Chapter 10. Enabling FIPS mode with RHEL image builder


You can create a customized image and boot a FIPS-enabled RHEL image. Before you compose the image, you must change the value of the fips directive in your blueprint.

Prerequisites

  • You are logged in as the root user or a user who is a member of the weldr group.

Procedure

  1. Create a plain text file in the Tom’s Obvious, Minimal Language (TOML) format with the following content:

    name = "system-fips-mode-enabled"
    description = "blueprint with FIPS enabled"
    version = "0.0.1"
    
    [customizations]
    fips = true
    
    [[customizations.user]]
    name = "admin"
    password = "admin"
    groups = ["users", "wheel"]
  2. Build the customized RHEL image:

    # image-builder build image-type --blueprint blueprint-name

Verification

  1. Log in to the system image with the username and password that you configured in your blueprint.
  2. Check if FIPS mode is enabled:

    $ cat /proc/sys/crypto/fips_enabled
    1
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