provisioning: include instructions for RPI3

[sbaeurle]

Include instructions found in https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/fcos-unusually-slow-on-raspberry-pi-3b/40635/16 into the documentation.

Commands verified locally with 3 RPi 3B+ running FCOS

[hrismarin]

I would suggest that instead of changing the title section to Provisioning Fedora CoreOS on the Raspberry Pi 4/3, to create a new section dedicated to Raspberry Pi 3 and title it, for example Provisioning Fedora CoreOS on the Raspberry Pi 3.

Otherwise it looks good.

[dustymabe]

I wonder if it would be better to script this somehow, like by piping configuration through sfdisk or something?

Then it's less interactive (less chance for things to go wrong).

[sbaeurle]

I'll come up with a small script for this

[hrismarin]

FWIW, I've mentioned a few times that I have a Python script that automatically provision FCOS on RPi 4 using EDK2 or U-Boot approaches. I can provide it if anyone is interested.

[dustymabe]

Hmm. I wouldn't expect this but I guess maybe the growing of the root partition somehow undoes the changes you made.

Can you try booting an instance with an extra kernel parameter to disable the growfs from happening:

[dustymabe@media ~]$ cat /tmp/foo.sh 
#!/bin/bash                                                            
# Create dropin for disabling # ignition-ostree-growfs.service
DROPIN_CRED=$(base64 -w 0 <<EOF
[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=echo "skipping ignition-ostree-growfs.service"
EOF
)
echo "systemd.set_credential_binary=systemd.unit-dropin.ignition-ostree-growfs.service:${DROPIN_CRED}"
[dustymabe@media ~]$ bash /tmp/foo.sh 
systemd.set_credential_binary=systemd.unit-dropin.ignition-ostree-growfs.service:W1NlcnZpY2VdCkV4ZWNTdGFydD0KRXhlY1N0YXJ0PWVjaG8gInNraXBwaW5nIGlnbml0aW9uLW9zdHJlZS1ncm93ZnMuc2VydmljZSIK

So the kernel parameter would then be:

systemd.set_credential_binary=systemd.unit-dropin.ignition-ostree-growfs.service:W1NlcnZpY2VdCkV4ZWNTdGFydD0KRXhlY1N0YXJ0PWVjaG8gInNraXBwaW5nIGlnbml0aW9uLW9zdHJlZS1ncm93ZnMuc2VydmljZSIK

When you do this you should get a CLHM warning about the root filesystem being smaller than recommended:

Fedora CoreOS 43.20260106.dev.0

############################################################################
WARNING: The root filesystem is too small. It is strongly recommended to
allocate at least 8 GiB of space to allow for upgrades. From June 2021, this
condition will trigger a failure in some cases. For more information, see:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-coreos/storage/

You may delete this warning using:
sudo rm /etc/motd.d/60-coreos-rootfs-size.motd
############################################################################

Tracker: https://github.com/coreos/fedora-coreos-tracker
Discuss: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/tag/coreos

[core@cosa-devsh ~]$ 

[sbaeurle]

FWIW, I've mentioned a few times that I have a Python script that automatically provision FCOS on RPi 4 using EDK2 or U-Boot approaches. I can provide it if anyone is interested.

i did combine all commands in the docs into a simple bash script as well. maybe i can add the mentioned sfdisk automation

[hrismarin]

FWIW, I've mentioned a few times that I have a Python script that automatically provision FCOS on RPi 4 using EDK2 or U-Boot approaches. I can provide it if anyone is interested.

i did combine all commands in the docs into a simple bash script as well. maybe i can add the mentioned sfdisk automation

I don't have a Raspberry Pi 3 and won't be able to test it.

I wrote mine a while ago and it's about 150 lines long, so it's not suitable for inclusion in the docs. It automatically downloads EDK2 or U-Boot files (depending on the option) and copies them to the appropriate directories on the SD card, without requiring elevated privileges, i.e. sudo. However, as I mentioned, it is written in Python and cannot be used on CoreOS “out of the box”.