bty - flash images onto target disks, locally or over PXE

Image-flash provisioning toolkit for bare-metal and virtual targets. Writes pre-built (“cooked”) system images onto target disks - locally from a USB live stick or remotely over PXE - and configures the deployed system on first boot via cloud-init or CIJOE workflows.

Get started

• Overview
  • Two delivery modes
  • OS scope
  • Components
• Quickstart
  • Get the USB live image
  • Flash a USB stick
  • Drop images onto the stick
  • Boot a target machine
  • What you can do today
  • What is coming
• Flash a target with the USB live image
  • Prerequisites
  • Step 1: Get the USB image
  • Step 2: Write the image to a USB stick
  • Step 3: Drop your image(s) onto BTY_IMAGES
  • Step 4: Boot the target from USB
  • Step 5a: Flash with bty-tui (interactive)
  • Step 5b: Flash with bty (scriptable)
  • Step 6: Reboot
  • Troubleshooting
  • What’s next

Reference

• Concepts
  • Image
  • Target
  • Provisioning mode
  • Disk layout (USB live)
  • Machine record
  • Boot policy
• Flows
  • Direct flash (CLI / TUI)
  • Interactive PXE flash (boot_policy=tui)
  • Server-driven PXE flash (boot_policy=flash)
• Components
  • bty (CLI)
  • bty-tui (Terminal UI)
  • bty-web (HTTP server + browser UI)
  • bty-media/ (appliance-image builder)
  • CIJOE provisioning modes
• Related work
  • Heavy fleet orchestrators - MAAS, Foreman, Tinkerbell, OpenStack Ironic
  • Image-deploy in similar shape - FOG Project, iVentoy, Clonezilla SE
  • Installer-based provisioners - Cobbler, Microsoft WDS/MDT
  • OS-specific image platforms - Fedora CoreOS, Flatcar, Bottlerocket, NixOS
  • Image creation - Packer, mkosi, debian-live, jkab
  • Manual flashers - dd, Etcher, Rufus, Ventoy
  • What makes bty distinct
• Reference
  • Pre-built release artifacts
  • CLI
  • Configuration
  • Python API
  • HTTP API
  • Configuration schemas
  • State export / import format