coreos / coreos/ignition

Add `fips: true`

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kind/enhancement
Dominant language
Go
Stars
974
Forks
296
Avg merge
6d 14h
Merged PRs (30d)
9

Description

We're working on OCP CoreOS Layering and the way FIPS works today is special cased in just RHCOS:

https://github.com/openshift/os/tree/master/overlay.d/05rhcos/usr/lib/dracut/modules.d/40rhcos-fips

It's a custom dracut module that's parsing Ignition, and then parsing a file inside that.

Similar to kernel arguments I think having Ignition support this directly would be much cleaner - it'd get us closer to a world where for OCP the state of the system is described via Ignition exclusively, and not Ignition plus some extra stuff.

How fips is implemented is distribution-specific, but it basically boils down to running a binary in the initramfs and rebooting at least for Fedora derivatives. I think other distributions could ensure they can do the same, even if not the same binary name.

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First steps

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reading the linked kernel-arguments work and the RHCOS dracut module at overlay.d/05rhcos/usr/lib/dracut/modules.d/40rhcos-fips. Clarify how an Ignition fips: true field should map to distribution-specific initramfs behavior, then define and test the configuration and boot outcomes for supported distributions.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
go
Domain
operating-systems
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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