Option 1: Mirroring catalogs to a private registry with a bastion server

You can use a bastion host to mirror the catalogs to a private registry for an airgap deployment.

About this task

The bastion host must be connected to both the private registry and the Kubernetes cluster. When you mirror the images, you must run the oc mirror commands on the bastion host. The IBM® Catalog Management plug-in or ibm-pak uses File-based catalogs (FBC) to mirror all the catalogs. The FBC is in JSON or YAML format that contains information that is needed to install an operator into the cluster.

Procedure

Set the environment variables and authenticate the registries.
1. Set the environment variable $TARGET_REGISTRY by running the following command.
```
export TARGET_REGISTRY=<target-registry>
```
  The <target-registry> refers to the registry (fully qualified hostname and port) where the images are mirrored to and accessed by the cluster. For example: localhost.localdomain:5000 or 172.16.0.10:5000.
2. Set the following environment variables with the installer image name and the version.
```
export CASE_NAME=ibm-ba-insights
export CASE_VERSION=25.0.0
```
3. Run the following command to set the preferred tool parameter in the YAML file to oc-mirror.
```
oc ibm-pak config mirror-tools --enabled oc-mirror
```
4. Authenticate the registries.
  You must store authentication credentials for all the IBM Business Automation Insights source Docker registries. The following registries require authentication:
  - cp.icr.io
  - registry.redhat.io
  - registry.access.redhat.com
  If you plan to run Podman as the non-root user, see Basic Setup and Use of Podman in a Rootless environment .
  Set the environment variable XDG_RUNTIME_DIR by running the following commands:
```
export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/${UID}
export REGISTRY_AUTH_FILE=$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/containers/auth.json
```
  where ${UID} is the user id of the current user. Make sure that the directory /run/user/${UID} exists and the current user must have write permission.
  Note: Run the following command as the non-root user if you do not want to use sudo podman:
  mkdir -p /run/user/<ID of non-root> && chown <non-root-user>:<non-root-group> /run/user/<ID of non-root>
  If you are using Podman, run the following command to configure credentials for all target registries that require authentication. You must run the command separately for each registry.
```
export REGISTRY_AUTH_FILE=<path to the file that has the auth credentials generated on podman login>
podman login cp.icr.io
podman login <TARGET_REGISTRY>
```
  If you are using docker, run the following command to configure credentials for all target registries that require authentication. You must run the command separately for each registry.
```
export REGISTRY_AUTH_FILE=<path to the file that has the auth credentials generated on docker login>
docker login cp.icr.io
docker login <TARGET_REGISTRY>
```
  Important: When you log in to cp.icr.io, you must specify the user as cp and the IBM entitlement key as the password. For example:
```
podman login cp.icr.io
Username: cp
Password: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Login Succeeded!
```
  The password can be copied from the IBM container library . You can add --tls-verify=false to the command, if you see "cert error" messages.
  If you export REGISTRY_AUTH_FILE=~/.ibm-pak/auth.json, and then run the podman login command, you can see that the file is populated with registry credentials.
  If you use docker login, the authentication file is typically located in $HOME/.docker/config.json on Linux® or %USERPROFILE%/.docker/config.json on Windows. After you run the docker login command, you can export REGISTRY_AUTH_FILE to point to that location. For example, on Linux you can run the following command:
```
export REGISTRY_AUTH_FILE=$HOME/.docker/config.json
```

Run the following command to generate mirror manifests to be used when mirroring the catalog to the target registry. The $TARGET_REGISTRY refers to the registry where the catalogs are mirrored to and accessed by the cluster.

oc ibm-pak generate mirror-manifests $CASE_NAME $TARGET_REGISTRY \
  --version $CASE_VERSION

Important: The generate mirror-manifests command provides an output that lists the command for mirroring. Save the command for later use in step 3.

The following example shows sample output.

oc ibm-pak generate mirror-manifests ibm-ba-insights --version 25.0.0 $TARGET_REGISTRY/bai-2500
ibm-bts-bundle done
ibm-licensing done
ibm-zen  done
ibm-cs-iam done
ibm-cs-install done
ibm-elasticsearch-operator done
ibm-events-operator done
ibm-ba-insights done
ibm-cert-manager done
ibm-cs-flink done
ibm-cloud-native-postgresql done
Generating mirror manifests of CASE: ibm-ba-insights, version: 25.0.0 is complete
Next steps
- To mirror the non curated catalog:
oc mirror --config /root/.ibm-pak/data/mirror/ibm-ba-insights/25.0.0/image-set-config.yaml docker://local_registry/bai2500 --dest-skip-tls --max-per-registry=6
Note: oc mirror arguments are recommendations and may not be valid on all versions of the oc-mirror plug-in.

A new directory $IBMPAK_HOME/.ibm-pak/mirror is created when you issue the oc ibm-pak generate mirror-manifests command. The mirror directory stores the catalog-sources.yaml, image-content-source-policy.yaml, and image-set-config.yaml files.

Tip: If you are using a Red Hat®® Quay.io registry and need to mirror the images to a specific organization in the registry, you can set the target to that organization. Specify the organization name in the generate mirror-manifests command:

export ORGANIZATION=<your-organization> \
oc ibm-pak generate mirror-manifests $CASE_NAME $TARGET_REGISTRY/$ORGANIZATION \
   --version $CASE_VERSION

Restriction: Currently, you cannot select the images to mirror by their target architecture because image registries do not support sparse manifests (manifests that reference image digests outside of the package).

The $IBMPAK_HOME/.ibm-pak directory structure is built over time as you save CASEs and mirror. The following tree shows an example of the $IBMPAK_HOME/.ibm-pak directory structure:

tree ~/.ibm-pak
/root/.ibm-pak
├── config
│   └── config.yaml
├── data
│   ├── cases
│   │   └── $CASE_NAME
│   │       └── $CASE_VERSION
│   │           ├── XXXXX
│   │           ├── XXXXX
│   └── mirror
│       └── $CASE_NAME
│   │       └── $CASE_VERSION
│               ├── catalog-sources.yaml
│               ├── image-content-source-policy.yaml
|               ├── image-digest-mirror-set.yaml
│               └── image-set-config.yaml
└── logs
    └── oc-ibm_pak.log

Run the command generated in step 2 to mirror the catalogs.

You must run the command on the host that is connected to both the local Docker registry and the cluster.

The command does not produce any console logs for about 6 - 8 minutes as it prepares the list from the CASE package. If you want, you can add verbose (-v) to the command with possible values of 1 to 9.

The following command can be used to see all the available options.

oc mirror --help

Based on the number and size of the images to mirror, the oc mirror command can take a considerable amount of time. If you are running the command on a remote system, run the command in the background with the nohup POSIX command so that it does not stop if the user logs out. The following command starts the mirroring process in the background and writes the log to a bai-2500.txt file.

nohup oc mirror --config /root/.ibm-pak/data/mirror/ibm-ba-insights/25.0.0/image-set-config.yaml docker://$TARGET_REGISTRY/bai2500 --dest-skip-tls --max-per-registry=6 > /opt/bai-2500.txt 2>&1 &

The following example shows sample output.

nohup: ignoring input
Logging to .oc-mirror.log
Checking push permissions for target_registry
Creating directory: oc-mirror-workspace/src/publish
Creating directory: oc-mirror-workspace/src/v2
Creating directory: oc-mirror-workspace/src/charts
Creating directory: oc-mirror-workspace/src/release-signatures
No metadata detected, creating new workspace
22 related images processed in 935.023807ms
Writing image mapping to oc-mirror-workspace/operators.1718146125/manifests-ibm-bai-catalog/mapping.txt
wrote mirroring manifests to oc-mirror-workspace/operators.1718146125/manifests-ibm-bts-operator-catalog
--
--
--
info: Mirroring completed in 8m1.74s (0B/s)

Rendering catalog image "target_registry/bai2500.gm/root/ibm-bai-catalog:84a2dd" with file-based catalog
Rendering catalog image "target_registry/bai2500.gm/cpopen/ibm-cert-manager-operator-catalog:41084f" with file-based catalog
Rendering catalog image "target_registry/bai2500.gm/cpopen/ibm-cs-install-catalog:687382" with file-based catalog
Rendering catalog image "target_registry/bai2500.gm/cpopen/ibm-events-operator-catalog:4cd92e" with file-based catalog
Rendering catalog image "target_registry/bai2500.gm/cpopen/ibm-iam-operator-catalog:022616" with file-based catalog
Rendering catalog image "target_registry/bai2500.gm/cpopen/ibm-licensing-catalog:7435ce" with file-based catalog
Rendering catalog image "target_registry/bai2500.gm/cpopen/ibm-opencontent-flink-operator-catalog:880fdd" with file-based catalog
Rendering catalog image "target_registry/bai2500.gm/cpopen/opencontent-elasticsearch-operator-catalog:755b51" with file-based catalog
Rendering catalog image "target_registry/bai2500.gm/cpopen/ibm-bts-operator-catalog:866f02" with file-based catalog
Rendering catalog image "target_registry/bai2500.gm/cpopen/ibm-cpd-cloud-native-postgresql-operator-catalog:0b46a3" with file-based catalog
Rendering catalog image "target_registry/bai2500.gm/cpopen/ibm-zen-operator-catalog:690874" with file-based catalog
Writing image mapping to oc-mirror-workspace/results-1718146867/mapping.txt
Writing CatalogSource manifests to oc-mirror-workspace/results-1718146867
Writing ICSP manifests to oc-mirror-workspace/results-1718146867

For Rancher, configure the private registry. For example:

mirrors:
  "icr.io":
    endpoint:
      - "https://my-private-registry.com"
    rewrite:
      "^(.+)": "bai2500/${1}"

  "cp.icr.io":
    endpoint:
      - "https://my-private-registry.com"
    rewrite:
      "^(.+)": "bai2500/${1}"

configs:
  "my-private-registry.com":
    auth:
      username: "<username>"
      password: "<password>"
    tls:
      cert_file:            # path to the cert file used to authenticate to the registry
      key_file:             # path to the key file for the certificate used to authenticate to the registry
      ca_file:              # path to the ca file used to verify the registry's certificate
      insecure_skip_verify: # may be set to true to skip verifying the registry's certificate

Note: bai2500 is the namespace name created in your local private registry.

For specific instructions on how to configure private registries, see Registries Configuration File

For OpenShift®, update the global image pull secret for your cluster to have authentication credentials in place to pull images from your $TARGET_REGISTRY as specified in the image-content-source-policy.yaml file. For more information, see Updating the global cluster pull secret .

For OpenShift, run the following command to create ImageContentsourcePolicy.

kubectl apply -f $IBMPAK_HOME/.ibm-pak/data/mirror/$CASE_NAME/$CASE_VERSION/image-content-source-policy.yaml

For OpenShift, verify that the ImageContentsourcePolicy resource is created.
```
kubectl get imageContentSourcePolicy
```
For OpenShift, verify your cluster node status.
```
kubectl get MachineConfigPool -w
```
After the ImageContentsourcePolicy and global image pull secret are applied, the configuration of your nodes is updated sequentially. Wait until all the MachineConfigPools are updated before you move on to the next step.
For OpenShift, create a project for the CASE commands (bai is an example) by running the following commands. Before you run the command in this step, you must be logged in to your cluster.
```
export NAMESPACE=bai
kubectl new-project $NAMESPACE
```

Optional: For OpenShift, if you use an insecure registry, you must add the target registry to the cluster insecureRegistries list.

kubectl patch image.config.openshift.io/cluster \
  --type=merge -p '{"spec":{"registrySources":{"insecureRegistries":["'${TARGET_REGISTRY}'"]}}}'

What to do next

You can now go ahead and install the Business Automation Insights operator. For more information, see Option 2: Installing the IBM Business Automation Insights catalog and operator instances by using ibm-pak.