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Introducing automotive-image-builder

Automotive image builder is a tool used to create operating system (OS) images. It relies on the capabilities of OSBuild underneath it. Because OSBuild uses files called manifests as input to define how to build the image, that terminology extends to the input files used by automotive-image-builder as well.

The automotive image builder manifests are YAML files that define the content and configuration of the OS image. A manifest file can be as simple as the following minimal manifest example:

Minimal AIB manifest
--8<-- "demos/minimal/minimal.aib.yml"

To review available manifest options and configurations, see: Automotive Image Builder manifest format

Installing Automotive image builder​

Automotive Image Builder can be installed in two ways:

  • As RPM on RHEL, CentOS, Fedora and derivatives.
  • As a container on other Linux distribution or MacOS.

Installing Automotive image builder from RPM​

Automotive image builder is packaged as RPM, available for RHEL, CentOS, and Fedora in the centos-automotive-sig/automotive-image-builder copr repository. Complete the following steps to install Automotive image builder on these systems:

  1. Enable the Automotive image builder and osbuild-auto repositories:

    $ sudo dnf copr enable @centos-automotive-sig/automotive-image-builder
    $ sudo dnf copr enable @centos-automotive-sig/osbuild-auto

  2. Install automotive-image-builder. This RPM also includes automotive-image-runner, a convenient wrapper around QEMU that you can use to launch OS images as virtual machine, as well as other tools that the build process relies on.

    $ sudo dnf install automotive-image-builder

Next, you can start building images. For example, use the following command to build the minimal.aib.yml manifest that is available in sig-docs/demos/minimal:

$ automotive-image-builder build --distro autosd9 --mode image --target qemu --export qcow2 minimal.aib.yml minimal.qcow2

Running Automotive image builder from a container​

The Automotive SIG maintains a container image that you can use to run automotive-image-builder in the automotive-image-builder Quay.io repo. This containerized build process is useful for hosts other than RHEL, CentOS, and Fedora, or if you do not want to install the RPM-based version of the automotive-image-builder tool.

To easily run automotive-image-builder from a container, you can use the auto-image-builder.sh script that is available in the `sample-images repository.

  1. Download the script:

    $ curl -O "https://gitlab.com/CentOS/automotive/sample-images/-/raw/main/auto-image-builder.sh?ref_type=heads"

  2. Build an image. In this example, build the minimal.aib.yml manifest that is available in sig-docs/demos/minimal:

    $ bash auto-image-builder.sh build --distro autosd9 --mode image --target qemu --export qcow2 minimal.aib.yml minimal.qcow2

For more information about the container, see the automotive-image-builder repository.

Automotive image builder example manifests​

The Automotive SIG maintains two collections of automotive-image-builder manifests that you can use to better understand the requisite YAML syntax, and for you to build and modify yourself:

  • The sig-docs/demos which includes all the manifests present in this documentation site. These images are built and tested nightly, and when changes are merged to Automotive image builder itself.
  • The sample-images repos which includes a collection of manifests. These images are not regularly tested and while most of them are included in sig-docs/demos there may still be interesting manifests examples.

mpp.yml vs aib.yml​

As you browse through the example manifests you might notice two types of manifests, some ending with .mpp.yml and some ending with .aib.yml. They reflect an evolution to the manifest format. The .mpp.yml manifests are written using the first generation format and structure heavily based on OSBuild's manifests. That format is complex, error-prone and cumbersome when manually edited.

This, first, complex format has been replaced by a "simplified" format which has a limited and clearly defined set of capabilities documented at: https://centos.gitlab.io/automotive/src/automotive-image-builder/simple_manifest.html. This format requires the .aib.yml file extension. It is the format that is used in this documentation and the format that we strongly encourage you to use.

Understanding the Automotive image builder options​

When you build an image with automotive-image-builder, you must specify some options in the build command:

$ sudo automotive-image-builder build --mode ````&lt;package-or-image&gt;```` --target ````&lt;target&gt;```` \
--export ````&lt;export-format&gt;```` ````&lt;path-to-manifest&gt;````.mpp.yml ````&lt;my-image&gt;````.qcow2

Architecture​

--arch : The hardware architecture to build for (x86_64 or aarch64). If unspecified, the native architecture is used.

!!! Note You can compose an image for any architecture, but you can only build for the native architecture.

Distributions​

--distro : Define the package repositories for the distribution you intend to use. The default is "cs9". View available distributions with the automotive-image-builder list-dist command. Available distributions include:

  • autosd or autosd9

  • cs9

  • eln

  • f40

    To extend the list-dist with custom distributions, add an ipp.yml in a directory called /some/dir/distro and pass --include /some/dir to the argument list.

Modes​

--mode : Set the value to package or image. The default value is image.

  • Use package to build a package-based OS image, which is useful for development and testing.
  • Use image to build an OSTree image for use in production.

Targets​

--target : The physical or virtual deployment target for your image. The default value is qemu. View the available targets with the automotive-image-builder list-targets command. Available targets include:

  • QEMU with aboot or grub
  • KVM
  • TI AM62, AM69, BeaglePlay, J784S4 EVM, and TDA4
  • AWS
  • Qualcomm QDrive3 and RideSX4
  • ccimx93
  • Windows PC
  • Renesas R-Car
  • Raspberry Pi 4
  • NXP S32G2-VNP-RDB3

Export formats​

--export : The image file type that you want to build. View the available export formats with the automotive-image-builder list-exports command. Export formats available as of October 2024 include:

  • image: A raw disk image with partitions
  • qcow2: A qcow2 format disk image with partitions
  • ext4: An ext4 filesystem containing just the rootfs partition (i.e., no boot partitions)
  • aboot: An android boot system partition image and a boot partition
  • container: A container image you can run with podman or docker
  • tar: A tar file containing the basic rootfs files
  • ostree-commit: An ostree repo with the commit built from the image
  • ostree-oci-image: An oci image wrapping the ostree commit from ostree-commit
  • rpmlist: A json file listing all the RPMs used in the image

Next steps​

For more information about using the automotive-image-builder tool with build options and manifests to provision your hardware, see the flashing guide specific to your target hardware: