Building Your Own Docker Base Images (Part 3: Yum)

May 12, 2019 3 minute read

In my previous two posts (1, 2 ), we created Docker Debian and Arch-based images from scratch for the i386 architecture.

In this blog post - last one in this series - we’ll do the same for yum based distributions like CentOS and Fedora.

Building your own Docker base images isn’t difficult and let you trust your distribution Gpg signing keys instead of the docker hub. As explained in the first blog post. The mkimage scripts in the contrib directory of the Moby project git repository is a good place to start if you want to build own docker images.

Building your own docker images (Part2: Arch GNU/Linux & Co)

May 5, 2019 2 minute read

In my previous post, we started with creating Debian based docker images from scratch for the i386 architecture.

In this blog post, we’ll create Arch GNU/Linux based images.

Arch GNU/Linux

Arch Linux stopped supporting i386 systems. When you want to run Archlinux on an i386 system there is a community maintained Archlinux32 project and the Free software version Parabola GNU/Linux-libre.

For the arm architecture, there is Archlinux Arm project that I used.

building your own docker base images (Part 1: Debian GNU/Linux & Co)

April 22, 2019 7 minute read

I was using docker on an Odroid U3, but my Odroid stopped working. I switched to another system that is i386 only.

You’ll find my journey to build docker images for i386 below.

Reasons to build your own docker images

If you want to use docker you can start with docker images on the docker registry. There are several reasons to build your own base images.

Howto use centos cloud images with cloud-init on KVM/libvirtd

March 3, 2019 6 minute read

Images versus unattended setup

Old-school

Unattended setup

In a traditional environment, systems are installed from a CDROM. The configuration is executed by the system administrator through the installer. This soon becomes a borning and unpractical task when we need to set up a lot of systems also it is important that systems are configured in same - and hopefully correct - way.

In a traditional environment, this can be automated by booting via BOOTP/PXE boot and configured is by a system that “feeds” the installer. Examples are:

• [Solaris Jumpstart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JumpStart_(Solaris)
• Redhat Kickstart
• DebianInstaller Preseed
• Suse Autoyast
• …

How to install libreboot on a ThinkPad W500

February 10, 2019 12 minute read

I got a Lenovo Thinkpad W500 from www.2dehands.be for a nice price.

Actually, I got it a couple of months back but I didn’t have time to play with it and it took some time to get some parts from Aliexpress.

The Thinkpad W500 is probably the most powerful system that is compatible with Libreboot, it has a nice high-resolution display with a 1920 x 1200 resolution which is even a higher screen resolution than the Full HD resolution used on most new laptops today.

Security

Keep in mind that the core duo CPU does not get microcode updates from Intel for [spectre and meltdown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(security_vulnerability). There is no solution (currently) for spectre 3a - Rogue System Register Read - CVE-2018-3640 and Spectre 4 - Speculative Store Bypass CVE-2018-3639 without a microcode update.

Binary blobs are bad. Having a closed source binary-only piece of software on your system is not only unacceptable for Free Software activists it also makes it more difficult to review what it really does and makes it more difficult to review it for security concerns.

Having your system vulnerable is also a bad thing of course. Can’t wait to get a computer system with an open CPU architecture like RISC-V.

Preparation