Sloth

Linux provisioning, for the lazy

This is a hands-off provisioning method primarily intended for installing Arch Linux on bare-metal.

Clone this repository, build the image, and dd it to your disk.

Requirements

• cloud-utils
• edk2-ovmf
• packer
• qemu

How this works

• An ISO containing cloud-init config is created (artefacts/seed.iso)
• Packer creates a golden image (artefacts/img/packer-arch)
• The cloud-init config from seed.iso is used at first boot
• For bare-metal, an arch liveboot (artefacts/iso/packer-arch) is generated which can be copied to a USB stick, which will automatically dd the image to the specified disk
• The provisioning script (packer/http/postinst.sh) is run, which runs ansible on the machine against itself

To use this, place your ansible config under ansible/ and cloud-init files under cloud-init/. Then run make packer.

Building an image

1. Place your cloud-init configuration in cloud-init/ (see the example configuration in examples/cloud-init/).
2. Place your Ansible configuration in ansible/ (see the example configuration in examples/ansible). Make sure you have a site.yaml which will run your desired configuration.
3. Build the images using the packer target of the Makefile:

$ make packer

4. dd the resultant image artefacts/iso/packer-arch to your USB stick.
5. Boot from your USB stick, and select the disk you'd like to copy your install to. THIS WILL WIPE THE CONTENTS OF THE DISK!

The following variables can be overridden in the Makefile:

Variable	Description	Example
VERSION	The Arch ISO version to download & use for image builds	VERSION=2021.09.01
MIRROR	Log contents - freetext field	MIRROR=https://mirror.bytemark.co.uk
CRYPT	Set this to 1 to enable an encrypted root. Will prompt for password at build time.	CRYPT=1

For example, to use a specific version of the Arch ISO from a specific mirror:

make packer VERSION='2021.09.01' MIRROR='https://mirror.bytemark.co.uk'

To make an image with an encrypted root (will prompt for password when building):

$ make packer CRYPT=1

Ansible

Example configuration can be found under examples/ansible/.

The AUR module is baked into the golden image, along with yay.

This allows provisioning of packages.