Skip to content

Prepare aarch64 Node for Image Building

Before building aarch64 compute images with build_image_aarch64.yml, you must manually install RHEL 10 on one aarch64 bare-metal node. This node is used as a build host to create diskless images for all aarch64 functional groups.

Caution

Limited validation has been performed on the aarch64 platform.

Prerequisites

  • A disk is available to the aarch64 node for full OS installation.
  • The aarch64 node has network connectivity to the PXE (admin) network.
  • The same NFS share used by the OIM is reachable on the aarch64 node.
  • The Deploy Omnia Core procedure is complete (with NFS share option selected during omnia.sh --install).
  • prepare_oim.yml has been executed (downloads the regctl binary for aarch64).
  • local_repo.yml has been executed with software_config.json that includes aarch64 packages (downloads the aarch64 image builder container to the local registry).

Procedure

1. Install RHEL 10 on the aarch64 node

Manually install the full Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 OS on one of the aarch64 nodes with root password enabled.

Warning

  • The root password must be at least 8 characters long, contain alphanumeric characters, and must not include commas (,), hyphens (-), single quotes ('), double quotes ("), or backslashes (\).
  • The password set during RHEL installation on the aarch64 node must be supplied as provision_password when running prepare_oim.yml.

2. Create an inventory file

Create an inventory file with the aarch64 node's admin IP address in the admin_aarch64 group:

Example: /omnia/build_image_aarch64/inventory
[admin_aarch64]
<aarch64_node_admin_ip>

Replace <aarch64_node_admin_ip> with the actual admin IP address of the node where RHEL 10 was installed.

Note

The admin_aarch64 inventory group must contain exactly one host. The build_image_aarch64.yml playbook will fail if the group is empty or contains more than one host.

What happens during the build

When you run build_image_aarch64.yml -i inventory, the playbook automatically performs the following on the aarch64 node:

  1. Sets up passwordless SSH from omnia_core to the aarch64 node.
  2. Verifies the target machine architecture is aarch64.
  3. Adds the OIM PXE IP and hostname to /etc/hosts.
  4. Installs NFS utilities and mounts the OIM NFS share.
  5. Copies the Pulp repository configuration and certificate.
  6. Pulls the aarch64 image builder container from the local registry.
  7. Copies the regctl binary for registry operations.
  8. Builds diskless images for all aarch64 functional groups defined in the PXE mapping file.
  9. Uploads the built images to MinIO (S3).

Next Steps