files

The files module can be used to copy directories from files/ to any location in your image at build time, as long as the location exists at build time (e.g. you can’t put files in /home/<username>/, because users haven’t been created yet prior to first boot).

Note

If you want to place files into /etc/, there are two ways to do it:

1. copying a directory in files/ directly to /etc to add all of its files at build time, or
2. putting the files you want there in /usr/etc/ as part of copying things over to /usr/, which rpm-ostree will then copy to /etc/ at runtime/boot.

Typically, you will want to use the latter option (putting files in /usr/etc/) in almost all cases, since that is the proper directory for “system” configuration templates on atomic Fedora distros, whereas /etc/ is meant for manual overrides and editing by the machine’s admin after installation (see issue https://github.com/blue-build/legacy-template/issues/28). However, if you really need something to be in /etc/ at build time --- for instance, if you for some reason need to place a repo file in /etc/yum.repos.d/ in such a way that it is used by a rpm-ostree module later on --- then the former option will be necessary.

Caution

The files module cannot write to directories that will later be symlinked to point to other places (typically /var/) by rpm-ostree.

This is because it doesn’t make sense for a directory to be both a symlink and a real directory that has had actual files directly copied to it, so the files module copying files to one of those directories (thereby instantiating it as a real directory) and rpm-ostree’s behavior regarding them will necessarily conflict.

For reference, according to the official Fedora documentation, here is a list of the directories that rpm-ostree symlinks to other locations:

• /home/ → /var/home/
• /opt/ → /var/opt/
• /srv/ → /var/srv/
• /root/ → /var/roothome/
• /usr/local/ → /var/usrlocal/
• /mnt/ → /var/mnt/
• /tmp/ → /sysroot/tmp/

So don’t use files to copy any files to any of the directories on the left, because at runtime rpm-ostree will want to link them to the ones on the right, which will cause a conflict as explained above.

Example configuration

modules:
  - type: files
    files:
      - source: system   # copies `files/system/*` (* means everything inside it) into your image's root folder `/`
        destination: /
      - source: my-image/usr   # copies `files/my-image/usr/*` to `/usr/` inside the image
        destination: /usr

Configuration options

files: (required enum)

List of files / folders to copy.

Possible values: string: string, { source: string, destination: string }