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RHEL 9 Packer Template for MAAS

Introduction

The Packer template in this directory creates a RHEL 9 AMD64/ARM64 image for use with MAAS.

Prerequisites (to create the image)

  • A machine running Ubuntu 22.04+ with the ability to run KVM virtual machines.
  • qemu-utils, libnbd-bin, nbdkit and fuse2fs
  • Packer, v1.8.0 or newer
  • The RHEL 9 DVD ISO

Requirements (to deploy the image)

Customizing the Image

The deployment image may be customized by modifying http/rhel9.ks.pkrtpl.hcl. See the CentOS kickstart documentation for more information.

Building the image using a proxy

The Packer template pulls all packages from the DVD except for Canonical's cloud-init repository. To use a proxy during the installation define the KS_PROXY variable in the environment, as bellow:

export KS_PROXY=$HTTP_PROXY

Building an image

You can easily build the image using the Makefile:

make ISO=/PATH/TO/rhel-baseos-9.0-x86_64-dvd.iso

Alternatively you can manually run packer. Your current working directory must be in packer-maas/rhel9, where this file is located. Once in packer-maas/rhel9 you can generate an image with:

packer init
PACKER_LOG=1 packer build -var 'rhel9_iso_path=/PATH/TO/rhel-baseos-9.0-x86_64-dvd.iso' .

Note: rhel9.pkr.hcl is configured to run Packer in headless mode. Only Packer output will be seen. If you wish to see the installation output connect to the VNC port given in the Packer output or change the value of headless to false in rhel9.pkr.hcl.

Installation is non-interactive.

Makefile Parameters

ARCH

Defaults to x86_64 to build AMD64 compatible images. In order to build ARM64 images, use ARCH=aarch64

ISO

The path to the installation ISO image for RHEL.

TIMEOUT

The timeout to apply when building the image. The default value is set to 1h.

Uploading an image to MAAS

maas $PROFILE boot-resources create \
    name='rhel/rhel9' title='RHEL 9 Custom' \
    architecture='amd64/generic' filetype='tgz' \
    content@=rhel9.tar.gz

For ARM64, use:

maas $PROFILE boot-resources create \
    name='rhel/rhel9' title='RHEL 9 Custom' \
    architecture='arm64/generic' filetype='tgz' \
    content@=rhel9.tar.gz

Please note that, currently due to lack of support in curtin, deploying ARM64 images needs a preseed file. This is due to LP# 2090874 and currently is in the process of getting fixed.

#cloud-config
debconf_selections:
 maas: |
  {{for line in str(curtin_preseed).splitlines()}}
  {{line}}
  {{endfor}}
  
extract_commands:
  grub_install: curtin in-target -- cp -v /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/shimaa64.efi /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/shimx64.efi

late_commands:
  maas: [wget, '--no-proxy', '{{node_disable_pxe_url}}', '--post-data', '{{node_disable_pxe_data}}', '-O', '/dev/null']
  bootloader_01: ["curtin", "in-target", "--", "cp", "-v", "/boot/efi/EFI/redhat/shimaa64.efi", "/boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/bootaa64.efi"]
  bootloader_02: ["curtin", "in-target", "--", "cp", "-v", "/boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grubaa64.efi", "/boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/"]

This file needs to be saved on Region Controllers under /var/snap/maas/current/preseeds/curtin_userdata_rhel_arm64_generic_rhel9 or /etc/maas/preseeds/curtin_userdata_rhel_arm64_generic_rhel9. The last portion of this file must match the image name uploaded in MAAS.

Default Username

The default username is cloud-user