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# Afterburn

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Afterburn is a one-shot agent for cloud-like platforms which interacts with provider-specific metadata endpoints.
It is typically used in conjunction with [Ignition](https://github.com/coreos/ignition).

## Features

It comprises several modules which may run at different times during the lifecycle of an instance.

Depending on the specific platform, the following services may run in the [initramfs](https://github.com/coreos/afterburn/tree/main/dracut/30afterburn) on first boot:
 * setting local hostname
 * injecting [network command-line arguments](usage/initrd-network-cmdline.md)
 * configuring the network with [Netplan guestinfo metadata on VMware](usage/vmware-netplan-guestinfo-metadata.md)

The following features are conditionally available on some platforms as [systemd service units](https://github.com/coreos/afterburn/tree/main/systemd):
 * installing public SSH keys for local system users
 * retrieving [attributes](usage/attributes.md) from instance metadata
 * checking in to the provider in order to report a successful boot or instance provisioning

## Supported platforms

See [Supported platforms](platforms.md).
