Description:

This task is to track the mandatory transition of our operator and operand images to the rhel9-6-els/rhel-minimal base image, as part of the wider initiative to reduce CVE noise and improve security posture. This change must be completed for all images targeting the OpenShift 4.21 release or later.

Action Required:

1. Base Image Change: Update the base image specified in the Containerfile/Dockerfile from the current Red Hat operator image to rhel9-6-els/rhel-minimal.
2. Package Manager Update: Replace the DNF package manager with micro DNF in all build instructions for installing packages.
   Note: UBI Minimal does not include the Python runtime required by DNF.
3. Verification: Test the resulting operator and operand images to ensure no regression in functionality and that all necessary dependencies are correctly installed using microdnf.

Scope of Change:

• In Scope: All operator and operand images maintained and built by the owning team.
• Out of Scope: Dependencies pulled from RHEL AppStreams (e.g., Postgres, Redis) which are maintained by the RHEL team.

Acceptance Criteria (Definition of Done):

• All in-scope images have successfully been rebuilt using the UBI Minimal base image.

• The use of microdnf has been verified in the image build process.

• New images have been tested and confirmed to be fully functional.

• The necessary PRs for the changes have been merged.