Chapter 5. Customizing file systems during the image creation

By using Insights image builder you can customize your filesystem layouts to set up the desired partitions and sizes during the image creation process.

Warning

The support to customize filesystem partitions is available for all the image types, except for the Bare metal - Installer (.iso) type.

5.1. Manually configuring partitions during image creation

When creating a customized image with Insights image builder, you can customize the system configuration to use manual or automatic partitioning. Use the automatic partitioning, which is the default. Partitions can still be extended or reordered when using manual partitioning. To manually configure the partitioning of the image you are creating, complete the following steps:

Prerequisites

  • You have an account on Red Hat Customer Portal with an Insights subscription.
  • You have access to the Insights image builder dashboard.

  • You have already completed the following steps:

    • Image output
    • Target cloud environment
    • Optionally, Registration

Procedure

  1. On the System Configuration - File system configuration page:

    You can select Use automatic partitioning or Manually configure partitions for your image file system.

    1. Click the Manually configure partitions button.

      The Configure partitions section opens, showing the configuration based on Red Hat standards and security guides.

  2. From the dropdown menu, provide details to configure the partitions:

    1. For the Mount point field, select one of the following mount point type options:

      • /app
      • /data
      • /home
      • /opt
      • /srv
      • /tmp
      • /usr
      • /usr/local
      • /var

      • /

        You can also add an additional path to the Mount point, such as /tmp. For example: /var as a prefix and /tmp as an additional path results in /var/tmp.

        Note

        Depending on the Mount point type you choose, the file system type changes to xfs, and so on.

    2. For the Minimum size partition field of the file system, enter the desired minimum partition size. In the Minimum size dropdown menu, you can use common size units such as GiB, MiB, or KiB. The default unit is GiB.

      Note

      Minimum size means that image builder can still increase the partition sizes, in case they are too small to create a working image.

  3. To add more partitions, click the Add partition button. Repeat step 2 for each partition.

    If you see the following error message: “Duplicate partitions: Only one partition at each mount point can be created.”, you can:

    • Click the remove button to remove the duplicated partition.

    • Choose a new mount point for the partition you want to create.

      After you finish the partitioning configuration, click Next.

  4. Optional: On the Packages page, add packages to your image.

    Click Next.

  5. On the Name image page, enter a name for your image and click Next. If you do not enter a name, you can find the image you created by its UUID.

  6. On the Review page, review the information.

    1. Click the System Configuration tab to review the file system configuration partitioning.

    2. Click Create image.

      After you complete the steps in the Create image wizard, the image builder dashboard is displayed. Insights image builder starts the compose of a RHEL image for the x86_64 architecture.

      The Insights image builder dashboard opens. You can see details such as the Image UUID, the cloud target environment, the image OS release and the status of the image creation.

      Note

      The image build, upload and cloud registration processes can take up to ten minutes to complete.

Additional resources