Hi all!
I’ve been using RancherOS for years as the minimal OS to host all of my containers and it’s been working great. Until today.
I updated Redis to its latest version, and got some errors. After some investigation I found that in needs Docker 20 or higher to run. RancherOS has been abandoned, and the latest version you can install is 19.
Do you fine folks know something similar to RancherOS? Thanks!
I use debian as my OS for docker host, then install docker from them as you get the most up to date version
This is my plan B in case I can’t find a lightweight distro to replace RancherOS. Thanks!
Would Alpine be an option?
That’s what I’m using right now. I am kind of curious if you are aware of any apk using tiny operating systems like alpine but that also have systemd? I want to experiement with quadlets/podman but don’t really want to lose how simple alpine is to administer and how fast it boots.
I’d suggest Alpine too. Works great for me so far.
I tried this recently and it works pretty well! I haven’t migrate my RancherOS deployment yet though. Need tiny bit more testing.
It runs entirely in RAM, administration is super simple, no ssh, easy to update/and upgrade, immutable, minimal distro designed specifically for secure container usage.
This looks super interesting. Thanks! One question though; can I still use it if I don’t want to use Kubernetes? I just want to deploy a few containers here and there. I was thinking about moving everything to Kubernetes, but it seems a bit overkill for the 10 containers I have running.
I that case, check out Fedora CoreOS.
I’ve been playing around with MicroOS, which is based off of OpenSUSE and is supposed to be the successor to RancherOS
It is a fork of CoreOS, from when they got bought by RedHat and it was abandoned (or rather morphed into being fedora based).
It is has been fairly stable for me over the past two+ years, with one systemd-resolver snarfu. The auto update being baked in from the get go is nice.
Only thing to be aware of is that Kinvolk who are the maintainers have been bought by Microsoft, though so far it has not affected anything. Also if you don’t like systemd then it is not for you, as that is more or less all the distribution is.
They are running docker 20.10.23 on the stable branch atm. https://www.flatcar.org/releases
Hello again! I am trying Flatcar, and I really like the concept. I had not used immutable distros before. I have a question: How can I apply changes to the configuration? I have a YAML file with the butane config and transpile it to a JSON file with the ignition configuration. How do I apply that new configuration? Do I have to delete the VM and start over again, or is there a way to update it inside the VM? I looked around in the official docs, but did not find anything :(
I am not using it with immutable config, so the only thing flatcar is doing is it has an A and a B partition for
/usrthat it switches between on updates (such that it can always rollback to the last working system).I only used ignition for the initial setup, after that I just ssh in to the machine and change systemd services via /etc/systemd/system (such as added new mounts, using systemd unit’s for running docker containers etc.)
Adding a user is initially done: https://www.flatcar.org/docs/latest/setup/customization/adding-users/
The idea is that all software you need to run except for systemd and some utilities (more or less what is in busybox) are run in containers, which i think was the same deal with RancerOS.
Gotcha. Thanks!
Looks good! I’ll give it a try. Thanks!
I run a Debian LXC on my Proxmox server with Portainer to manage my Docker containers. It’s small and lightweight all told.
If you want a gui to manage your containers, I use portainer (with debian as OS).
I use it too! I really like it :)
Any distribution with Docker/Podman (they’re compatible with each other) should work fine. Don’t forget to back up the data, though. But if you’re searching for a minimal distro, then use Alpine, Gentoo, or any other non-systemd distro.
I’m looking into switching over to NixOS for my k3s hosts.
