OS innovation with systemd-sysext

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 10:22:13 +0200

Flatcar Container Linux has a strong focus on backwards compatibility. Being a continuation of the CoreOS Container Linux project which started more than 10 years ago, the main design stayed as is. Flatcar ships a fixed set of software and users should rely on containers for the rest. This has proven successful but there are some scenarios where one has to extend Flatcar in ways the original design wasn’t intended for. Luckily, Flatcar still evolves, though, to make it even more suited for reliable infrastructure automation.

Extending Flatcar: Say 'Goodbye' to torcx and 'Hello' to systemd-sysext

Mon, 18 Dec 2023 10:22:13 +0200

Flatcar is a minimal, immutable, image-based operating system for fully automated, zero-touch container infrastructure. It ships the bare minimum required for running containers at scale - and usually, the answer to questions like “how do I install tool XYZ on Flatcar?” is: “run it in a container”. Sometimes though, “tool XYZ” needs to operate close to the OS itself, and it’s not feasible (or even outright impossible) to run it in a container. Good examples for such tools and applications are custom container runtimes like podman, complex control planes like Kubernetes, and vendor-specific programs like VMware’s open-vm-tools that are only useful in specific environments.

Sysext on Flatcar Container Linux

OS innovation with systemd-sysext

Extending Flatcar: Say 'Goodbye' to torcx and 'Hello' to systemd-sysext