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Using LinuxKit on Scaleway

docs/platform-scaleway.md

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Using LinuxKit on Scaleway

This is a quick guide to run LinuxKit on Scaleway (only VPS x86_64 for now)

Setup

You must create a Scaleway API Token (combination of Access and Secret Key), available at Scaleway Console, first. Then you can use it either with the SCW_ACCESS_KEY and SCW_SECRET_KEY environment variables or the -access-key and -secret-key flags of the linuxkit push scaleway and linuxkit run scaleway commands.

In addition, Organization ID value has to be set, either with the SCW_DEFAULT_ORGANIZATION_ID environment variable or the -organization-id command line flag.

The environment variable SCW_DEFAULT_ZONE is used to set the zone (there is also the -zone flag)

Build an image

Scaleway requires a iso-efi image. To create one:

$ linuxkit build -format iso-efi examples/scaleway.yml

Changes needed in the yaml

  • You have to set root=/dev/vda in the cmdline to have the right device set on boot
  • The metadata package is not only used to set the metadata, but also to signal Scaleway that the instance has booted. So it is encouraged to use it (dhcpcd must be set before)

Push image

You have to do linuxkit push scaleway scaleway.iso to upload it to your Scaleway images. By default the image name is the name of the ISO file without the extension. It can be overidden with the -img-name flag or the SCW_IMAGE_NAME environment variable.

Note 1: If an image (and snapshot) of the same name exists, it will be replaced.

Note 2: The image is zone specific: if you create an image in par1 you can't use is in ams1.

Push process

Building a Scaleway image have a special process. Basically:

  • Create an image-builder instance with an additional volume, based on Ubuntu Bionic (only x86_64 for now)
  • Copy the ISO image on this instance
  • Use dd to write the image on the additional volume (/dev/vdb by default)
  • Terminate the instance, create a snapshot, and create an image from the snapshot

Note 1: An image is linked to a snapshot, so you can't delete a snapshot before the image.

Note 2: You can specify an already running instance to act as the image builder with the -instance-id flag. But if you don't specify the -no-clean flag it will be destroyed upon completion.

Create an instance and connect to it

With the image created, we can now create an instance.

linuxkit run scaleway scaleway

By default, the instance name is linuxkit. It can be overidden with the -instance-name flag. If you don't set the -no-attach flag, you will be connected to the serial port.

You can edit the Scaleway example to allow you to SSH to your instance in order to use it.