4장. Creating bootc-compatible base disk images by using bootc-image-builder

By using the bootc-image-builder tool, you can convert bootc images into disk images for a variety of different platforms and formats. Converting bootc images into disk images is equivalent to installing a bootc image. After you deploy these disk images to the target environment, you can update them directly from the container registry.

You can build your base images by using one of the following methods:

The bootc-image-builder tool supports generating the following image types:

bootc-image-builder uses the local container storage by default. The tool cannot pull container images from remote registries itself. To build disk images, you must make the base bootc container image available in the system’s local container registry to mount the system’s container storage into the bootc-image-builder container so it can use containers from the system storage.

Deploying from a container image is beneficial when you run VMs or servers because you can achieve the same installation result. That consistency extends across multiple different image types and platforms when you build them from the same container image. Consequently, you can minimize the effort in maintaining operating system images across platforms. You can also update systems that you deploy from these disk images by using the bootc tool, instead of re-creating and uploading new disk images with bootc-image-builder.

Although you can deploy a rhel-9-bootc image directly, you can also create your own customized images that are derived from this bootc image. The bootc-image-builder tool takes the rhel-9-bootc OCI container image as an input.