Base Image

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Discussion

A Base Image is a Machine Image that provides the common operating system, storage, services, configuration, and security foundation for one or more derived images.

The Base Image may contain an installed operating system, disk partitions, filesystems, core packages, system services, user and access settings, network configuration, security controls, and other shared capabilities.

A Base Image reduces duplication by allowing later image builds to add specialized packages, services, configurations, or capabilities without repeating the complete operating-system installation.

Within Crucible, a Base Image may serve as the source for a hardened guest image or a later Image Layer.

Definition

machine image that provides the common operating-system, storage, service, configuration, and security foundation for one or more derived images

Source

Generalized from virtualization, cloud computing, operating-system deployment, container-image, and machine-image engineering usage and specialized for the Crucible architecture and operational model.

Note

A Base Image does not necessarily satisfy every security, compliance, or workload requirement of a deployed system.

The term identifies the image’s role as a reusable foundation rather than a particular level of hardening, approval, or completeness.

Example

Crucible builds a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9 Base Image containing the installed operating system, configured filesystems, essential packages, and shared system services. Later image layers add security hardening and Kubernetes capabilities.

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