linuxkit/docs/platform-packet.md

LinuxKit with bare metal on Packet

Packet is a bare metal hosting provider.

You will need to create a Packet account and a project to put this new machine into. You will also need to create an API key with appropriate read/write permissions to allow the image to boot.

Linuxkit is known to boot on the Type 0 and Type 1 servers at Packet. Support for other server types, including the Type 2A ARM server, is a work in progress.

The linuxkit run packet command can mostly either be configured via command line options or with environment variables. see linuxkit run packet --help for the options and environment variables.

Boot

LinuxKit on Packet boots the kernel+initrd output from moby via iPXE. iPXE booting requires a HTTP server on which you can store your images. At the moment there is no builtin support for this, although we are working on this too.

A simple way to host files is via a simple local http server written in Go, e.g.:

package main

import (
	"log"
	"net/http"
)

func main() {
	// Simple static webserver:
	log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(":8080", http.FileServer(http.Dir("."))))
}

and then go run this in the directory with the kernel+initrd.

The web server must be accessible from Packet. You can either run the server on another Packet machine, or use tools like ngrok to make it accessible via a reverse proxy.

You then specify the location of your http server using the -base-url command line option. For example, to boot the toplevel linuxkit.yml example:

moby build linuxkit.yml
# run the web server
# run 'ngrok http 8080' in another window
PACKET_API_KEY=<API key> linuxkit run packet -base-url http://9b828514.ngrok.io -project-id <Project ID> linuxkit

Note: It may take several minutes to deploy a new server. If you are attached to the console, you should see the BIOS and the boot messages.

Console

By default, linuxkit run packet ... will connect to the Packet SOS ("Serial over SSH") console. This requires ssh access, i.e., you must have uploaded your SSH keys to Packet beforehand.

Note: We also require that the Packet SOS host is in your known_hosts file, otherwise the connection to the console will fail. There is a Packet SOS host per zone.

You can disable the serial console access with the -console=false command line option.

Disks

At this moment the Linuxkit server boots from RAM, with no persistent storage. We are working on adding persistent storage support on Packet.

Networking

Some Packet server types have bonded networks; the current code does not support that.

Integration services and Metadata

Packet supports user state during system bringup, which enables the boot process to be more informative about the current state of the boot process once the kernel has loaded but before the system is ready for login.