Converging image and package based OS updates
Channel: SUSE Labs
Date: 2022-10-24

by Ludwig Nussel at SUSE Labs Conference 2022

Thanks to our conference sponsors, ARM and HPE, and our hosting sponsor and BigBlueButton provider, Blindside Networks.

A basic building block of (open)SUSE’s operating systems are RPM packages. So no matter whether we produce installers or images or containers, there's always RPMs. Some would like to use images or containers to update the OS. In the end that also means updating RPMs, just wrapped in another layer. So why not use RPMs in the first place but with concepts known from images? Anyway the problems and solutions needed to get an OS delivered that way are similar so we end up with a framework that could work for any method.

The PoC presented is based on btrfs subvolumes, reflinked RPM content without database for zero copy updates and systemd-boot.