On Tue, 2024-04-09 at 10:00 -0400, Neal Gompa wrote:
On Tue, Apr 9, 2024 at 9:53 AM Tadej Janež <tadej.j(a)nez.si>
wrote:
>
> Hey Fedora Cloud WG!
>
> Firstly, thanks for providing Fedora for the popular cloud
> providers!
>
> Since Fedora 35, the Fedora Cloud images use btrfs by default [1].
> For my deployments, I would like to use ext4 or xfs, so my question
> are:
> 1) Is it possible to change the root file system at deploy time?
> 2) If not, how could one change the cloud images to use a different
> root file system?
>
It is not possible to change at deployment time, you would need to
build your own custom images.
Ok, thanks for clarifying!
Our images are now defined here:
https://pagure.io/fedora-kiwi-descriptions/blob/rawhide/f/teams/cloud/clo...
If you want to use something else, you'd want to have your own
version
of the definitions and modify that file to use the filesystem of your
choice.
I see, one would need to modify the "filesystem" key of the selected
Cloud-Base-<provider> image.
Are there instructions on how to build a custom cloud image?
However, even if I can easily build a custom cloud image, the overhead
of maintaining custom cloud images is very high.
For every Fedora release and cloud provider, I would need to build the
image and then with IaC (e.g. Terraform), handle uploading the custom
image and using it...
Is there a particular reason you want to use ext4 or xfs for your
rootfs? Typically the pattern we see is that people attach a
secondary
volume or use S3 and put their data on that instead of the rootfs.
Yes, I use that pattern as well. Usually, /srv or /var would be on a
separate block storage and formatted with the file system of choice.
The reasons why I would want to use, e.g. ext4 for the rootfs, would
be:
1. Familiarity. I've mainly been using ext4 or LVM+ext4 (with LUKS
underneath) for the last 2 decades. I know the tools and I know what
"care" such filesystems need.
2. Maturity. Ext2/3/4 have been round for quite longer than btrfs and
there are very little "unknowns" or "surprises" with it.
3. Simplicity. When provisioning machines with a cloud provider, I
actually don't need the LVM+ext4 combination because the cloud provider
would typically handle the things LVM would handle for a non-cloud
machine, e.g. increasing the block storage size, snapshotting, ...
Please, don't read this as a critique against btrfs, just me trying to
explain why I would find it nicer to just use ext4 for the rootfs as
well.
Regards,
Tadej