Move image loading to installation phase and remove firstboot service #148
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Podman will be useful on non cluster hosts. Signed-off-by: Florent CARLI <florent.carli@rte-france.com>
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dupremathieu
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Jan 30, 2026
Container image loading was previously handled by a custom firstboot system service due to Docker’s requirement for a running daemon. This was necessary during NFS-root-based installations, where docker load could not be executed at install time. By standardizing on Podman, which does not rely on a system service, images can now be loaded directly during the installation phase using podman load. This allows us to remove the firstboot service entirely and significantly simplify the installation and initialization process. Dropping Docker support for build_debian_iso is a prerequisite for this change, but the main goal of this commit is to streamline image provisioning by performing it during installation rather than at first boot. Signed-off-by: Florent CARLI <florent.carli@rte-france.com>
This it to explain the aardvark-dns dependency Signed-off-by: Florent CARLI <florent.carli@rte-france.com>
This is to not have to repeat "sudo" everytime Signed-off-by: Florent CARLI <florent.carli@rte-france.com>
Signed-off-by: Florent CARLI <florent.carli@rte-france.com>
This has nothing to do in the SEAPATH_HOST class which is also for standalone machines Signed-off-by: Florent CARLI <florent.carli@rte-france.com>
the fai-cd binary changed so we need to adapt our patch Signed-off-by: Florent CARLI <florent.carli@rte-france.com>
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This pull request aims to simplify the image provisioning process by moving image loading from a firstboot system service to the installation phase itself. This is a draft, because it requires dropping docker support for build_debian_iso.
Historically, Docker has required a system service running as root. When installing a system from an NFSROOT, this prevents us from running docker load on the target system, as the Docker daemon is not available at that stage. To work around this limitation, we introduced a dedicated firstboot service responsible for loading container images during the first boot of the machine.
While functional, this approach adds significant complexity to the installation process.
Podman does not require a system service, which is already beneficial from a security standpoint. More importantly in our case, it allows container images to be loaded directly using podman load from the NFSROOT during the installation phase.
By relying only on Podman, we can therefore load images at install time and completely remove the need for a custom firstboot service. This greatly simplifies the overall workflow and makes the system initialization more straightforward and robust.
Dropping Docker support for build_debian_iso is a prerequisite to enable this change, but the primary objective of this pull request is to move image loading to the installation phase and eliminate the firstboot mechanism.