Quick Start Overview

With eLxr 12, you can install and customize eLxr Edge images based on OSTree that provide the capability to perform system-level and user space package updates on a live target, ensuring maximum uptime.

eLxr tenents include:

  • Reliable - ensures consistent performance and stability, regardless of the deployment. Provides a secure and stable distribution, with its foundation in open-source community innovation with predictable release and update cadence, fit for long lifecycles and long-term deployments.

  • Real Time - caters to applications with stringent timing requirements, using preempt-rt kernel configurations to prioritize low-latency responses, ensuring that tasks are executed in precise time-bounds. Provides better determinism and predictability compared to standard Linux kernel.

  • Right Sized - relies on a smaller footprint for better performance, optimized workloads, and smaller attack surface for resource usage efficiency. Provides all required features and attributes, considering best usage of system resources, with the option to augment functionality based on the large Debian-compatible package repositories.

  • Robust - optimized for hardware powering the intelligent edge, ensures optimized performance out-of-the box with Intel Quick Assist Technology (QAT) and OpenVino acceleration, to provide better performance and stability during operations and overall system integrity throughout the lifecycle.

  • Resilient - designed to handle potential defects and security vulnerabilities by mitigating and responding to incoming threats, with built in security features, such as policy enforcing and relying on dedicated hardware features such as Trusted Platform Module (TPM), Cryptographic Engine and so on.

For a list of features, including the available image types, hardware board support, and package management, see Release Information.

In this quick start, you will learn how to install the eLxr 12 distribution in a couple of different ways, specific to your use case. For example, if you want to run eLxr 12 on a hardware device, such as a PC or development board, you can download the ISO file and copy it to bootable media. If you want to run eLxr 12 in a container for use in cloud-native applications, you can clone the eLxr tools repository and install it in a Docker container.

Tip

If you just want to jump in to eLxr 12 without building the container image first, you can run the Full or Slim image directly from Docker Hub.

Before You Begin

Before you get started, you should have familiarity with Linux development and development tools. You will need Internet access to perform the procedures throughout this manual.

To perform ISO image-based installations, you must have:

  • An x86 device with UEFI, connected to a keyboard and monitor - see Release Information for a list of supported platforms

    Note

    To test on a Windows, Mac, or Linux host, you can use a virtual machine manager (VMM) such as VirtualBox.

  • Bootable media, such as a USB or SD flash drive

To perform container-based installations, you must have:

  • A Linux development host with the following minimum requirements:

    • Internet access to download the images and perform updates on the deployed system

    • Git to clone repositories and communicate with the Elxr 12 project on GitLab

    • Docker Engine installed and configured to allow non-privileged users to run Docker commands

    • Python3 with rucksack and libvirt-python3 modules

    • libvirt-dev package

Workflows

Your workflow changes only slightly to account for the type of install you want to perform.

ISO Image on Hardware or with a VMM

Hardware and Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)-based installations are very similar, and only differ in the need to prepare the ISO file for bootable media.

  1. Obtain and prepare the eLxr 12 image. For ISO images with hardware or a VMM, you first need to obtain the image. For details, see Downloading the eLxr Image. For hardware installations, you will also need to copy the ISO image file to bootable media.

  2. Perform the installation.

  3. Boot the eLxr 12 image to verify its functionality. This is the part where you log in and get to play some with eLxr. For details, see booting-the-elxr-image.

  4. Update the package index and install something. Install a package or packages from the eLxr 12 package repository. For details, see Adding and Updating Packages.

Image Container with Docker

To use an eLxr image direct from Docker Hub:

  1. Pull the eLxr container image.

    $ docker image pull elxrlinux/elxr:12.10.0.0

  2. Run the image.

    $ docker run -it elxrlinux/elxr:12.10.0.0

    Note

    To use the Slim image, substitute elxr:12.10.0.0 in the commands above with elxr-slim:12.10.0.0-slim.

  3. Customize the image to include the packages and applications you need. For details, see Adding and Updating Packages.

Distro-to-Order Image

Use the rucksack repository to build a customized, distro-to-order eLxr image, based on your development requirements.

For details, see Distro-to-Order Developer’s Guide.

Cloud-native Virtual Machine Images

Use the cloud-native qcow images in a number of VM-capable environments, including your Linux development host, OpenStack, or KubeVirt.

  1. Create the meta-data and user-data Cloud-init configuration files to define basic image requirements, such as a hostname, username, password, and groups.

  2. Download the cloud-native image directly.

  3. Use the virt-install command to launch a virtual machine and install the image to it.

  4. Connect to the image using virsh console and log in.

For details, see Deploying eLxr Cloud Virtual Machine Images.