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Orion

Orion is the always-on services host for the home — a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 running bootc, Cockpit, Tailscale, and Podman with rootless quadlets.

Prerequisites

  • Raspberry Pi 4 or 5
  • SD card or USB storage (16 GB minimum)
  • Another machine to flash the image
  • Network access (Ethernet recommended)

Flash the image

Download the latest Orion image and write it to your boot media:

bootc-image-builder --type raw \
  --target-arch aarch64 \
  quay.io/centos-bootc/fedora-bootc:eln

Then flash with arm-image-installer, rpi-imager, or dd.

Note

Exact download URLs and image-building commands will be added once CI publishes artifacts.

First boot

  1. Insert the boot media and power on the Pi.
  2. The system will boot into the default deployment.
  3. Log in over SSH or serial console (default user and credentials TBD).

Post-install

Tailscale

sudo tailscale up

Cockpit

Cockpit is available on port 9090:

https://<orion-ip>:9090

User services (quadlets)

Place container unit files in ~/.config/containers/systemd/:

mkdir -p ~/.config/containers/systemd

See the Podman quadlet documentation for unit file syntax.

Updates

sudo bootc upgrade
sudo systemctl reboot

To roll back a bad update:

sudo bootc rollback
sudo systemctl reboot

What's included

Component Purpose
Cockpit Web-based system management (:9090)
Tailscale Mesh VPN / remote access
Podman Rootless containers via quadlets
bootc Atomic image-based updates

Troubleshooting

TODO — common issues and fixes will be added as they come up.