CoreOS Home Server Setup

This repository contains support files for deploying a simple server setup based on Fedora CoreOS, and mainly based around systemd and Podman.

Prerequisites

Effective use of the source-files here requires that you have the following dependencies installed on your host:

• gpg for secret management and image validation.
• butane for rendering out host and service configuration.
• qemu for virtual host testing.

All of the requirements are checked during the various Makefile invocations, and will return fatal errors unless fulfilled. In addition to the aforementioned build-time dependencies, the build host needs the following setup procedures performed:

Import GPG key for image validation:

This is required for validating the signatures for installation media when deploying bare-metal and virtual hosts:

curl -fL https://getfedora.org/static/fedora.gpg | gpg --import

Setup and Deployment

Initial server deployment is managed by the included Makefile, which also allows for testing against a virtualized environment. Configuration for virtual and physical servers is managed by Fedora CoreOS configuration (aka Butane) files, which will typically define host-specific configuration, and merge in additional, standard configuration; check the virtual host configuration for an example.

You can prepare host configuration for consumption by using the deploy target for the included Makefile, e.g.:

make deploy HOST=example

This will compile the host-specific host/example/spec.bu file to its corresponding Ignition format via the butane utility (which is expected to be installed on the system), and serve the final result over HTTP on the local network. This, of course, assumes that you'll be installing on bare metal on a system on your local network -- support for additional targets may be added in the future.

Testing

A virtual host is included for development and testing; using this requires that you have qemu installed on your system. Using the virtual environment is simple:

make deploy HOST=virtual

This will automatically download the Fedora CoreOS image for the VERSION specified in the Makefile, compile included Butane files, and start a virtual machine on the terminal running the make command. If you want to see the various command run under the hood, add the VERBOSE=1 parameter to the make invocation.

By default, you can use the <Ctrl>a x key-combination to escape the virtual machine, and can use the <Ctrl>a h key-combination to get additional options related to the current virtual session.

Included Services

In addition to host-specific configuration, servers will typically include a number of services, managed by systemd and podman. These are intended to be deployed via Ignition on server setup, but also be managed throughout the server's life-cycle.

Check the service documentation for more information.

License

All code in this repository is covered by the terms of the MIT License, the full text of which can be found in the LICENSE file.