Skip to content

Ignite installation guide

This guide describes the installation and uninstallation process of Ignite.

System requirements

Ignite runs on most Intel, AMD or ARM (AArch64) based linux/amd64 systems with KVM support. See the full CPU support table in dependencies.md for more information.

See cloudprovider.md for guidance on running Ignite on various cloud providers and suitable instances that you could use.

NOTE: You do not need to install any "traditional" QEMU/KVM packages, as long as there is virtualization support in the CPU and kernel it works.

See dependencies.md for needed dependencies. Look at arm.md for use on Raspberry Pi and other ARM machines.

Checking for KVM support

Please read dependencies.md for the full reference, but if you quickly want to check if your CPU and kernel supports virtualization, run these commands:

lscpu | grep Virtualization
Virtualization:      VT-x

$ lsmod | grep kvm
kvm_intel             200704  0
kvm                   593920  1 kvm_intel

Alternatively, on Ubuntu-like systems there's a tool called kvm-ok in the cpu-checker package. Check for KVM support using kvm-ok:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y cpu-checker
...
$ kvm-ok
INFO: /dev/kvm exists
KVM acceleration can be used

With this kind of output, you're ready to go!

Alternatively if you want to run this on AWS EC2, use Amazon Linux v2 (https://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-2/) and ensure you use a baremetal instance, like the r series like say r5.metal (https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/).

Installing dependencies

Ignite has a few dependencies (read more in this doc). Install them on Ubuntu/CentOS like this:
(Ignite does not depend on docker package version. If you already installed docker-ce, you don't need to replace it to docker.io.)

Ubuntu:

apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends dmsetup openssh-client git binutils
which containerd || apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends containerd
    # Install containerd if it's not present -- prevents breaking docker-ce installations

CentOS:

yum install -y e2fsprogs openssh-clients git
which containerd || ( yum-config-manager --add-repo https://download.docker.com/linux/centos/docker-ce.repo && yum install -y containerd.io )
    # Install containerd if it's not present

Amazon Linux 2

yum install -y e2fsprogs openssh-clients git 
which containerd || amazon-linux-extras enable docker && yum install -y containerd
    # Install containerd if it's not present

CNI Plugins

Install the CNI binaries like this:

export CNI_VERSION=v0.9.1
export ARCH=$([ $(uname -m) = "x86_64" ] && echo amd64 || echo arm64)
sudo mkdir -p /opt/cni/bin
curl -sSL https://github.com/containernetworking/plugins/releases/download/${CNI_VERSION}/cni-plugins-linux-${ARCH}-${CNI_VERSION}.tgz | sudo tar -xz -C /opt/cni/bin

Note that the SSH and Git packages are optional; they are only needed if you use the ignite ssh and/or ignite gitops commands.

Downloading the binary

Ignite is a currently a single binary application. To install it, download the binary from the GitHub releases page, save it as /usr/local/bin/ignite and make it executable.

To install Ignite from the command line, follow these steps:

export VERSION=v0.10.0
export GOARCH=$(go env GOARCH 2>/dev/null || echo "amd64")

for binary in ignite ignited; do
    echo "Installing ${binary}..."
    curl -sfLo ${binary} https://github.com/weaveworks/ignite/releases/download/${VERSION}/${binary}-${GOARCH}
    chmod +x ${binary}
    sudo mv ${binary} /usr/local/bin
done

Ignite uses semantic versioning, select the version to be installed by changing the VERSION environment variable.

Verifying the installation

If the installation was successful, the ignite CLI and ignited daemon commands should now be available:

Ignite CLI

$ ignite version
Ignite version: version.Info{Major:"0", Minor:"8", GitVersion:"v0.10.0", GitCommit:"...", GitTreeState:"clean", BuildDate:"...", GoVersion:"...", Compiler:"gc", Platform:"linux/amd64"}
Firecracker version: v0.22.4
Runtime: containerd

Ignited Daemon

Verify the ignited daemon is running and monitoring files in /etc/firecracker/manifests/. To do this you will need to install the uuid-runtime (Ubuntu) package.

The example here comes from a DigitalOcean droplet Region: NCY1, Size: 2GB image:

# ignited daemon --log-level debug &
# cd /etc/firecracker/manifests/
# touch smoke-test.yml
DEBU[0830] FileWatcher: Registered inotify events [notify.InCloseWrite: "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"] for path "/etc/fire cracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml" 
root@serviceubuntu18-<redacted>-desktop-4ku7nqh:/etc/firecracker/manifests# DEBU[0831] FileWatcher: Sending update: MODIFY -> "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml" 
DEBU[0831] FileWatcher: Dispatched events batch and reset the events cache 
WARN[0831] Ignoring "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml": unknown API version "" and/or kind ""

Now add some VM details (see Run Ignite VMs Declaratively for additional details):

VMFILE=/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml
tee "$VMFILE" > /dev/null <<EOF
apiVersion: ignite.weave.works/v1alpha4
kind: VM
metadata:
  name: smoke-test
  uid: $(uuidgen)
spec:
  image:
    oci: weaveworks/ignite-ubuntu
  cpus: 2
  diskSize: 3GB
  memory: 800MB
status:
  running: true
EOF

The console output should resemble this:

DEBU[2551] FileWatcher: Registered inotify events [notify.InCloseWrite: "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"] for path "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"
DEBU[2552] FileWatcher: Sending update: MODIFY -> "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"
DEBU[2552] FileWatcher: Dispatched events batch and reset the events cache
DEBU[2552] GenericMappedRawStorage: AddMapping: "vm/d039cbcd-3606-462d-839e-25ac745cd7c5" -> "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"
DEBU[2552] SyncStorage: Received update {{CREATE &TypeMeta{Kind:VM,APIVersion:ignite.weave.works/v1alpha4,}} 0xc0004c7aa0} true
DEBU[2552] SyncStorage: Sent update: {CREATE &TypeMeta{Kind:VM,APIVersion:ignite.weave.works/v1alpha4,}}
DEBU[2552] FileWatcher: Skipping suspended event MODIFY for path: "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"
DEBU[2552] FileWatcher: Registered inotify events [notify.InCloseWrite: "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"] for path "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"
DEBU[2553] FileWatcher: Sending update: MODIFY -> "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"
DEBU[2553] FileWatcher: Dispatched events batch and reset the events cache
DEBU[2553] SyncStorage: Received update {{MODIFY &TypeMeta{Kind:VM,APIVersion:ignite.weave.works/v1alpha4,}} 0xc0004c7aa0} true
DEBU[2553] FileWatcher: Skipping suspended event MODIFY for path: "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"
DEBU[2553] SyncStorage: Sent update: {MODIFY &TypeMeta{Kind:VM,APIVersion:ignite.weave.works/v1alpha4,}}
DEBU[2553] FileWatcher: Registered inotify events [notify.InCloseWrite: "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"] for path "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"
DEBU[2554] FileWatcher: Sending update: MODIFY -> "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"
DEBU[2554] FileWatcher: Dispatched events batch and reset the events cache
DEBU[2554] SyncStorage: Received update {{MODIFY &TypeMeta{Kind:VM,APIVersion:ignite.weave.works/v1alpha4,}} 0xc0004c7aa0} true
DEBU[2554] FileWatcher: Registered inotify events [notify.InCloseWrite: "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"] for path "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"
DEBU[2554] SyncStorage: Sent update: {MODIFY &TypeMeta{Kind:VM,APIVersion:ignite.weave.works/v1alpha4,}}
DEBU[2554] FileWatcher: Skipping suspended event MODIFY for path: "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"
DEBU[2555] FileWatcher: Sending update: MODIFY -> "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"
DEBU[2555] FileWatcher: Dispatched events batch and reset the events cache
DEBU[2555] SyncStorage: Received update {{MODIFY &TypeMeta{Kind:VM,APIVersion:ignite.weave.works/v1alpha4,}} 0xc0004c7aa0} true
DEBU[2555] SyncStorage: Sent update: {MODIFY &TypeMeta{Kind:VM,APIVersion:ignite.weave.works/v1alpha4,}}
DEBU[2555] FileWatcher: Skipping suspended event MODIFY for path: "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"
DEBU[2556] FileWatcher: Registered inotify events [notify.InCloseWrite: "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"] for path "/etc/firecracker/manifests/smoke-test.yml"
etc.
etc.

Now in a new terminal/console:

  1. Verify Ignite is tracking the running micro-VM
# ignite ps
VM ID                   IMAGE                           KERNEL                                  SIZE    CPU
S       MEMORY          CREATED STATUS  IPS             PORTS   NAME
rpfrdqxmffadvn6t        weaveworks/ignite-ubuntu:latest weaveworks/ignite-kernel:5.10.51        1.2 GB  1 4
56.0 MB 43m ago Up 39m  10.61.0.2               smoke-test
  1. Verify the micro-VM is accessible (username: root, password: root).
# ignite attach smoke-test
# cat /proc/cpuinfo

To detach from the VM's TTY, type ^P^Q (Ctrl + P + Q).

# ignite stop smoke-test
# ignite rm smoke-test

Now you can continue with the Getting Started Walkthrough.

Removing the installation

To completely remove the Ignite installation, execute the following as root:

# Force-remove all running VMs
ignite rm -f $(ignite ps -aq)
# Remove the data directory
rm -r /var/lib/firecracker
# Remove the ignite and ignited binaries
rm /usr/local/bin/ignite{,d}