The details of RancherOS upgrade

Hi,

I’m so expressed by RancherOS’s design, a big step for OS evolution. :slight_smile:

I’m curious about automatic updates of RancherOS, as we known, CoreOS use Ignition for setup disk during booting phase, Ignition will setup disk partition and many things. Is anyone can share how RancherOS do this? I never found any info about technical detail of RancherOS upgrade.

Thanks very much.

Heya!

Rancher upgrades are not “automatic” in the sense that the user (or mgmt tool) needs to trigger sudo ros os upgrade. The upgrade command then adds a new kernel, initrd, and syslinux cfg to the boot disk. The new initrd contains the new version of ros and the cloud-init needed to update the system-docker containers.

I’m curious to know if there are users that would like auto-upgrades - most of the (larger) users I have contact with need to manage the upgrade cycle manually - but this is obviously something that could be configurable.

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Sorry for the necro on this thread, however, I am interested in auto-updates of RancherOS, similar to how CoreOS handles auto-updates today. The primary use case for this is in home lab and/or remote environments where it may be less mission critical and may be neglected/forgotten for a period of time. Better to have the system update itself to patch any critical vulnerabilities if needed.

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I’ve decided to go towards FlatCar instead.
Although I like the RancherOS idea with stacking Docker daemons, it lacks some delivery flexibility compared to CoreOS solutions.

I don’t think Rancher will support this with neither great care nor attention after the recent acquisition… but that’s only my subjective opinion.