Getting Started with Fedora/CentOS bootc

Introduction

The Fedora/CentOS bootc project generates reference "base images" that are designed for use with the bootc project.

Container Images

These are the two "full" container images:

  • quay.io/centos-bootc/centos-bootc:stream9 (CentOS Stream 9)

  • registry.gitlab.com/bootc-org/fedora-bootc/base-images-experimental/fedora-bootc-full:40 (Fedora 40)

Provisioning Philosophy

It is generally expected that you create a custom container image, derived from one of our base images for deployment.

For more information on configuration, refer to the documentation for Building containers.

Quickstart

Inspecting as a container

You can run any of the containers via any OCI compliant runtime, such as podman, docker etc. The images are configured to launch systemd by default, but in order to just inspect the system you will likely want to invoke e.g. bash:

$ podman run --rm -ti quay.io/centos-bootc/centos-bootc:stream9 bash
bash-5.1# rpm -q kernel systemd podman bootc
kernel-5.14.0-432.el9.aarch64
systemd-252-32.el9.aarch64
podman-5.0.0-1.el9.aarch64
bootc-0.1.7-1.el9.aarch64
bash-5.1#

If you invoke the container without bash, it is configured to run /sbin/init by default, which is not configured to auto-login on the console. You would need to e.g.

$ podman exec -ti wizardly_kare bash

to get an interactive shell (replace wizardly_kare with the actual container name).

However, it is more interesting to make a custom derived container image, and run it. See Building derived container images.

Booting on a local hypervisor

The podman-bootc-cli tool streamlines a local virtualization experience.

This command will "self-install" the container into a disk image behind the scenes, and launch an interactive SSH session.

$ podman-bootc run quay.io/centos-bootc/centos-bootc:stream9

Other useful commands include:

  • podman-bootc list

  • podman-bootc ssh

  • podman-bootc rm

The podman-bootc command can also directly run your custom derived container images! 
$ podman-bootc run quay.io/exampleuser/mycustom-image:latest

See Building derived container images.

Using Podman Desktop with the bootc extension

See Podman Desktop bootc.

Exploring the OS for the first time

By design, there are no hard-coded default credentials or non-root interactive users.

If you set up an SSH key, you can SSH into the VM and explore the OS:

ssh root@<ip address>

Note that the podman-bootc CLI by default automatically invokes ssh in this way.

Key related projects

Other projects:

Established key related and included projects:

Getting in touch

Bugs can be reported to:

For longer discussions related to Fedora bootc, use the forum.

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