Appliance Installer Evidence

The installer boots and completes for real in QEMU -- across HTTP/PXE, ISO, and Ventoy-on-FAT paths, plus failure-path and rescue scenarios.

Appliance

Four QEMU evidence scripts cover the installer end to end: the PXE/HTTP chain boots the installer kernel + initrd, serves the image over HTTP, and asserts serial success markers before re-booting into the written disk and logging in over SSH. The ISO path wraps the same image in a bootable ISO and additionally verifies GPT layout and power-off-not-reboot behavior. The Ventoy path proves the installer finds the appliance ISO as a file on a FAT/exFAT data partition rather than as burned boot media. The scenarios script covers what the other three don't: a forced mid-init panic recovering cleanly, MAC-based install pinning on multi-homed boxes, and rescue console access.

The installer kernel is operator-supplied by design -- Ze neither ships nor builds it. Point any script at one with ZE_INSTALL_KERNEL.

Proves Installer boots and completes for real across HTTP/PXE, ISO, and Ventoy paths, plus fault/pin/rescue scenarios

Environment QEMU only, no Docker (the installer initrd is pure Go, no busybox)

Requires An operator-supplied installer kernel with IP_PNP_DHCP, VIRTIO_NET, VIRTIO_BLK, EXT4 built in

Source docs/guide/ze-install.md

appliance-install

# HTTP/PXE install chain
$ make ze-install-qemu-test

# bootable ISO chain
$ make ze-install-iso-qemu-test

# Ventoy ISO-on-FAT path
$ make ze-install-ventoy-qemu-test

# fault/pin/rescue scenarios
$ make ze-install-scenarios-qemu-test

Prerequisites

QEMU and an operator-supplied installer kernel (ZE_INSTALL_KERNEL=/path/to/vmlinuz); each script self-skips with a clear message if none is usable.

scripts/evidence/effective-install-*.py evidence scripts