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Bare Metal Appliance Store

Bare Metal Appliance Store is a unique feature in the recovery firmware that simplifies the process of downloading and installing an operating system image.

Advantages:

  • Download the latest available image for a distribution directly from the internet.
  • Avoids having to use image writer software from another machine and having to use SD cards/USB flash etc.
  • Self-hosting, no need for an external PXE server
    • Good for remote sites where the Ten64 is the sole internet connection (e.g using a cellular modem installed inside the Ten64)
  • Some possibilies to script and customize the process for your needs
  • Ability to setup your own image registry

Disadvantages:

  • No access to distribution installer settings (e.g partitioning, locales, disk encryption)
    • Installed environment is generally similar to cloud server images
    • It is planned to implement some pre- and post- boot (e.g cloud-init) manipulation features in future recovery versions

The bare metal appliance store shares the same backend as the μVirt appliance store - images listings are maintained in the same arm image registry.

Note that the default registry has the ability to mark images as compatible/incompatible with hardware so not all appliances wil be presented for install. (You can use appstore-list --show-all to show all appliances in the registry)

Demo - from power on to Debian login prompt

Usage

Once you have booted into the recovery firmware, make sure you have internet access (e.g use set-wan):

recovery# set-wan eth8

You can then use appstore_list to download the listings (if not already downloaded) and list available images:

recovery# appstore-list

Lists not downloaded, will attempt to download
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  8951  100  8951    0     0  15353      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 95223
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  2316  100  2316    0     0  24903      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 24903
Repository traverse
        traverse-openwrt-ls1088         :Traverse OpenWrt build for LS1088 (disk devices)
        muvirt-ls1088           :muvirt for LS1088 (disk install)
        traverse-debian-buster          :Traverse Debian Buster image
        traverse-opensuse-151           :Traverse openSuSE 15.1 image
Repository officialdistro
        opensuse-tumbleweed-jeos-devel          :openSuSE JeOS Tumbleweed - JeOS-devel variant
        opensuse-tumbleweed-jeos                :openSuSE JeOS Tumbleweed - JeOS variant
        opensuse-leap-15.2-jeos         :openSuSE JeOS Leap-15.2 - JeOS variant
        [8 entries hidden due to incompatibility with this platform]

Then using baremetal-deploy you can write the image to a disk:

baremetal-deploy traverse-debian-buster /dev/nvme0n1

Checking compatibility...


Appliance to deploy: traverse-debian-buster - Traverse Debian Buster image
Device to deploy to: /dev/nvme0n1
Downloading image


! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
About to write image to device /dev/nvme0n1 if you don't want this, Ctrl-C now!
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
[  158.521024]  nbd0: p1 p2 p3
[  169.985106] block nbd0: NBD_DISCONNECT
[  169.988881] block nbd0: Disconnected due to user request.
[  169.994284] block nbd0: shutting down sockets

You can then reboot and enjoy your new operating system.