[HN Gopher] Talos Linux
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       Talos Linux
        
       Author : kiyanwang
       Score  : 84 points
       Date   : 2022-06-19 11:34 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.talos.dev)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.talos.dev)
        
       | ByThyGrace wrote:
       | > Ephemeral
       | 
       | > Talos runs in memory from a SquashFS, and persists nothing,
       | leaving the primary disk entirely to Kubernetes.
       | 
       | Hmm so if the entire disk is unused where is /boot in this
       | configuration?
        
         | AtlasBarfed wrote:
         | ... so it wastes memory instead of disk?
         | 
         | Unless we are talking about, like, a 100MB ramdisk, why is that
         | a good thing?
         | 
         | And really, I'd prefer a 10MB ramdisk.
        
           | cbarrick wrote:
           | Diskless servers are not uncommon
        
           | ReptileMan wrote:
           | Probably makes full disk encryption easier. Also compared to
           | how much memory you can have on a modern server - it's
           | trivial amount
        
           | andrewrynhard wrote:
           | It is a 50MB squashfs.
        
             | giancarlostoro wrote:
             | Thats impressive honestly.
        
         | ZiiS wrote:
         | It can netboot.
        
       | moondev wrote:
       | The amount and variety of machine images shipped is honestly
       | impressive:
       | 
       | https://github.com/siderolabs/talos/releases/tag/v1.0.6
       | 
       | First time I have seen a project publish vmware-arm64.ova for
       | ESXi arm edition.
       | 
       | Is it still possible to exec into a shell on a cluster node via
       | something like https://github.com/kvaps/kubectl-node-shell ?
        
         | glitchcrab wrote:
         | There's no shell on a Talos machine. You can obviously mount
         | the host filesystem into a container, but you cannot exec onto
         | a node directly (afaik).
        
       | solatic wrote:
       | Can anybody help explain when organizations should use Talos
       | instead of cloud-vendor-managed Kubernetes offerings
       | (EKS/AKS/GKE)? Especially considering that the managed offerings
       | now fit most regulatory requirements (e.g. EKS is FedRAMP-High
       | Authorized)? Or does Talos see most of its use in on-prem
       | environments?
        
         | andrewrynhard wrote:
         | For folks who are all in on a single cloud provider it might
         | not make sense, but if you run Kubernetes in multiple clouds,
         | on-premise, edge, etc. then it starts to make a lot of sense
         | since you get consistency.
        
         | indymike wrote:
         | > Can anybody help explain when organizations should use Talos
         | instead of cloud-vendor-managed Kubernetes offerings
         | (EKS/AKS/GKE)?
         | 
         | 1. Learning. I want to self host to learn the stack top to
         | bottom.
         | 
         | 2. Build your own service.
         | 
         | 3. Why not? (probably the best, most hackerish option)
         | 
         | > Especially considering that the managed offerings now fit
         | most regulatory requirements (e.g. EKS is FedRAMP-High
         | Authorized)?
         | 
         | Standards that meet regulatory requirements may not be updated
         | or secure enough to meet private sector needs.
        
       | 0daystock wrote:
       | > Security: Talos reduces your attack surface: It's minimal,
       | hardened and immutable. All API access is secured with mutual TLS
       | (mTLS) authentication.
       | 
       | So, no actual threat modelling, third party audits or integration
       | and unit testing is done? Yes, that appears so.
        
         | ntoskrnl wrote:
         | Did you just read a marketing blurb on their landing page and
         | decide after 5 seconds they don't do unit testing? I guess we
         | can also assume they don't brush their teeth every morning
         | because they didn't mention that either.
        
           | 0daystock wrote:
           | Actually I read the entire documentation and browsed the
           | source code.
           | 
           | https://www.talos.dev/v1.0/learn-more/philosophy/ "Security"
           | section makes no mention of independent audits. It just
           | boldly claims "There are no passwords in Talos" as if that
           | was a panacea for security.
           | 
           | The existing integration tests don't verify any assumptions
           | about security, only that the configuration is valid. Please
           | correct me if I'm wrong or missed anything.
           | 
           | If you're going to call something "secure" you need to prove
           | it.
        
             | derfabianpeter wrote:
             | They didn't call it secure as per your initial quote. They
             | say it is designed to have a small attack surface. You
             | missed to acknowledge that security means different things
             | for different contexts. Besides, it's a free offering,
             | clearing issues with insecurities other offerings have. If
             | you want something to be more secure, you can point out
             | flaws you find in the intended way (filing issues) which
             | might help improve the situation. Calling it out the way
             | you did (probably without trying the tool and even more
             | likely without having substantial knowledge of better
             | approachable alternatives in the space) doesn't help at
             | all.
        
       | mbushey wrote:
       | I've been looking at Talos for almost a year now. I love the fact
       | there is no shell, each machine is just a K8s node. It seems
       | wonderful, but I can not get it to install. A friend has has the
       | exact same experience, he finally went with Ubuntu and k3s. Has
       | anyone successfully installed it?
        
       | midislack wrote:
       | This is SO cool, Raptor Engineering's Talos Workstations have a
       | new OS!
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | This only appears to support ARM64/aarch64 and AMD64/x86_64; it
         | doesn't mention POWER anywhere.
        
           | midislack wrote:
           | Why'd they name it Talos then? LOL check out my new OS -
           | called Surface!
        
       | thewakalix wrote:
       | By Talos, this can't be happening!
        
       | hoistbypetard wrote:
       | I was totally expecting this to be something made by Raptor:
       | https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/
        
         | heffer wrote:
         | I had somewhat of a weird moment here as well. I was expecting
         | this to be related to Cisco Talos.
         | 
         | And so I opened your link to find out what it was about. Only
         | to find it mentioning CAPI 2.0 which I only know from the ISDN
         | days (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ISDN_Application_Pro
         | gra...) and not as some form of I/O interface accelerator.
        
           | andrewrynhard wrote:
           | We mention CAPI but certainly not 2.0 since the CAPI we are
           | referring to is "Cluster API" and they only have 1.0.
        
         | rubicks wrote:
         | Same. Was expecting polished Debian-based OS for ppc
         | architecture machines. Shucks.
        
           | pabs3 wrote:
           | I would expect Raptor folks to contribute upstream to
           | firmware, the Linux kernel, bootloaders and Debian itself,
           | not make a fork just for their own machines. The Debian
           | ppc64el architecture is an official release architecture so
           | Debian supports those machines quite well already.
        
       | badrabbit wrote:
       | GKE uses ChromeOS, weirded me out at first.
        
         | danpalmer wrote:
         | GKE runs Google's "Container Optimised" OS. It's just a bare-
         | bones Linux designed for security and performance running
         | containers, very similar to Talos.
         | 
         | Edit: Was wrong, thanks for the correction.
        
           | wrs wrote:
           | "Container-Optimized OS is maintained by Google and based on
           | the open source Chromium OS project." [0]
           | 
           | [0] https://cloud.google.com/container-optimized-
           | os/docs/concept...
        
             | danpalmer wrote:
             | Ha. I even triple-checked this with a bunch of google
             | searches to make sure I was right. Sorry about that!
             | 
             | That is strange. They aren't even some common base, CO-OS
             | is literally based on Chromium OS.
        
               | badrabbit wrote:
               | Ssh into the nodes and poke around. Interesting FS
               | layout, my typical probing commands didn't work and
               | couldn't figure out the package manager or distro for a
               | while, it was my firsr exposure to chromium os.
        
       | TruthWillHurt wrote:
       | So.. it's CoreOS all over again?
       | 
       | Or Ubuntu Eucalyptus?
       | 
       | (Neither is still with us. wonder why..)
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | CoreOS has a lot of children including Flatcar, RHEL CoreOS,
         | and Fedora CoreOS. Then you have Ubuntu whatever, Google
         | Container-Optimized OS, Amazon Bottlerocket, Talos, and
         | probably a few more. The market is flooded.
        
         | andrewrynhard wrote:
         | The same spirit as CoreOS but it is something entirely
         | different. Written from PID1 up solely for the purposes of
         | running Kubernetes.
        
           | andrewrynhard wrote:
           | I would say that CoreOS is gone because RH destroyed it. Not
           | because people didn't use it.
        
             | ossusermivami wrote:
             | I think you are misinformed, coreos is still alive within
             | RH products (openshift)
        
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       (page generated 2022-06-19 23:01 UTC)