Feature request:
This feature request is for MAAS to be able to conduct the full life cycle of a machine –
enlistment, commission, testing, deployment, etc. offline without requiring either
mirrored or upstream access to APT, snaps, or image repositories so as to facilitate a fully offline installation capability, out of the box within MAAS.
Right now, at many points during enlistment, commissioning and deployment, apt and snap packages (among other dependencies if there are any) are downloaded and installed in the images – even ephemeral ones, for the purposes of running scripts and completing tasks.
This behavior may be undesired in situations where MAAS is operating in an air-gapped or near air-gapped environment where direct or even indirect access to the internet or mirrors is restricted.
Existing features considered:
- MAAS has existing facilities to be able to point it to local package mirrors and images
for deployment, but this would still mean to set up ancillary services (apt mirror, reprepro etc.)
in order for MAAS to function. This specific feature request is to forgo all of this and allow MAAS to somehow pre-cache all required files locally and operate with it (or via similar mechanisms to facilitate this offline mode of function).