Installing OS templates in air-gapped environments

Since the operating system templates provided by MetalSoft are on GitHub, in an air-gapped environment they would need to be uploaded to the environment.

  1. Clone the git repository

On a machine with access to the internet clone and tar/zip the directory. Git is needed. Note windows also has tar if build 17063 (2017).

git clone https://github.com/metalsoft-io/os-templates
tar -zcf os-templates.tar.gz os-templates

This directory will essentially include the entire repository of assets that need to be injected into ISOs, but NOT THE ISOs.

Send the archive to a machine in the air-gapped env.

  1. Run the CLI to install the os-template

Download the MetalSoft CLI for the target machine in the air-gapped env from MetalSoft’s CLI GitHub releases

Send this executable to a machine in the air-gapped env.

  1. Prepare the ISO that you would like to use as the gold ISO.

Send this ISO to the repository that will be used for deploys in the air-gapped env.

The file should then be reachable to the MetalSoft Controller on an URL such as: https://my-repo.mycompany.com/templates/ubuntu/ubuntu-24.04.iso If you need to use basic authentication you can prefix the url with https://user:password@my-repo.mycompany.com/templates/ubuntu/ubuntu-24.04.iso

  1. On the machine in the air-gapped env set the env vars:

export METALCLOUD_API_KEY=3:4asd...
export METALCLOUD_ENDPOINT="https://us08.metalsoft.io/"

Run the CLI to list available templates

./metalcloud-cli os-template list-repo --repo-url /tmp/os-templates
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────┬────────────────────┬────────────────────┬─────────────┬──────────────┬───────────┬────────────┐
│ PATH                                           │ NAME               │ LABEL              │ DEVICE TYPE │ ARCHITECTURE │ BOOT MODE │ VISIBILITY │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────┼────────────────────┼─────────────┼──────────────┼───────────┼────────────┤
│ RHEL/10.0/standard-v7                          │ RHEL 10.0          │ rhel-10-0          │ server      │ x86_64       │ uefi      │ public     │
│ RHEL/7.9/standard-v7                           │ RHEL 7.9           │ rhel-7-9           │ server      │ x86_64       │ uefi      │ public     │
│ RHEL/8.10/standard-v7                          │ RHEL 8.10          │ rhel-8-10          │ server      │ x86_64       │ uefi      │ public     │
│ RHEL/9.6/standard-v7                           │ RHEL 9.6           │ rhel-9-6           │ server      │ x86_64       │ uefi      │ public     │
│ Ubuntu/22.04/oob-u22-04-4-lts-powerflex-sdc-v7 │ Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS │ ubuntu-22-04-4-lts │ server      │ x86_64       │ uefi      │ private    │
│ Ubuntu/22.04/oob-u22-04-4-lts-v7               │ Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS │ ubuntu-22-04-4-lts │ server      │ x86_64       │ uefi      │ private    │
│ Ubuntu/24.04-2/oob-u24-04-3-lts-v7             │ Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS │ ubuntu-24-04-3-lts │ server      │ x86_64       │ uefi      │ private    │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────┴────────────────────┴────────────────────┴─────────────┴──────────────┴───────────┴────────────┘

Run the CLI to install the OS template:

alexandrubordei@Alex-MAC metalcloud-cli % ./metalcloud-cli os-template create-from-repo RHEL/10.0/standard-v7 --name "test RHEL" --label "rhel-10-test-alex" --repo-url /tmp/os-templates 
┌────┬───────────┬───────────────────┬─────────────┬────────┬────────────┬──────────────────────┬─────────┐
│  # │ NAME      │ LABEL             │ DEVICE TYPE │ STATUS │ VISIBILITY │ CREATED              │ UPDATED │
├────┼───────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────┼────────┼────────────┼──────────────────────┼─────────┤
│ 31 │ test RHEL │ rhel-10-test-alex │ server      │ ready  │ public     │ 19 Aug 25 17:52 CEST │         │
└────┴───────────┴───────────────────┴─────────────┴────────┴────────────┴──────────────────────┴─────────┘

You should now have the template deployed. Don’t forget to make it public to allow others to use it.