bootlinux

The ansible bootlinux lets you get, build and install Linux. It also lets you apply custom patches, remove kernels, etc. Anything you have to do with regards to generic kernel development. The defaults it will track one of the latest stable kernels that are still supported, using the linux stable git tree.

Requirements

You are expected to have an extra partition

Role Variables

• infer_uid_and_group: defaults to False, if set to True, then we will ignore the passed on data_user and data_group and instead try to infer this by inspecting the whoami and getent on the logged in target system we are provisioning. So if user sam is running able on a host, targetting a system called foofighter and logging into that system using username pincho, then the data_user will be set overwritten and set to pincho. We will then also lookup for pincho's default group id and use that for data_group. This is useful if you are targetting a slew of systems and don't really want to deal with the complexities of the username and group, and the default target username you use to ssh into a system suffices to use as a base. This is set to False to remain compatible with old users of this role.

• data_path: where to place the git trees we clone under

• data_user: the user to assign permissions to

• data_group: the group to assign permissions to

• data_device: the target device to use for the data partition

• data_fstype: the filesystem to store the data parition under

• data_label: the label to use

• data_fs_opts: the filesystem options to use, you want to ensure to add the label

• target_linux_admin_name: your developer name

• target_linux_admin_email: your email

• target_linux_git: the git tree to clone, by default this is the linux-stable tree

• target_linux_tree: the name of the tree

• target_linux_dir_path: where to place the tree on the target system

• target_linux_version: which version of linux to use, so 4.19.62

• target_linux_tag : the actual tag as used on linux, so v4.19.62

• target_linux_extra_patch: if defined an extra patch to apply with git am prior to compilation

• target_linux_config: the configuration file to use

• make: the make command to use

• target_linux_make_cmd: the actual full make command and its arguments

• target_linux_make_install_cmd: the install command

Dependencies

As defined in requirements.yml.

Example Playbook

Below is an example playbook, say a bootlinux.yml file:

---
- hosts: all
  roles:
    - role: bootlinux

Custom runs

Say you want to boot compile a vanilla kernel and you have created a new section under the hosts file called [dev], with a subset of the [all] section. You can compile say a vanilla kernel v4.19.58 with an extra set of patches we'd git am for you on top by using the following:

cd ansible
ansible-playbook -i hosts -l dev --extra-vars "target_linux_extra_patch=pend-v4.19.58-fixes-20190716-v2.patch" bootlinux.yml

You'd place the pend-v4.19.58-fixes-20190716-v2.patch file on the directory ansible/roles/bootlinux/templates/.

Now say you wantd to be explicit about a tag of Linux you'd want to use:

ansible-playbook -i hosts -l dev --extra-vars "target_linux_version=4.19.21 "target_linux_extra_patch=try-v4.19.20-fixes-20190716-v1.patch" bootlinux.yml

To uninstall a kernel:

ansible-playbook -i hosts -l dev --tags uninstall-linux --extra-vars "uninstall_kernel_ver=4.19.58+" bootlinux.yml

The ansible bootlinux role relies on the create_partition role to create a data partition where we can stuff code, and compile it. To test that aspect of the bootlinux role you can run:

ansible-playbook -i hosts -l baseline --tags data_partition,partition bootlinux.yml

To reboot all hosts:

ansible-playbook -i hosts bootlinux.yml --tags reboot

For further examples refer to one of this role's users, the https://github.com/mcgrof/kdevops project or the https://github.com/mcgrof/oscheck project from where this code originally came from.

TODO

Avoiding carrying linux-next configs

It seems a waste of space to be adding configurations for linux-next for all tags. It seems easier to just look for the latest linux-next and try that. We just symlink linux-next files when we really need to, and when something really needs a new config, we then just add a new file.

License

GPLv2