Provisioning Fedora CoreOS on Alibaba Cloud (Aliyun)

This guide shows how to provision new Fedora CoreOS (FCOS) nodes on Alibaba Cloud. Fedora currently does not publish Fedora CoreOS images within Alibaba Cloud, so you must download an Alibaba Cloud image from Fedora and upload it to one of your Object Storage Service (OSS) buckets.

Prerequisites

Before provisioning an FCOS machine, you must have an Ignition configuration file containing your customizations. If you do not have one, see Producing an Ignition File.

Fedora CoreOS has a default core user that can be used to explore the OS. If you want to use it, finalize its configuration by providing e.g. an SSH key.

If you do not want to use Ignition to get started, you can make use of the Afterburn support.

You also need to have access to an Alibaba Cloud account and activated Object Storage Service (OSS). The examples below use the Alibaba Cloud CLI and jq as a command-line JSON processor.

Downloading an Alibaba Cloud image

Fedora CoreOS is designed to be updated automatically, with different schedules per stream. Once you have picked the relevant stream, download, verify, and decompress the latest Alibaba Cloud image:

STREAM="stable"
coreos-installer download --decompress -s "${STREAM}" -p aliyun -f qcow2.xz

Alternatively, you can manually download an Alibaba Cloud image from the download page. Verify the download, following the instructions on that page, and decompress it.

Uploading the image to Alibaba Cloud

Create any bucket that doesn’t already exist in your Alibaba Cloud account with a globally unique name or reuse an existing bucket:
Example creating Alibaba Cloud OSS (Object Storage Service) bucket
```
REGION="ap-southeast-1"
BUCKET_NAME="my-bucket"
BUCKET_URL="oss://${BUCKET_NAME}"
aliyun oss mb "${BUCKET_URL}" --region="${REGION}" --acl=private
```

Upload an FCOS image:

Example uploading FCOS to an Alibaba Cloud OSS bucket

DOWNLOADED_IMAGE="./image.qcow2"
IMAGE_NAME="my-fcos-image"
IMAGE_BLOB="${IMAGE_NAME}.qcow2"
aliyun oss cp "${DOWNLOADED_IMAGE}" "${BUCKET_URL}/${IMAGE_BLOB}" \
    --region="${REGION}" --acl=private

Import uploaded FCOS image:

Example importing FCOS to Alibaba Cloud ECS

TASK_ID=$(aliyun ecs ImportImage \
    --region="${REGION}" \
    --DiskDeviceMapping.1.OSSBucket="${BUCKET_NAME}" \
    --DiskDeviceMapping.1.OSSObject="${IMAGE_BLOB}" \
    --ImageName="${IMAGE_NAME}" \
    | jq --raw-output .TaskId)

Wait until the image was successfully imported

Example waiting with a timeout equal to one hour

aliyun ecs DescribeTasks --region="${REGION}" --TaskIds="${TASK_ID}" \
    --waiter expr='TaskSet.Task[0].TaskStatus' to=Finished timeout=3600

Determine id of imported FCOS image:

Example determining id of the imported FCOS image

IMAGE_ID=$(aliyun ecs DescribeImages --region="${REGION}" --ImageName="${IMAGE_NAME}" \
    | jq --raw-output .Images.Image[0].ImageId)

Delete uploaded blob

Example deleting uploaded blob

aliyun oss rm "${BUCKET_URL}/${IMAGE_BLOB}" --region "${REGION}"

Creating a VSwitch

There exists no default VPCs or VSwitches in Alibaba Cloud. Hence, for creating any instances a VSwitch must exist. Pick some existing or create one with the following steps.

Create a new VPC:

Example creating a new VPC

VPC_CIDR="172.16.0.0/12"
VPC_NAME="fcos-test"
VPC_ID=$(aliyun vpc CreateVpc --region="${REGION}" \
    --CidrBlock="${VPC_CIDR}" --VpcName="${VPC_NAME}" \
    | jq --raw-output .VpcId)

Pick some availability zone for creating a VSwitch:

Example pick some availability zone

ZONE_ID=$(aliyun ecs DescribeZones --region="${REGION}" \
    | jq --raw-output .Zones.Zone[0].ZoneId)

Create a new VSwitch:

Example creating a new VSwitch

VSWITCH_CIDR="172.16.0.0/16"
VSWITCH_NAME="${VPC_NAME}"
VSWITCH_ID=$(aliyun vpc CreateVSwitch \
    --region="${REGION}" \
    --CidrBlock="${VSWITCH_CIDR}" \
    --VpcId="${VPC_ID}" \
    --VSwitchName="${VSWITCH_NAME}" \
    --ZoneId="${ZONE_ID}" \
    | jq --raw-output .VSwitchId)

Launching an ECS instance

Upload an SSH public key to Alibaba Cloud ECS

Example uploading an SSH public key

KEY_PAIR_NAME="fcos-key"
PUBLIC_KEY_PATH="<Please fill the path to your public key>"
PUBLIC_KEY_BODY=$(cat ${PUBLIC_KEY_PATH})
aliyun ecs ImportKeyPair --region="${REGION}" \
    --KeyPairName="${KEY_PAIR_NAME}" --PublicKeyBody="${PUBLIC_KEY_BODY}"

Creating an ECS instance

Example creating ECS instance

INSTANCE_NAME="my-fcos-vm"
INSTANCE_TYPE="ecs.t6-c1m1.large"
INSTANCE_ID=$(aliyun ecs CreateInstance \
    --region="${REGION}" \
    --KeyPairName="${KEY_PAIR_NAME}" \
    --ImageId="${IMAGE_ID}" \
    --InstanceName="${INSTANCE_NAME}" \
    --InstanceType="${INSTANCE_TYPE}" \
    --InternetChargeType=PayByTraffic \
    --InternetMaxBandwidthIn=5 \
    --InternetMaxBandwidthOut=5 \
    --VSwitchId="${VSWITCH_ID}" \
    | jq --raw-output .InstanceId)

Allocate a public IPv4 address for the previously created instance

Example allocating a public IP address

PUBLIC_IP=$(aliyun ecs AllocatePublicIpAddress \
    --region="${REGION}" --InstanceId="${INSTANCE_ID}" \
    | jq --raw-output .IpAddress)

Start the instance

Example starting an instance

aliyun ecs StartInstance --region="${REGION}" --InstanceId="${INSTANCE_ID}"

Wait until the instance is running

Example waiting and determining the public IP address

aliyun ecs DescribeInstanceStatus --InstanceId.1="$INSTANCE_ID" --region="${REGION}" \
    --waiter expr='InstanceStatuses.InstanceStatus[0].Status' to=Running timeout=600

Connect to the new instance via SSH
Example connecting
```
ssh core@"${PUBLIC_IP}"
```

You can start a customized instance with your Ignition file by adding the parameter --UserData=$(cat <Path to your Ignition config> | base64 -w0) to the aliyun ecs CreateInstance command that creates a new instance.

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