Chapter 9. Managing RHEL bootc images

You can change the container image reference used for upgrades by using the bootc switch command. For example, you can switch from the stage to the production tag. The bootc switch command performs the same operations as the bootc upgrade command and additionally changes the container image reference.

To manually switch an existing ostree-based container image reference, use the bootc switch command.

The rhel9/rhel-bootc image uses the dracut infrastructure to build an initial RAM disk, the initrd during the image build time. The initrd is built and included in the /usr/lib/modules/$kver/initramfs.img location inside the container.

You can use a drop-in configuration file to override the dracut configuration, and place it in /usr/lib/dracut/dracut.conf.d/<50-custom-added-modules.conf> And thus re-create initrd with the modules you want to add.

The default container image includes a pre-generated initial RAM disk (initrd) in /usr/lib/modules/$kver/initramfs.img. To regenerate the initrd, for example, to add a dracut module, follow the steps:

Installing image mode for RHEL is a one time task. You can perform any other management task, such as changing or updating the system, by pushing the changes to the container registry.

When using image mode for RHEL, you can choose to perform manual updates for your systems. Manual updates are also useful if you have an automated way to perform updates, for example, by using Ansible. Because the automatic updates are enabled by default, to perform manual updates you must turn the automatic updates off. You can do this by choosing one of the following options:

To perform manual updates you must turn off automatic updates. You can do this by choosing one of the following options in the procedure below.

To manually fetch updates from a registry and boot the system into the new updates, use bootc upgrade. This command fetches the transactional in-place updates from the installed operating system to the container image registry. The command queries the registry and queues an updated container image for the next boot. It stages the changes to the base image, while not changing the running system by default.

You can roll back to a previous boot entry to revert changes by using the bootc rollback command. This command changes the boot loader entry ordering by making the deployment under rollback queued for the next boot. The current deployment then becomes the rollback. Any staged changes, such as a queued upgrade that was not applied, are discarded.

After a rollback completes, the system reboots and the update timer runs within 1 to 3 hours which automatically updates and reboots your system to the image you just rolled back from.

You can change the configuration of your operating system by modifying the Containerfile. Then you can build and push your container image to the registry. When you next boot your operating system, an update will be applied.

You can also change the container image source by using the bootc switch command. The container registry is the source of truth. See Switching the container image reference.

Usually, when deploying updates to system groups, you can use a central management service to provide a client to be installed on each system which connects to the central service. Often, the management service requires the client to perform a one time registration. The following is an example on how to deploy updates to system groups. You can modify it to create a persistent systemd service, if required.

You can install a client into an image mode for RHEL image and run it at startup to register the system.

Health checks are one of the Day 2 Operations. You can manually check the system health of the container images and events that are running inside the container.

You can set health checks by creating the container on the command line. You can display the health check status of a container by using the podman inspect or podman ps commands.

You can monitor and print events that occur in Podman by using the podman events command. Each event includes a timestamp, a type, a status, a name, if applicable, and an image, if applicable.

For more information about health checks and events, see chapter Monitoring containers.

You can automate the building process by using CI/CD pipelines so that an update process can be triggered by events, such as updating an application. You can use automation tools that track these updates and trigger the CI/CD pipelines. The pipeline keeps the systems up to date by using the transactional background operating system updates.

Installing software on a system presents certain risks: it can change a system’s behavior, and can leave unwanted files and directories behind after they are no longer needed. You can prevent these risks by installing your favorite development and debugging tools, editors, and software development kits (SDKs) into the Toolbx utility included in the RHEL bootc, an image fully mutable container without affecting the base operating system. You can perform changes on the host system with commands such as less, lsof, rsync, ssh, sudo, and unzip.

The Toolbx utility performs the following actions:

The default container name is rhel-toolbox. To inspect bootc containers, follow the steps: