (running) since Sun Oct 31 12:02:02 IST 2021
System status:
❯ pmctl status system
System Name: Zeus
Kernel: Linux (5.14.0-0.rc7.54.fc36.x86_64) #1 SMP Mon Aug 23 13:55:32 UTC 2021
Chassis: vm
Hardware Model: VMware Virtual Platform
Hardware Vendor: VMware, Inc.
Product UUID: 979e4d56b63718b18534e112e64cb18
Operating System: VMware Photon OS/Linux
Operating System Home URL: https://vmware.github.io/photon/
Systemd Version: v247.10-3.ph4
Architecture: x86-64
Virtualization: vmware
Network State: routable (carrier)
Network Online State: online
DNS: 172.16.130.2
Address: 172.16.130.132/24 on link ens33
172.16.130.131/24 on link ens33
fe80::3279:c56d:55f9:aed7/64 on link ens33
172.16.130.138/24 on link ens37
Gateway: 172.16.130.2 on link ens37
172.16.130.2 on link ens33
Uptime: Running Since (2 days, 3 hours, 8 minutes) Booted (Wed Dec 22 15:57:24 IST 2021) Users (9) Proc (284)
Memory: Total (13564788736) Used (13564788736) Free (589791232) Available (9723891712)
The Photon OS Installer is an initiative that aims to separate out installer source code from the Photon project and use it as a python library. You can use this Photon OS Installer project to create a photon-installer binary that can install Photon OS when invoked with the appropriate arguments.
Features
You can use the Photon OS Installer to perform the following tasks:
Generate Photon Installer executable
Create Photon Images (ISO, GCE, AMI, AZURE, OVA, and so on)
Make Photon Installer Source code installable through the pip interface and use it as a python library.
Dependencies
The Photon OS installer has the following dependencies:
Build Dependecies:
python3
python3-pyinstaller
python3-setuptools
python3-devel
python3-requests
python3-cracklib
python3-curses
Run time dependecies:
dosfstools
efibootmgr
glibc
gptfdisk
grub2
kpartx
lvm2
zlib
cdrkit
findutils
Note: If the architecture is x86, then we need to add grub2-pc also in runtime dependency.
Building from source
To build the Photon OS Installer executable on Photon OS, run the following commands:
