systemd/docs/BUILDING_IMAGES.md

title	category	layout	SPDX-License-Identifier
Safely Building Images	Concepts	default	LGPL-2.1-or-later

Safely Building Images

In many scenarios OS installations are shipped as pre-built images, that require no further installation process beyond simple dd-ing the image to disk and booting it up. When building such "golden" OS images for systemd-based OSes a few points should be taken into account.

Most of the points described here are implemented by the mkosi OS image builder developed and maintained by the systemd project. If you are using or working on another image builder it's recommended to keep the following concepts and recommendations in mind.

Resources to Reset

Typically the same OS image shall be deployable in multiple instances, and each instance should automatically acquire its own identifying credentials on first boot. For that it's essential to:

1. Remove the /etc/machine-id file or write the string uninitialized\n into it. This file is supposed to carry a 128bit identifier unique to the system. Only when it is reset it will be auto-generated on first boot and thus be truly unique. If this file is not reset, and carries a valid ID every instance of the system will come up with the same ID and that will likely lead to problems sooner or later, as many network-visible identifiers are commonly derived from the machine ID, for example IPv6 addresses or transient MAC addresses.

2. Remove the /var/lib/systemd/random-seed file (see systemd-random-seed(8)), which is used to seed the kernel's random pool on boot. If this file is shipped pre-initialized, every instance will seed its random pool with the same random data that is included in the image, and thus possibly generate random data that is more similar to other instances booted off the same image than advisable.

3. Remove the /loader/random-seed file (see systemd-boot(7)) from the UEFI System Partition (ESP), in case the systemd-boot boot loader is used in the image.

4. It might also make sense to remove /etc/hostname and /etc/machine-info which carry additional identifying information about the OS image.

5. Remove /var/lib/systemd/credential.secret which is used for protecting service credentials, see systemd.exec(5) and systemd-creds(1) for details. Note that by removing this file access to previously encrypted credentials from this image is lost. The file is automatically generated if a new credential is encrypted and the file does not exist yet.

Boot Menu Entry Identifiers

The kernel-install(8) logic used to generate Boot Loader Specification Type 1 entries by default uses the machine ID as stored in /etc/machine-id for naming boot menu entries and the directories in the ESP to place kernel images in. This is done in order to allow multiple installations of the same OS on the same system without conflicts. However, this is problematic if the machine ID shall be generated automatically on first boot: if the ID is not known before the first boot it cannot be used to name the most basic resources required for the boot process to complete.

Thus, for images that shall acquire their identity on first boot only, it is required to use a different identifier for naming boot menu entries. To allow this the kernel-install logic knows the generalized entry token concept, which can be a freely chosen string to use for identifying the boot menu resources of the OS. If not configured explicitly it defaults to the machine ID. The file /etc/kernel/entry-token may be used to configure this string explicitly. Thus, golden image builders should write a suitable identifier into this file, for example the IMAGE_ID= or ID= field from /etc/os-release (also see below). It is recommended to do this before the kernel-install functionality is invoked (i.e. before the package manager is used to install packages into the OS tree being prepared), so that the selected string is automatically used for all entries to be generated.

Booting with Empty /var/ and/or Empty Root File System

systemd is designed to be able to come up safely and robustly if the /var/ file system or even the entire root file system (with exception of /usr/, i.e. the vendor OS resources) is empty (i.e. "unpopulated"). With this in mind it's relatively easy to build images that only ship a /usr/ tree, and otherwise carry no other data, populating the rest of the directory hierarchy on first boot as needed.

Specifically, the following mechanisms are in place:

1. The switch-root logic in systemd, that is used to switch from the initrd phase to the host will create the basic OS hierarchy skeleton if missing. It will create a couple of directories strictly necessary to boot up successfully, plus essential symlinks (such as those necessary for the dynamic loader ld.so to function).

2. PID 1 will initialize /etc/machine-id automatically if not initialized yet (see above).

3. The nss-systemd(8) glibc NSS module ensures the root and nobody users and groups remain resolvable, even without /etc/passwd and /etc/group around.

4. The systemd-sysusers(8) will component automatically populate /etc/passwd and /etc/group on first boot with further necessary system users.

5. The systemd-tmpfiles(8) component ensures that various files and directories below /etc/, /var/ and other places are created automatically at boot if missing. Unlike the directories/symlinks created by the switch-root logic above this logic is extensible by packages, and can adjust access modes, file ownership and more. Among others this will also link /etc/os-release → /usr/lib/os-release, ensuring that the OS release information is unconditionally accessible through /etc/os-release.

6. The nss-myhostname(8) glibc NSS module will ensure the local host name as well as localhost remains resolvable, even without /etc/hosts around.

With these mechanisms the hierarchies below /var/ and /etc/ can be safely and robustly populated on first boot, so that the OS can safely boot up. Note that some auxiliary package are not prepared to operate correctly if their configuration data in /etc/ or their state directories in /var/ are missing. This can typically be addressed via systemd-tmpfiles lines that ensure the missing files and directories are created if missing. In particular, configuration files that are necessary for operation can be automatically copied or symlinked from the /usr/share/factory/etc/ tree via the C or L line types. That said, we recommend that all packages safely fall back to internal defaults if their configuration is missing, making such additional steps unnecessary.

Note that while systemd itself explicitly supports booting up with entirely unpopulated images (/usr/ being the only required directory to be populated) distributions might not be there yet: depending on your distribution further, manual work might be required to make this scenario work.

Adapting OS Images to Storage

Typically, if an image is dd-ed onto a target disk it will be minimal: i.e. only consist of necessary vendor data, and lack "payload" data, that shall be individual to the system, and dependent on host parameters. On first boot, the OS should take possession of the backing storage as necessary, dynamically using available space. Specifically:

1. Additional partitions should be created, that make no sense to ship pre-built in the image. For example /tmp/ or /home/ partitions, or even /var/ or the root file system (see above).

2. Additional partitions should be created that shall function as A/B secondaries for partitions shipped in the original image. In other words: if the /usr/ file system shall be updated in an A/B fashion it typically makes sense to ship the original A file system in the deployed image, but create the B partition on first boot.

3. Partitions covering only a part of the disk should be grown to the full extent of the disk.

4. File systems in uninitialized partitions should be formatted with a file system of choice.

5. File systems covering only a part of a partition should be grown to the full extent of the partition.

6. Partitions should be encrypted with cryptographic keys generated locally on the machine the system is first booted on, ensuring these keys remain local and are not shared with any other instance of the OS image.

Or any combination of the above: i.e. first create a partition, then encrypt it, then format it.

systemd provides multiple tools to implement the above logic:

1. The systemd-repart(8) component may manipulate GPT partition tables automatically on boot, growing partitions or adding in partitions taking the backing storage size into account. It can also encrypt partitions automatically it creates (even bind to TPM2, automatically) and populate partitions from various sources. It does this all in a robust fashion so that aborted invocations will not leave incompletely set up partitions around.

2. The systemd-growfs@(8).service tool can automatically grow a file system to the partition it is contained in. The x-systemd.growfs mount option in /etc/fstab is sufficient to enable this logic for specific mounts. Alternatively appropriately set up partitions can set GPT partition flag 59 to request this behaviour, see the Discoverable Partitions Specification for details. If the file system is already grown it executes no operation.

3. Similar, the systemd-makefs@.service and systemd-makeswap@.service services can format file systems and swap spaces before first use, if they carry no file system signature yet. The x-systemd.makefs mount option in /etc/fstab may be used to request this functionality.

Provisioning Image Settings

While a lot of work has gone into ensuring systemd systems can safely boot with unpopulated /etc/ trees, it sometimes is desirable to set a couple of basic settings after dd-ing the image to disk, but before first boot. For this the tool systemd-firstboot(1) can be useful, with its --image= switch. It may be used to set very basic settings, such as the root password or hostname on an OS disk image or installed block device.

Distinguishing First Boot

For various purposes it's useful to be able to distinguish the first boot-up of the system from later boot-ups (for example, to set up TPM hardware specifically, or register a system somewhere). systemd provides mechanisms to implement that. Specifically, the ConditionFirstBoot= and AssertFirstBoot= settings may be used to conditionalize units to only run on first boot. See systemd.unit(5) for details.

A special target unit first-boot-complete.target may be used as milestone to safely handle first boots where the system is powered off too early: if the first boot process is aborted before this target is reached, the following boot process will be considered a first boot, too. Once the target is reached, subsequent boots will not be considered first boots anymore, even if the boot process is aborted immediately after. Thus, services that must complete fully before a system shall be considered fully past the first boot should be ordered before this target unit.

Whether a system will come up in first boot state or not is derived from the initialization status of /etc/machine-id: if the file already carries a valid ID the system is already past the first boot. If it is not initialized yet it is still considered in the first boot state. For details see machine-id(5).

Image Metadata

Typically, when operating with golden disk images it is useful to be able to identify them and their version. For this the two fields IMAGE_ID= and IMAGE_VERSION= have been defined in os-release(5). These fields may be accessed from unit files and similar via the %M and %A specifiers.

Depending on how the images are put together it might make sense to leave the OS distribution's os-release file as is in /usr/lib/os-release but to replace the usual /etc/os-release symlink with a regular file that extends the distribution's file with one augmented with these two additional fields.

Links

machine-id(5)
systemd-random-seed(8)
os-release(5)
Boot Loader Specification
Discoverable Partitions Specification
mkosi
systemd-boot(7)
systemd-repart(8)
systemd-growfs@(8).service