Installation guide

StrongLinux 1.0 (Aria) comes in two editions, each with its own ISO:

Both are based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and boot on BIOS and UEFI (amd64).

Requirements

The installer needs network access: StrongLinux packages come from the http://repo.strongstack.cloud/stronglinux repository and Ubuntu packages from archive.ubuntu.com.

1. Download and verify

Download the ISO, SHA256SUMS, its signature SHA256SUMS.gpg and the key stronglinux-archive-keyring.gpg from the downloads page. Then verify:

gpgv --keyring ./stronglinux-archive-keyring.gpg SHA256SUMS.gpg SHA256SUMS
sha256sum -c --ignore-missing SHA256SUMS

The first command must report Good signature and the second, OK for every downloaded file.

2. Write the installation media

• Linux: sudo dd if=stronglinux-1.0-<date>-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress oflag=sync
• Windows: Rufus in DD mode, or balenaEtcher.
• VM: attach the ISO directly as a CD-ROM (KVM/libvirt, Proxmox, VMware, VirtualBox).

3. Install

1. Choose the language: English, Português (Brasil) or Español. It applies to the menu and to the installed system (locale and keyboard).
2. Choose an option in the menu. After 15 seconds, the first option starts on its own.

Server ISO

Desktop ISO

4. First login

• User stronglinux, initial password stronglinux.
• On first login the system requires a new password: 14 or more characters,

with upper case, lower case, a digit and a symbol.

• On the Server edition SSH is enabled. After installing your key, turn off

password authentication (PasswordAuthentication no).

5. OpenStack cloud (Server edition only)

With the All-in-one option, the strongctl-firstboot service deploys the cloud by itself on first boot. To follow it:

tail -f /var/lib/strongctl/firstboot.status
sudo journalctl -fu strongctl-firstboot

On a server that is already installed, deploy by hand:

sudo strongctl init --aio        # creates inventory, globals and the password vault
sudo strongctl bootstrap         # MariaDB, RabbitMQ, Memcached and OVN central
sudo strongctl deploy            # Keystone, Glance, Placement, Nova, Neutron,
                                 # Cinder, Horizon, Heat, Barbican and StrongStack
sudo strongctl verify            # checks services, endpoints and certificates

The administrator credentials are in /root/admin-openrc.sh. Horizon is at https://<host-ip>/dashboard. The APIs use TLS with the internal CA in /etc/strongctl/tls/ca.crt.

For high-availability multi-node clouds (3 controllers, Galera, clustered RabbitMQ, OVN RAFT and Keepalived), see the high availability guide.

6. Cloud images and PXE

• stronglinux-1.0-base-cloud-amd64.qcow2: base system with cloud-init, to run

as a VM on any cloud.

• stronglinux-1.0-openstack-cloud-amd64.qcow2: base system with strongctl,

ready to become a cloud node.

• Network installation: see the PXE boot guide.

7. apt repository

A system installed from the ISO is already configured. To use the repository on an existing Ubuntu 24.04:

sudo install -m 0644 stronglinux-archive-keyring.gpg /usr/share/keyrings/
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/stronglinux.sources <<'EOF'
Types: deb
URIs: http://repo.strongstack.cloud/stronglinux
Suites: stronglinux-1.0 stronglinux-1.0-updates stronglinux-1.0-security
Components: main
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/stronglinux-archive-keyring.gpg
EOF
sudo apt update

8. Updates

• System: sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade.
• OpenStack cloud: use strongctl upgrade, a rolling update that keeps the

VMs running. See the upgrade guide.