Photon OS Installer Overview

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:

➜  ~ tdnf install -y python3 python3-setuptools python3-pyinstaller
➜  ~ git clone https://github.com/vmware/photon-os-installer.git
➜  ~ cd photon-os-installer
➜  ~ pyinstaller --onefile photon-installer.spec

To build the Photon Installer executable on other distros, run the following commands:

➜  ~ pip3 install setuptools pyinstaller
➜  ~ git clone https://github.com/vmware/photon-os-installer.git
➜  ~ cd photon-os-installer
➜  ~ pyinstaller --onefile photon-installer.spec

You can find the generated executable in the dist directory created.

Presently, you can build the following images with the Photon OS Installer:

To build Photon Cloud images using Photon OS Installer, run the following commands:

➜  ~ pip3 install git+https://github.com/vmware/photon-os-installer.git
➜  ~ git clone https://github.com/vmware/photon.git
➜  ~ cd photon
➜  ~ make image IMG_NAME=ami

To use Photon OS Installer as a python library, run the following commands:

import photon_installer
from photon_installer.installer import Installer
import json
with open('path_to_file/config.json') as f:
    install_config = json.load(f)
installer = Installer(working_directory='/root/photon/stage/ova', repo_paths='/root/photon/stage/RPMS', log_path='/root/photon/stage/LOGS')
installer.configure(install_config)
installer.execute()

You can refer to the sample installation configuration files on the following page: Sample Kickstart Files

Developers or contributors can refer to the Photon OS Installer project here: Photo OS Installer