openSUSE MicroOS - the OS that does "just one job"

As operating systems get used in more and more places, from VMs and Cloud to IoT and Edge and everything in between, there is a simple problem - no one wants to deal with maintaining all of this new stuff.

And yet, most distributions today are expected to be maintained the same way as they were a decade ago. Sure there are nicer tools to automate things, but that's still a lot of work that someone, be a sysadmin or a tool developer, has to take care of.

Given many of these newer use cases involve an operating system being deployed to do 'just one job', do we always need to deploy distros that could be a swiss-army knife capable of doing anything?

openSUSE MicroOS answers this with a clear 'no', providing a 'general purpose but single service' distribution.

Deploy it, set it up to do what you need, and then forget about it while it will patch, reboot, and repair itself.

Transcript

1. MicroOS
   The OS that does “just one job”
   openSUSE contributor
   Richard Brown
   rbrown@opensuse.org
   sysrich on Freenode.net
   @sysrich
   

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2. About Me
   ●
   ~15 years with openSUSE & other FOSS
   communities
   ●
   >5 years with SUSE
   ●
   Future Technologies Team Member
   ●
   openSUSE MicroOS & Kubic
   

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3. Agenda
   ●
   What MicroOS isn’t
   ●
   What MicroOS is
   ●
   What MicroOS could be next
   

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5. Not a Container OS
   ●
   MicroOS is not designed to be used as the
   base OS inside containers
   

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6. Tumbleweed is our Container OS
   registry.opensuse.org/opensuse/tumbleweed
   latest 73ef0c72c385 2 days ago 90.4 MB
   registry.opensuse.org/opensuse/busybox
   latest 188f8aaa3c14 2 days ago 9.4 MB
   ●
   Use these images for all of your container
   building with podman build, docker
   build, buildah and kiwi
   

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7. Not ‘tiny at all costs’
   ●
   Size matters
   – Easier to Deploy
   – Fewer Updates, Less Risk
   ●
   MicroOS is designed to be as small as
   possible, while fulfilling it’s job without
   compromises.
   

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8. Still Pretty Small
   ●
   619MB Bare Metal Install
   – 165 MB kernel-default
   – 152 MB kernel-firmware
   – 68 MB grub2
   ●
   382MB VM Image
   – 68 MB grub2
   – 35 MB kernel-default-base
   – 10 MB systemd
   – 288 RPMs, 210 Source Packages
   

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9. Not the same as ‘JeOS’ or ‘Transactional Server’
   ●
   JeOS – regular openSUSE, deployed from a
   very small image, expected to grow as a
   typical multi-purpose system.
   ●
   Transactional Server – regular openSUSE
   with a read only root-filesystem, with
   atomic updates, expected to be used as a
   typical multi-purpose system.
   

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10. What is MicroOS?
    

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11. Why is MicroOS?
    

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12. Why is MicroOS?
    ●
    Computer’s are not just laptops, desktops,
    and servers any more.
    ●
    People don’t even use laptops, desktops
    and servers the same way any more.
    

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14. IP Webcam
    Do you have an IP Webcam
    or similar IoT Device?
    Ever updated it?
    

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15. IP Webcam
    There are millions of these devices
    ●
    78% of total detected malware activity
    is due to IoT botnets (2018)
    ●
    Failed update → Many, many unhappy
    customers
    

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16. O2 UK Network Outage 2019
    ●
    Reliable Updates
    ●
    Automatic Recovery
    ●
    Outage can be very expensive
    ●
    Repair can be very time consuming
    

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18. The New World
    Virtualisation
    More Services = More VMs,
    not more physical
    hardware
    Containers
    Limits incompatibilities,
    isolates service problems
    Cloud
    More Hardware is always
    just a Credit Card away
    IoT
    Single-purpose devices
    are increasingly prolific
    eg. Raspberry Pis
    

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19. Regular Linux Isn’t Good Enough
    ●
    Regular Distros are all like Swiss Army
    Knives
    ●
    Lots of Services & Features
    – Increased chance of incompatibilities
    between services
    – A problem with service A can impact B, C, D,
    etc
    

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20. Single Purpose Systems
    ●
    VM/Cloud Instance/IoT device
    deployed to do “just one job”
    ●
    Installation contains a minimal
    number of services
    ●
    Patching often ignored (Rip n’
    replace)
    ●
    More services to use? Just add more
    VM/Cloud/IoT Devices
    

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21. Hand Crafted isn’t Good Enough
    ●
    Building custom Single Purpose systems
    by hand is a lot of work
    ●
    Still often have issues with Configuration
    Management
    ●
    Still need effort to keep patched
    ●
    Optimising for RAM/CPU/Disk is HARD
    

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22. Nobody is perfect
    ●
    Even the best designed & maintained systems
    have flaws
    ●
    Those flaws need to be prevented from
    getting in the way of what the system is
    meant to do
    ●
    Anything worth doing, is worth being able to
    undo
    

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23. “I NEVER want to touch a running system”
    - Every SysAdmin, ever
    

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24. Transactional Updates
    ●
    Any change to a system should be applied
    reliably, reproducably, and reversibly
    ●
    Transactional Updates are:
    – Atomic
    – Either fully applied, or not at all
    – Applied without impacting the running
    system
    

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25. Health Check
    ●
    Checks for errors during boot phase
    – Error with new snapshot:
    ●
    Rollback to last known working snapshot
    – Error with already successful booted snapshot:
    ●
    Try reboot
    ●
    Shutdown services, inform admin
    ●
    Needs access to harddisk
    

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26. openSUSE MicroOS
    openSUSE MicroOS
    The perfect single-service
    Linux-based Operating System
    Salt & Read-Only Root
    Filesystem
    Fully automated
    Transactional Updates
    Optimised footprint
    

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27. MicroOS Architecture
    openSUSE MicroOS is a rolling release
    based on openSUSE Tumbleweed.
    MicroOS is wholly built, developed, and
    tested as part of the Tumbleweed release
    process.
    Any test failure detected before the release
    of either Tumbleweed & MicroOS can
    prevent the release of both distributions.
    

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28. Hardware Requirements
    ARM:
    – EFI, either firmware or u-boot
    X86-64:
    – UEFI (secure boot)
    – Legacy Bios
    Memory (Virtualised):
    – 512 MB + Workload
    – 4 GB + Workload
    

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29. Deployment Options
    DVD/NET ISO w. YaST
    Customisable,
    streamlined, installer
    VM/Vagrant/Cloud/Pi
    Images
    Preconfigured, ready to
    use disk images
    Yomi
    Installing directly
    using Saltstack
    Ignition
    For use to configure
    images/systems on first
    boot
    

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30. More about Yomi?
    YouTube
    openSUSE Conference 2019
    Alberto Planas
    Installing openSUSE only
    with SaltStack
    

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31. Automatic initial configuration: Ignition
    ●
    https://github.com/coreos/ignition
    ●
    Partly replacement of cloud-init
    – Features:
    ●
    Partitioning disks
    ●
    Formatting partitions
    ●
    Writing files, enable systemd services
    ●
    Configure users
    – Runs out of initramfs during first boot
    – Does not touch sub-systems not mentioned in user supplied config
    

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32. Example Use Cases
    IoT Single-Service VM Container Host Cluster Node Appliances
    

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33. MicroOS – The Perfect Container Host OS
    Containers make it very easy to separate the
    Service/Application from the operating system.
    Users care about the Service, they shouldn’t care about the
    OS.
    MicroOS with it’s ‘self caring’ rolling OS means users just
    need to worry about picking and updating the containers
    they choose.
    

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34. We ❤️ Podman
    Alternative to for standalone container
    hosts/developer machines
    No Daemon
    Supports OCI-containers & Pods
    Familiar commands eg.
    – podman pull
    – podman run
    

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35. registry.opensuse.org
    We have our own container registry!
    Built direct from packages in OBS
    Rebuilt automatically – Always Fresh
    Signed/Notorised Images
    ●
    podman pull registry.opensuse.org/opensuse/tumbleweed
    ●
    podman pull registry.opensuse.org/opensuse/leap
    

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36. My MicroOS Life
    

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37. Debugging - Toolbox
    Read-only root filesystem:
    – Reboot needed to install additional tools
    – Situation after reboot is different then before
    Toolbox:
    – Launches small, privileged container
    – Root filesystem available below /media/root
    – zypper to install the necessary tools
    – Persistent between usages
    

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38. Bye bye Leap..
    

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39. openSUSE Kubic
    openSUSE Kubic is now a MicroOS
    Derivative, focused specifically on
    Containers and Kubernetes.
    Like MicroOS, it is wholly built,
    developed, and tested as part of the
    Tumbleweed release process.
    

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40. Kubernetes is special
    Lots of Moving Parts
    Containers, Kubernetes,
    Container Runtime, and
    base Operating System
    all need to be updated
    regularly
    Containers at Scale
    Kubernetes is designed
    to run 100s-1000s of
    containers at once
    Large Clusters
    Kubernetes clusters can
    span dozens or
    hundreds of physical
    machines or VMs
    

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41. Kubic – The perfect Kubernetes OS
    Inheriting all the usual benefits of
    openSUSE MicroOS, with optimisations
    for Containers and Kubernetes, including
    – Fully Integrated kubeadm
    – CRI-O Container Runtime
    – Kured for automating reboots across
    the cluster
    – Kubic-Control – alternative cluster
    bootstrapping tool
    

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42. MicroOS Desktop
    ●
    All of this makes perfect sense for ‘servers’,
    why not desktops?
    ●
    Auto updated base OS plus Desktop
    Environment
    ●
    Apps from Flatpak
    ●
    Currently in [ALPHA]
    

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44. MicroOS Leap 15.2
    ●
    All the benefits of MicrOS but based on the
    Leap 15.2 codebase
    ●
    COMING SOON
    

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