UKI correct choice for air-gapped install of first node?

[tbrasser]

Hey all, have been trying to keep up-to-date on kairos and components.

I want to 'bootstrap' my first node fully "offline", as it itself will take the role of gateway/router/dns-server/dhcp-server etc. (Currently thinking about opnsense as vm on k8s via kubevirt)

What is the recommended approach here? Will system extensions work for this (vm image) and put all the rest in UKI?

The idea is to add other nodes via netboot and build their images on the first node once it has internet access.

[mauromorales]

Hi @tbrasser thanks for the question and I hope the answer is still useful a month later 😅

We are not sure if there's a limit on the size of system extensions during boot time. Some firmware can be very limiting on the amount of data it can load, if this is not the case then the limitation will only be the memory of the system.

For putting it all together you can follow https://kairos.io/docs/examples/airgap/. This is page also gives a hint on where to put the manifests: https://kairos.io/docs/examples/single-node/ we discussed a bit on this during the last office-hours, you can watch the recording here https://youtu.be/E8Lgmn5KZ7s?si=MrO8RcENBWFpFHiC&t=106

Also, not sure if this would help simplify the project, but we just released this feature to serve uki images on AuroraBoot netboot you can check https://kairos.io/docs/reference/auroraboot/#booting-with-uki-and-secure-boot-via-efi-key-enrollment