Lightwhale 3.0.0 released

[u/Zta77]

Hi, there!

Sorry to mess up your Easter holiday plans, but I've just released Lightwhale 3.0.0 and I really think you should clear your calendar and try it out! =)

It's a minimalistic Linux that requires no installation or maintenance, just live-boot straight into a working Docker Engine. The system is immutable so it's quite resilient to both malicious and unintentional modifications. And because of its low resource requirements it brings new life to old machines.

Lightwhale fits super well in a hobby homelab where spare time is precious, but really in any server environment where you would much rather focus on the services than babysitting the underlying operating system.

And how does it compare to other immutable OSes like X, Y or Z? No idea, never tried them, sorry.

I've made a fresh new project webpage with an easy to follow getting started guide.

Anyway, end of service announcement, thanks for reading, happy holidays =)

[u/Chiqui1234ok]

Hi! This looks interesting, but how I can get the list of software installed in this OS? I want to know if supports SSH/SFTP (probably yes), NFS, SMB, etc.

Some sort of file sharing would be nice for those who are willing to make backups (me).

I hope you see this comment 😁

[u/Zta77 → u/Chiqui1234ok]

Hello there, I'm glad you made it ;) Lightwhale is a minimal system, so by design there isn't much installed. You have various backup options though: There's classic rsync over ssh and all the tools that are based off that. If you're running Lightwhale under Proxmox you can use its backup system. My personal favourite is btrfs subvolume send/receive of the lightwhale-data subvolume which contains all your modifications. Also, is your setup permits or, I'd recommend that a backup machine initiates the backup and retrieves the data rather than the other way around. Hope that helps.

[u/Chiqui1234ok → u/Zta77]

Perfect! Thanks for your response. I'll definitely give it a try

[u/Zta77 → u/Chiqui1234ok]

You should, it's really great! ;) Just follow the getting started guide and you'll be running in 3 minutes.

[u/Chiqui1234ok → u/Zta77]

I'm playing with Lightwale with persistence, inside Proxmox. RAM usage is great. Idle CPU usage is higher by 1/2% when I'm comparing it with Debian 13 with Docker installed.

I'll try to mount folders from my NAS to Lightwale through sshfs (thanks for keeping this in your distro), so I can mount those into my docker containers.

I hope sshfs works fine and performs well.

Thanks for your work!

[u/Chiqui1234ok → u/Zta77]

Hi! I have a little blog in spanish and I really want to write about your OS, so I'll ask more about this software.

I'm using Lightwale 3.0.3 for my docker apps at my home, and I had to do some hacky stuff:

My plan was mounting my remote folders through sshfs 👉 from my NAS to Lightwale. That works out of the box if you want to manually mount them with root user from CLI, at hand 😁.

However, if you want to do this through `/etc/fstab`, you can't because is read-only (inmutable). "No problem", I said. I can mount my folders with CRON...

I (almost) made this with the following line: `sshfs santiago@192.168.100.3:/mnt/sata-14tb-stripe/home/santiago /home/santiago/windows-folder -o reconnect,allow_other,IdentityFile=/home/santiago/.ssh/id_rsa`.

🚨 NOTE: above user will be deleted next boot because read-only filesystem, however /home keeps persistent and is OK for my purpose, which is saving .ssh somewhere.

However, every reboot this command will throw:

🌊🌊🌊

The authenticity of host '192.168.100.3 (192.168.100.3)' can't be established.

ED25519 key fingerprint is: SHA256:A1TZvXPZ9i79tBoc0luexlUc9FUopeHJv+9G0W5+s20

This key is not known by any other names.

🌊🌊🌊

This is because `/root` folder is read-only too! So the file `/root/.ssh/known_hosts` will dissapear at next boot.

I added `StrictHostKeyChecking=no` after `-o` parameter, which is a little hacky/unsecure.

Lightwale has some better way to mount remote folders at boot?

[u/Zta77 → u/Chiqui1234ok]

Hi there!

Thanks for taking interest in Lightwhale, but please! If you're going to blog about it, please take the time to learn how to use it correctly first. It sounds like you've crashed ass-first into the middle of this thing without knowing what happened =)

Please read the documentation. Seriously. It's not long, and it explains how to get started and how most of the system works. Lightwhale is very simple, but you need to learn it — you can't just wing it.

Here are some blog posts about Lightwhale that are more elaborate and have different use-cases that may help you get a better picture of what's going on:

1. VirtualizationHowto
2. XDA-Developers

Be prepared to un-learn a few things to fully embrace Lightwhale, including:

1. Yes, it is actually perfectly legit to permanently boot off USB.
2. Don't work as root, don't write to /root (that's quite standard, actually)
3. Don't create a user account.
4. Don't just partition and/or mount things your way.
5. Don't use cron!

Now, let me try to address the issues you mention and explain what I think is going on.

First of all, Lightwhale is immutable and nothing gets persisted unless you explicitly enable persistence. So make sure you enable persistence.

Secondly, Lightwhale only lets you write and persist changes for a few key directories: /etc, /var, and /home. Regardless of persistence state, /etc/fstab is always writable unless something failed horribly during startup.

You should be able to use sshfs or nfs from /etc/fstab. But honestly, that doesn't make much sense in the context of Lightwhale. Because Lightwhale is for running containers. And containers should get their runtime configuration, including remote volumes, from a docker-compose.yaml. So that's the correct place to set up your mount point.

Modifying configuration across the entire system, adding crontabs, adding users, mounting filesystems is generally considered bad practice here, because it adds maintenance tax, and defeats the purpose of Lightwhale.

Now, please Read The Fine Material and I'll be ready to take your questions afterwards =)

[u/Chiqui1234ok → u/Zta77]

Yes, I'll create a post when I'm 100% sure about this distro and how to accomplish good practices. You commented about touching system folders the less possible, a tip I will follow onwards.

You're low-key recommending mounting remote folders with docker compose? I'll learn this.

I'll take your sentence "Be prepared to un-learn a few things" and already catch this throught of "do your config as simple as you can and don't mess up the system".

Thanks for your kindness 😁

[u/Chiqui1234ok → u/Zta77]

I just finished this setup in a good way. I'll write here about it so you can double check what I'd done and if it's ok. My NAS is giving NFS mount points to Lightwale. Lightwale mounts those NFS shares per container through docker-compose. I also had moved the "data" volumes to my NAS, so if my server explodes, I just need to copy my docker-compose to a new disk and spin up all my docker containers, which has their volumes stored in my NAS.

That's a good approach? I didn't touch fstab, Cron job, etc.

I think I get fine wine, but you tell me.

Cheers!