Kernel

Commandline Parameters

Talos supports a number of kernel commandline parameters. Some are required for it to operate. Others are optional and useful in certain circumstances.

Several of these are enforced by the Kernel Self Protection Project KSPP.

Required parameters:

• talos.config: the HTTP(S) URL at which the machine configuration data can be found
• talos.platform: can be one of aws, azure, container, digitalocean, gcp, metal, packet, or vmware
• init_on_alloc=1: required by KSPP
• slab_nomerge: required by KSPP
• pti=on: required by KSPP

Recommended parameters:

• init_on_free=1: advised by KSPP if minimizing stale data lifetime is important

Available Talos-specific parameters

ip

Initial configuration of the interface, routes, DNS, NTP servers.

Full documentation is available in the Linux kernel docs.

ip=<client-ip>:<server-ip>:<gw-ip>:<netmask>:<hostname>:<device>:<autoconf>:<dns0-ip>:<dns1-ip>:<ntp0-ip>

Talos will use the configuration supplied via the kernel parameter as the initial network configuration. This parameter is useful in the environments where DHCP doesn’t provide IP addresses or when default DNS and NTP servers should be overridden before loading machine configuration. Partial configuration can be applied as well, e.g. ip=<:::::::<dns0-ip>:<dns1-ip>:<ntp0-ip> sets only the DNS and NTP servers.

panic

The amount of time to wait after a panic before a reboot is issued.

Talos will always reboot if it encounters an unrecoverable error. However, when collecting debug information, it may reboot too quickly for humans to read the logs. This option allows the user to delay the reboot to give time to collect debug information from the console screen.

A value of 0 disables automatic rebooting entirely.

talos.config

The URL at which the machine configuration data may be found.

talos.platform

The platform name on which Talos will run.

Valid options are: - aws - azure - container - digitalocean - gcp - metal - packet - vmware

talos.board

The board name, if Talos is being used on an ARM64 SBC.

Supported boards are: - bananapi_m64: Banana Pi M64 - libretech_all_h3_cc_h5: Libre Computer ALL-H3-CC - rock64: Pine64 Rock64 - rpi_4: Raspberry Pi 4, Model B

talos.hostname

The hostname to be used. The hostname is generally specified in the machine config. However, in some cases, the DHCP server needs to know the hostname before the machine configuration has been acquired.

Unless specifically required, the machine configuration should be used instead.

talos.shutdown

The type of shutdown to use when Talos is told to shutdown.

Valid options are: - halt - poweroff

talos.network.interface.ignore

A network interface which should be ignored and not configured by Talos.

Before a configuration is applied (early on each boot), Talos attempts to configure each network interface by DHCP. If there are many network interfaces on the machine which have link but no DHCP server, this can add significant boot delays.

This option may be specified multiple times for multiple network interfaces.