12mo ago

Do you run an image-based Server?

I use Fedora Kinoite daily and find it to be the only OS to make sense really.

I find Fedora CoreOS totally confusing (with that ignition file, no anaconda, no user password by default, like how would I set this up anywhere I dont have filesystem access to?)

But there are alternatives. I would like to build my own hardened Fedora server image that can be deployed anywhere (i.e. any PC to turn into a secure and easy out-of-the-box server).

As modern server often uses containers anyways, I think an atomic server only makes sense, as damn Debian is just a pain to use.

Experiences, recommendations?

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What makes Debian a pain to use on servers?
- Automatic updates are overcomplex and not even preinstalled. Install a package, change some configs, so some more.
  I dealt with it and its annoying.
  And there is a lot more that is completely manual with no good default presets
  
  cron
  run as superuser script.sh
  apt get updates
  apt get upgrade -y
  ??? profit?
  
  unattended-upgrades is annoying? How so?

NixOS works really well as an image based server. Use nixos-generate to create a pre-configured image and put it on a flash drive/PXE share, and you're good to go. Automatic updates are a bit confusing and not really documented, but doable. I have code examples.
- I would be interested in automatic updates on NixOS!
  
  This wiki page has an example on how to do automatic updates on a normal install of nixos:
  https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Automatic_system_upgrades
  But this won't work for nixos-generate because nixos-generate doesn't have a configuration.nix file in the booted system.
  Here is the code I use for my nixos-generate flake that I use to generate all of the nixos images in my homelab:
  https://codeberg.org/jlh/h5b/src/commit/763a873c5bb7a4706ad021ea5ac3634b4efeadce/nodes/common.nix#L113
  The way this works is that it includes the flake source code as a folder in the nix store on the booted system, and the nixos-upgrade timer will then use the flake to build an updated version of itself. Note that nixos-generate uses the packages output of the flake, while nixos-upgrade uses the nixosConfigurations output of the flake. I have written the flake so that they build identical systems, but it means there's some code that I had to write twice in flake.nix.
  Feel free to try it out yourself, though note that you will probably have to rip out the agenix stuff to get it to build.
  Nixos isnt really that user friendly yet, but insanely powerful once you understand how it works. Feel free to ask questions if anything seems confusing.

You can use Fedora IoT which is essentially rpm-ostree based Fedora Server. It would be less confusing if it was just named Fedora Atomic Server.
- This new distribution of Fedora is FAT!
- Omg yes thats true. Thanks!
  But CoreOS is also using rpm-ostree, how are they different?
  
  I didn't try CoreOS as I didn't even get how to set it up. As I understand it, it uses a completely different workflow for administering the system compared to regular distros.

the only OS to make sense really
How does it make more sense than Fedora KDE?
- I want a server haha.
  And yes, atomic ftw.
- Because containers (Distrobox, Flatpak, etc.) are bae.
  You can read my post I made a while ago for more information: https://feddit.de/post/8234416
  Once you "get" image based distros, you probably never want to go back. Traditional distros just feel... off now for me.
  Containerisation is the biggest strength in Linux, we use it all the time on servers, so why not on the desktop?
  Atomic OSs just make more sense for me, not only because of security/ bug/ whatever reasons, no, also because they feel simpler and are pretty convenient and robust.
  
  Interesting. I didn't realize it was structured this way. I thought it was similar to NixOS for some reason.

@Pantherina i use fedora kinoite and yeah it's really awesome! new packages and a safe system.
I wanted to use Fedora CoreOS on my server but no providers offer it so I ended up installing AlmaLinux instead. But yeah the ignition file setup is really painful. tried in a vm but never managed to get everything i wanted. i'm gonna stick with enterprise linux until they make it easier, i think
- I tried IOT too and it the bootloader didnt install.
  Then I just installed Atomic Sway (because not that much bloat), and before logging in rebased to secureblue server-main-userns-hardened. It worked but I have no DNS? Damn...
  
  @Pantherina have you checked if systemd-resolved is working properly and that systemd-networkd or networkmanager is used? only one of them shall be used. i had a similar issue when upgrading from 38 to 39 because then both were active. i'm using NetworkManager on my desktop and disabled systemd-networkd and then it worked..

I made a similar post a few weeks ago.
I will try uBlue core and give you all a small update about it.
I feel similar about Debian. It's a good distro for sure and I don't have any issues with it for server use, but somehow, I still don't like it somehow. RPM-/ OSTree based distros are more my taste, and I don't even know why.
- I am completely confused about ublue currently, (okay all they did is remove the image list, its the same on Github)
  Debian is old and crusty with all its tooling. Apt sucks, automatic updates are strange, there are no snapshots afaik, it uses ext4, its like Fedora was 10 years ago
  
  People who use Debian servers typically just install Docker on a basic system and then use containers. Which is exactly the same concept that you describe.
  What's the filesystem of the server got to do with anything? You can take snapshots in half a dozen different ways, everybody uses the method they're comfortable with.

37 comments