NS8 release and pre-made images

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Congratulations are in order first of all, for releasing.

Question:
Are the pre-made images still a “quick n dirty” alternative to a clean Linux install and adding NS8 over it?
(as someone said for NS8 beta)

(I hope the reply is “no”)

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I prefer to install a linux first and choose all my specific options and then trigger the script to install NS8

But for what I know the prebuilt image works

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I think the pre-built image was built by @amygos and @giacomo for cloud-init provisioning, however this use case is still not documented enough. Anybody is using it?

Instead, starting from the community feedback [complains], I tried to explain the steps required to get a shell and SSH access. I probably failed in my intent, but we can still improve the experience with the Rocky Linux pre-built image. This is the link to the relevant manual section: Installation — NS8 documentation

I wonder if we have to still prepare a cloud-init based image or switch to a different approach, like an Anaconda kickstart …or provide both approaches!

  • cloud-init could be preferred if the VM runs under platforms that support it, like Proxmox VE, see Cloud-Init FAQ - Proxmox VE. For this purpose I ask the opinion of Proxmox experts here /cc @Andy_Wismer

  • an Anaconda kickstart could be preferred by bare metal installations, because it can still require interactive steps, like creating a user and setting a password, or creating a RAID device.

    If you need to load Kickstart file automatically you can store your Kickstart file as /ks.cfg into the storage device which is accessible during the boot process and is labeled as OEMDRV. Such a device is automatically discovered during boot and the Kickstart file will be used. – Anaconda Kickstart Documentation — Anaconda 40.22 documentation

    We could provide one or more OEMDRV images (a few KB size I guess) for common use cases, or create an interactive script to generate the image… There is plenty of possible approaches.

In the end, cloud-init and kickstart differently solve the same problem: the system configuration provisioning. While cloud-init is a cross-distro solution good for VMs, kickstart is specific to Rocky Linux and aims to bare-metal. What would you prefer?

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I’ve been using the Rocky image(s) to quickly (re-)build a Proxmox VM. I have no dog in the fight over which distribution NS8 sits on top of, and if the team are building this image, then I’m hoping it’s a combination that they are very comfortable with using.

Cheers.

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Hi @davidep

Cloud-init is still “fairly” new, and not yet adopted on a broad scale.
But for virtualization, it does look a very useful concept.
Needs testing and polishing, and seems the way to go in future.

But also depends strongly on how “others” adopt this format / workflow…

I personally have not yet used it, in earlier versions of Proxmox it wasn’t as prominent as it is now.
It is more used for OpenStack, but it seems Proxmox is pushing this also.

Here is more info:

https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Cloud-Init_Support

My 2 cents
Andy