How to build and upload a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) image with Image Builder

Learn how to build a Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® (RHEL) image using the Red Hat Image Builder, then upload it to your chosen cloud service.

This learning path is for operations teams or system administrators

Developers might want to check out developers.redhat.com.

Get started on developers.redhat.com

Creating system images with RHEL Image Builder using CLI

5 mins

If you prefer to use the command line interface (CLI) for your Red Hat Enterprise Linux local instance, Image Builder can still be used to create golden images for your workflow needs. The image builder is based on the osbuild-composer upstream project and is available in RHEL as an installable package. 

What will you learn?

  • Creating RHEL images in the Image Builder service locally
  • Configuring images

What do you need before starting?

  • Red Hat account

Create an image with the CLI

  1. Install the Image Builder plugins with the following command:
    • sudo dnf install -y osbuild-composer composer-cli cockpit cockpit-composer
  2. Enable the extra services:
    • sudo systemctl enable –now cockpit cockpit.socket osbuild-composer.socket
  3. After enabling the socket, you can restart the osbuild-composer service:
    • sudo systemctl restart osbuild-composer

  4. After these steps, the web console will be enabled on port 9090 of your server, and you can access it with your browser.
  5. Once open, click the Create Image button to open the Image Builder dialogue wizard.
  6. Select your preferred RHEL release and designate your target cloud environment.
  7. Proceed through the wizard steps to register and name your image. You can register your image later if you do not currently have an activation key.

The built image can also be customized according to your organization’s specifications using Image Builder blueprints. To learn more about these options, please see this blog post. 

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