Bare metal with wifi network installation

[Aleksandar Kostadinov]

Hi,

I decided to try CoreOS for my home bastion server as a cool way to keep configuration in one place and reproducibly be able to provision this and other machines in the future. I see troubles how should I layer RPMs though. The way I see in docs [1] is to create a service.

But then I want to install:
* NetworkManager-...
* ddclient

The issue is apparently bigger with NetworkManager because the packages need to be there before there is a network to install packages.

My question is whether it is possible to layer additional packages with butane/ignition at installation time so that I don't need a package installation service and I can have a wifi network operational after install?

I see that in the installation media the network manager modules are missing to establish a wifi connection. It is fine to do initial provisioning over cable. But I want to install the thing, bring it at it's desired destination, power it and expect it to work.

btw bonus task is not to store wifi password inside initrd. Also I have another password for ddclient in butane. Can this also be protected? By protected I mean to be on the LUKS encrypted root that butane seems to support.

Thank you!

[1] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-coreos/os-extensions/

[Jonathan Lebon]

Hi,

Thanks for trying out FCOS!

On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 3:00 PM Aleksandar Kostadinov
 wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I decided to try CoreOS for my home bastion server as a cool way to keep configuration in one place and reproducibly be able to provision this and other machines in the future. I see troubles how should I layer RPMs though. The way I see in docs [1] is to create a service.
>
> But then I want to install:
> NetworkManager-...
> ddclient
>
> The issue is apparently bigger with NetworkManager because the packages need to be there before there is a network to install packages.
>
> My question is whether it is possible to layer additional packages with butane/ignition at installation time so that I don't need a package installation service and I can have a wifi network operational after install?

We don't have a streamlined way to do this currently. See the
discussions in https://github.com/coreos/fedora-coreos-tracker/issues/862.
I've added a comment there which should help:

https://github.com/coreos/fedora-coreos-tracker/issues/862#issuecomment-1096...
> I see that in the installation media the network manager modules are missing to establish a wifi connection. It is fine to do initial provisioning over cable. But I want to install the thing, bring it at it's desired destination, power it and expect it to work.
>
> btw bonus task is not to store wifi password inside initrd. Also I have another password for ddclient in butane. Can this also be protected? By protected I mean to be on the LUKS encrypted root that butane seems to support.

You can turn on LUKS for the rootfs or for a partition as documented
at https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-coreos/storage/#_encrypted_stora....

If you encrypt the rootfs using tpm2 binding, then you shouldn't need
networking at all in the initrd.

If you encrypt the rootfs using Tang binding, then networking is
required. It would also require rebuilding the initramfs to include
WiFi support. I'm also not sure if there's a way to safely store the
password.
> Thank you!
>
> [1] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-coreos/os-extensions/
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