Build Talos CM5 Image / build (push) Successful in 1h4m48s

Details

Add GRUB bootloader patches for talosctl upgrade on RPi5/CM5

Force GRUB instead of sd-boot on arm64 and pass --no-nvram to
  grub-install, working around the SetVariableRT firmware limitation
  that prevents in-place upgrades on RPi5/CM5 hardware.

  Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

2026-02-13 19:20:18 -05:00

2.5 KiB

Raw Blame History

Technical Guide

Build infrastructure, CI/CD configuration, and project structure for the Talos CM5 Builder.

Building locally (ARM64 host required)

make checkouts patches   # Clone and patch upstream sources
make kernel              # Build RPi kernel
make overlay             # Build SBC overlay
make installer           # Build installer + disk image

CI/CD (Gitea Actions)

Push a version tag to trigger an automated build:

git tag v1.12.3-k6.12.47-2
git push origin v1.12.3-k6.12.47-2

The pipeline runs on the ARM64 self-hosted runner and:

Builds the kernel, overlay, and installer
Attaches SBOM attestation (cosign + syft)
Pushes the installer image to Docker Hub
Creates a Gitea release with the raw disk image

Upstream update checks

A weekly scheduled workflow checks for new Talos and RPi kernel releases and creates Gitea issues when updates are available.

CI Secrets

Secret	Description
`REGISTRY_USERNAME`	Docker Hub username (org-level)
`REGISTRY_PASSWORD`	Docker Hub access token (org-level)

Runner Setup (Apple Silicon Mac Mini)

The build runner needs:

Docker Desktop with Buildx (arm64 native)
Gitea act_runner registered with labels: self-hosted, macOS, arm64
Sufficient disk space for kernel builds (~20GB)

# Install act_runner via Homebrew
brew install act_runner

# Or download directly
curl -sL https://gitea.com/gitea/act_runner/releases/latest/download/act_runner-darwin-arm64 -o act_runner
chmod +x act_runner

# Register
./act_runner register \
  --instance https://git.openharbor.io \
  --token <runner-token> \
  --name mac-mini \
  --labels self-hosted,macOS,arm64

# Run as service
./act_runner daemon

Project Structure

.gitea/workflows/
  build.yaml              # Build pipeline (tag push trigger)
  check-updates.yaml      # Upstream update checker (weekly cron)
Makefile                   # Build orchestration
config/
  config.txt.append        # CM5 overclock settings
  extensions.yaml          # System extensions list
scripts/
  check-upstream.sh        # Version comparison script
patches/
  siderolabs/
    pkgs/0001-*.patch      # RPi kernel patch
    talos/0001-*.patch     # Module list patch
    talos/0002-*.patch     # Skip NVRAM writes for GRUB on arm64
    talos/0003-*.patch     # Force GRUB bootloader on arm64
  talos-rpi5/
    sbc-raspberrypi5/      # Overlay patches (Go toolchain bump)
cosign.pub                 # Public key for verifying image attestations

2.5 KiB Raw Blame History