K3OS with nix (w/o NixOS)

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1

If I where to seek to get a a nix build handle onto k3os, how would I start?

  • Ditches systemd for openRC
  • Seems to rebuild — based on docker workflows and bash scripts — quite some of the nix native build machinery

https://github.com/rancher/k3os/issues/592

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I was under the impression that one of the benefits of k3OS was it can be configured from the k3s/kubernetes that it’s running. Like coreos & flatcar I don’t think you’re meant to install anything natively, everything is meant to be ran through containers.

All configuration is done through a single cloud-init style config file that is either packaged in the image, downloaded though cloud-init or managed by Kubernetes.

I guess you could use nix to build out cloud-init style config files that can be downloaded through cloud-init.
https://github.com/rancher/k3os#configuration

Or you might be able to use nix to remaster the ISO for initial install but that’s not really what you’re aiming for :man_shrugging:
https://github.com/rancher/k3os#automated-installation

3

I once investigated on this a while ago: to my taste the auto-upgrades done arbitrarily by a in-cluster controller are a bit too much. Since we’re managing the rest of the infrastructure with morph, it would be handy to remaster the iso in a way that could be deployed nix-natively with morph along with the rest of the non-k8s infrastructure.

Thanks for your ideas! I’m trying to collect some opinions and feedback so that once I might eventually kick this off, there is a fundus to draw upon.

EDIT: I think nix based remastering also comes in handy when special kernel modules are required (in our case rtpengine with in-kernel packet forwarding).

EDIT2: Thank you for the remastering glossary. I think that’s what I’m actually aiming for. :wink:

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Glad to have helped :+1: