Bare Metal on Flatcar Container Linux

Booting Flatcar Container Linux from an ISO

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The latest Flatcar Container Linux ISOs can be downloaded from the image storage site:

The Alpha channel closely tracks master and is released frequently. The newest versions of system libraries and utilities will be available for testing. The current version is Flatcar Container Linux 4628.0.0.

Download Alpha ISO Browse Storage Site

All of the files necessary to verify the image can be found on the storage site.

Booting Flatcar Container Linux via iPXE

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

These instructions will walk you through booting Flatcar Container Linux via iPXE on real or virtual hardware. By default, this will run Flatcar Container Linux completely out of RAM. Flatcar Container Linux can also be installed to disk .

A minimum of 3 GB of RAM is required to boot Flatcar Container Linux via PXE.

Configuring iPXE

iPXE can be used on any platform that can boot an ISO image. This includes many cloud providers and physical hardware.

Booting Flatcar Container Linux via PXE

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

These instructions will walk you through booting Flatcar Container Linux via PXE on real or virtual hardware. By default, this will run Flatcar Container Linux completely out of RAM. Flatcar Container Linux can also be installed to disk .

A minimum of 3 GB of RAM is required to boot Flatcar Container Linux via PXE.

Configuring pxelinux

This guide assumes you already have a working PXE server using pxelinux . If you need suggestions on how to set a server up, check out guides for Debian , Fedora or Ubuntu .

Running Flatcar Container Linux on Raspberry Pi 4

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hardware Requirements

A Raspberry Pi 4
Form of storage, either USB and/or SD card. USB 3.0 drive is recommended for the better performance in terms of price.
Display (via micro HDMI/HDMI/Serial Cables)
Keyboard

Before we start

A word of warning:

The UEFI firmware used in this guide is an UNOFFICIAL firmware , provided under an open source BSD license.
Flatcar Container Linux support for Raspberry Pi is still in its early stages and is not thoroughly tested.
Deploy Flatcar Container Linux on the hardware for purely fun and learning.
Please follow the documentation at your own risk.

Update the EEPROM

The Raspberry PI 4 uses an EEPROM to boot the system. Before proceeding ahead, it is recommended to update the EEPROM. Raspberry Pi OS automatically updates the bootloader on system boot. In case you are using Raspberry Pi OS already, then the bootloader may be already updated.

Installing Flatcar Container Linux to disk

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Required Dependencies

If you want to use the flatcar-install script on some other environment than Flatcar Container Linux, ensure that the following binaries are present:

bash
lbzip2 or bzip2 
mount, lsblk  (often found in the util-linux package)
wget
grep
cp, dd, mkfifo, mkdir, rm, tee (often found in the GNU coreutils package or as part of busybox)
udevadm (found in systemd-udev package, or for Alpine images in eudev)
gpg, gpg2 (found in gnupg2)
gawk (often found in GNU gawk package)

Install script

There is a simple installer that will destroy everything on the given target disk and install Flatcar Container Linux. Essentially it downloads an image, verifies it with gpg, and then copies it bit for bit to disk. An installation requires at least 8 GB of usable space on the device.