Can I install Fedore CoreOS 31 on VMWare Player 15.5.1?

Project Discussion
1

Hi,
I am a CoreOS newbie. I tried to install CoreOS on my VMWare Player, but it doesn’t seem to work.

I tried 2 methods:

(a) ISO
I launched VMWare Player and point it to the CoreOS ISO that I downloaded. VMWare complained that it could not detect the OS in the image!!!
Then, I manually selected RHEL 7 64-bit (the OVA seems to be set to that).
After it was booted, I ran “sudo su -” to go into “root”.
From there, I SFTP my ignition file over.
Then, I executed “coreos-installer install /dev/sda --ignition example.ign”.
It started to download the stable image and signature.
While there was some GPT message about /dev/sda, it ended with installation complete. I rebooted.
However, after reboot, it got stuck at “dhclient bound to ” message and nothing happened after that.

[REFERENCE]

(b) OVA
I open the OVA file which I downloaded from the FCOS download website.
I executed “base64 -w0 example.ign && echo”.
I copied the output of the “base64” command above and provided it as “Ignition config data”.
I set “Ignition data encoding” to “base64”.
I clicked on “Import”.
Again, it stopped at “dhclient bound to ”. Nothing happened after

=======================================

Any clue? Thanks in advance!!

My iginition file:
{
“ignition”: { “version”: “2.2.0” },
“storage”: {
“files”: [{
“filesystem”: “root”,
“path”: “/etc/hostname”,
“mode”: 420,
“contents”: { “source”: “data:,coreos31” }
}]
}
“passwd”: {
“users”: [
{
“name”: “core”,
“passwordHash”: “$1$pOPKJg/I$a9oHgcBS/aU4JpRXsOc9g.”,
“sshAuthorizedKeys”: [
“ssh-rsa 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 danielyeap@192.168.0.101”
]
},
{
“name”: “danielyeap”,
“uid”: 1000
}
]
}
}
}

2

The problem seems to be the previous ignition file I used.

The installation went well if I were to use the following ignition file:

{
“ignition”: {
“config”: {
“replace”: {
“source”: null,
“verification”: {}
}
},
“security”: {
“tls”: {}
},
“timeouts”: {},
“version”: “3.0.0”
},
“passwd”: {
“users”: [
{
“groups”: [
“sudo”,
“docker”
],
“name”: “core”,
“passwordHash”: “$1$wHEUmt50$NvXnnxX.qpoRN/sRFtSFp1”,
“sshAuthorizedKeys”: [
“ssh-rsa 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 danielyeap@192.168.0.101”
]
}
]
},
“storage”: {},
“systemd”: {}
}[

3

For VMware specifically, provisioning steps are documented at Provisioning Fedora CoreOS on VMware :: Fedora Docs. Those are specific to VSphere, but I think you can adapt the flow to VMware Player without too many issues.

In your case, it looks like you are manually crafting your Ignition config and ending with an invalid config. Specifically, the version field value is not valid for FCOS (it should be >= 3.0.0).

In order to avoid such issues, please consider producing an Ignition config as recommended by Producing an Ignition Config :: Fedora Docs.

4

Hi @lucab,
Thank you so much for your response.

As a matter of fact, I made good progress by studying the docs in greater details yesterday evening.

However, it seems the ignition config crafted by openshift-installer is not working entirely.

I am in the midst of removing bits here and there to troubleshoot.

Again, thank you so much for spending time to guide me!

5

Hi @danielyeap,
are you using an openshift-install binary built from the fcos branch of openshift/installer?
That would be built using Ignition v3.
You can find it here: Release 4.4.0-0.okd-2020-03-28-092308 - Beta 1 · okd-project/okd · GitHub
Please open an issue in that repository if you find it not to work as expected!

6

One problem I see with the ignition json above is the “source”: null, part, which is known to cause problems when parsing. Try using “source”: {} or to remove the replace field entirely. If you used openshift-install to generate it, please try the current OKD openshift-install release, where empty fields are excluded from generated json.