Changes/IoTSimplifiedInstaller

Guidance
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IoT Simplified Installer

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

Summary

The Fedora IoT Simplified Installer uses coreos-installer-dracut module to write an OStree commit straight to disk, without the need for a kickstart or user interaction.

Owner

• Name: Antonio Murdaca, Paul Whalen
• Email: amurdaca@redhat.com, pwhalen@fedoraproject.org

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora Linux 38
• Last updated: 2023-01-11
• FESCo issue: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
• Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
• Release notes tracker: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

The Fedora IoT Simplified Installer will use coreos-installer-dracut module to write an OStree commit straight to a disk specified in a kernel argument, without the need for a kickstart or user interaction. This type of installation is ideal for devices connected at the edge where connectivity can be slow or intermittent.

Benefit to Fedora

The addition of the Fedora IoT Simplified Installer will benefit IoT users by allowing them to create customized disk images for use on their edge devices. This feature is already available downstream, adding it to Fedora will once again bring Fedora back to the true upstream of RHEL for edge and allows testing and adoption of new functionality like FIDO Device Onboarding.

Scope

• Proposal owners:
  • Test building Fedora IoT Simplified Installer with osbuild-composer
  • Update Fedora IoT documentation with usage instructions.

• Other developers:

• Release engineering: #Releng issue number
  • N/A (not a System Wide Change)

• Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Alignment with Objectives:

Upgrade/compatibility impact

• Not applicable to this change.

How To Test

Testable by installing osbuild-composer in Fedora 38 and using the command line tool or the Cockpit web interface to create a Fedora IoT Simplified Installer iso to deploy a UEFI enabled edge device.

User Experience

This change will greatly enhance the Fedora IoT user experience by allowing users to utilize osbuild-composer and blueprints to create customized Fedora IoT deployments and leverage new features like FIDO Device Onboarding for secure zero touch device onboarding of edge devices.

Dependencies

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Contingency Plan

• Contingency deadline: Beta
• Blocks release? No.
• Blocks product? No.

Documentation

• Usage documentation to be written and included in the Fedora IoT user guide.