gmane.os.netbsd.devel.installation

Re: sshramdisk general information

Greg Troxel — 2013-03-21T20:39:01

I am very nervous about making the install disk *by default* open up ssh
with known passwords.  That really seems unsafe.  If there's a special
image that has that feature, and people choose it, fine, but in the
default image I think it's really not ok.

This leads me to think about having a new (host, unfortunately) tool to
tweak images to turn on the ssh feature.  Then the optionalness wouldn't
be so annoying.

Re: sshramdisk general information

Tim Rightnour — 2013-03-21T15:19:44

On 21-Mar-2013 Martin Husemann wrote:

Menuc will need some kind of timer functionality for this.


I think what Martin proposes here, is probably a good general solution to this
for the mainline ports.  What I did was good enough for "toy" devices, like
PI's or NSLU2's, but I wouldn't use it for amd64.

Curious. Is there a way we can somehow make dhcpd know that we are sysinst, so
a user can put a hint in dhcpd.conf that says "any sysinst gets this IP"?

---
Tim Rightnour <root< at >garbled.net>
NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/
Genecys: Open Source 3D MMORPG: http://www.genecys.org/

Re: sshramdisk general information

Martin Husemann — 2013-03-21T10:01:52

I wonder if we should make the ssh option slightly different:

 1) Run sysinst on the console anyway (maybe with some minimalistic LOCK file
    protection against concurrent installs)

 2) If the network came up, sysinst shows a message box asking "we seem to have
    network, would you like to continue by ssh'ing into this machine?
    If not, we will continue here..."

 3) Auto-close this dialog with a short timeout (like: 15 seconds)

 4) If the user selected "continue here", just continue as usual with
    sysinst on the console.

 5) If the user chose network or did not type anything, fire up sshd, show
    a message with IP numbers and the sysinst/netbsd hint, but also alow
    the user to use the console sysinst.

Note that we also need to modify some of the util menus and dhcp stuff run
later to deal with pre-run dhcpcd.

Bonus: add wpc_supplicant and a menu item genrating a config for it.

Then lets do the same for install CDs (where most of it is even easier).
    
Martin

Re: sshramdisk general information

Greg Troxel — 2013-03-20T22:48:18

First, thanks for doing this.

I'd like to see the installer functional on v6.   That's a small issue,
and I'll look at it.  It didn't seem (rpi) to do v6 stateless for me.

I am concerned about the security implications, and nervous about
installers doing this by default.

We could have a tool to whack a password into the image, so you could
write a card and then set a passwd, perhaps

  mtools echo change c:/passwd

or something.

The install could have mk.conf variable to point to ssh public key, and
put that in the install account.  The default might be to look in the
$HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys for the user doing the build.

mdnsd sounds useful

sshramdisk general information

Tim Rightnour — 2013-03-20T16:56:38

Recently, I added some code to evbarm to allow installation via sysinst over
sshd.  This allows a user to boot a headless Raspberry PI, ssh into it as
"sysinst" with a password of "netbsd", and have it launch sysinst to begin the
installation.  It also supports the console, so if they don't want to ssh in,
they can still install normally.

There are a few reasons I think this is useful:

1) It's kinda annoying to buy an HDMI cable and USB keyboard just to install
the PI, and then immediately disconnect them and toss them.

2) I envision this could be really useful, on a system like an NSLU2, where our
current install instructions tell the user to solder a serial port onto the
device.  In this instance, they could instead boot the image, and just ssh in
to kick sysinst off.

3) I wouldn't actually mind if other ports had this ability, as I could toss
the cd in, boot, and go back to my desk rather than standing in front of my
machine rack.


How does it work?

The embedded ramdisk contains dhcpcd, and sshd. O

Re: RFC: move md_init() in sysinst

David Laight — 2013-03-09T10:28:28

Maybe change all the hooks so that the main program has a weak definition.
Then none of the MD bits need any code for the unsupported hooks.
That would cut out the number of false-positives when grepping to
see where there are used.

David

Re: RFC: move md_init() in sysinst

Tim Rightnour — 2013-03-09T06:51:39

On 08-Mar-2013 Martin Husemann wrote:

I certainly could.  It just seems silly to add another hook that nobody will
use except one port, to avoid changing the semantics of a hook that nobody uses
at all.  I'm willing to do it, but it just seems like a messy waste.

(I'd object to the ifdef though, as that would be considerably different than
every other hook, and very non-obvious to other portmasters trying to enhance
sysinst)

---
Tim Rightnour <root< at >garbled.net>
NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/
Genecys: Open Source 3D MMORPG: http://www.genecys.org/

Re: RFC: move md_init() in sysinst

Martin Husemann — 2013-03-08T16:05:02

Why not add a new hook there?
Could even be a #define and the call guarded by #ifdef (so you don't have to
touch every other arch).

Martin

RFC: move md_init() in sysinst

Tim Rightnour — 2013-03-08T16:01:31

Currently no port uses the md_init() function in sysinst.  I would like to use
this function in evbarm, however, it doesn't do what I want.  Currently this
function is called prior to the menu system being inititalized.  I would like
to ask the user a question before beginning the installation (what kind of eval
board do you have?).

Does anyone object to me moving the call to md_init down in main(), so it is
called immediately after the menu system is initialized, but before the first
menu is presented to the user?

---
Tim Rightnour <root< at >garbled.net>
NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/
Genecys: Open Source 3D MMORPG: http://www.genecys.org/

(unknown)

2013-03-05T14:05:54

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A NetBSD system installer with Lua scripting, i18n

Marc Balmer — 2013-02-06T19:01:25

NetBSD- and Lua-Users

I am working on NetBSD system installer extentions for sysinst that allows sysinst to be scripted in Lua.  The basic idea is that an installation script can be shipped with the install media (or put on a netinstall server) that drives the installation process (or parts thereof).  If no such script is present, the standard way of the installation procedure will run.  A sample script I wrote, e.g. can install and configure pkgsrc packages during the install procedure.

It has been particularly "difficult" to deal with sysinst's i18n system, for example message strings would need a space at the end if the message is continued on the next line.

An earlier version of my sysinst changes used i18n written in C, but I think it could better be done entirely in Lua.  I am solicitating comments and ideas on this.

Attached are three files (not very elaborate code, just meant as proof of concept): i18n.lua, a "library" that translates messages, and i18n.de, i18n.fr two sample message catalogs for

Re: Anyone working on an automated install?

Aleksej Saushev — 2012-10-28T21:30:02


Same with bug fixed. I find it characteristic that no-one noticed it.

(I hope that it is clear how to add initial configuration to it.)

Re: Anyone working on an automated install?

Julian Yon — 2012-10-28T20:59:17

On Sun, 28 Oct 2012 15:07:17 +0000
David Laight <david< at >l8s.co.uk> wrote:


So, yes I was missing something. Thanks :)

Re: Anyone working on an automated install?

David Laight — 2012-10-28T18:36:29

Warning: there is a load of code in sysinst that appears to support a
config file - it will have bitrotted.
Similarly the code that attempted to save the list of executed commands
(so they could be rerun) is equally broken.

David

Re: Anyone working on an automated install?

Josh Branning — 2012-10-28T17:08:07

Okay, thanks for the clarification.


You are still entitled to your own personal opinion though I think.

Re: Anyone working on an automated install?

Rares Aioanei — 2012-10-28T20:03:24

You asked some  questions, to which I answered. I haven't got the time to study sysinst yet, I know C, I don't have write access to the code repository, and I can't say if it would be a good thing for NetBSD to include, as I don't have the authority.

Re: Anyone working on an automated install?

Josh Branning — 2012-10-28T16:46:00

That could mean many-a-thing, please clarify ...

Either you're good at writing C, and are not so good at reading C or you
use csh (or something else)?

Josh.

Re: Anyone working on an automated install?

Rares Aioanei — 2012-10-28T19:26:15

I speak C, but that's about it.

Re: Anyone working on an automated install?

Josh Branning — 2012-10-28T16:21:27

Fair enough, may I ask some questions:

How many people here know sysinst and C?
How many people here have write access to the repository?

Apart from the above, I just want to know whether this would be a good
thing for NetBSD to include.

Thanks,

Josh.

Re: Anyone working on an automated install?

Josh Branning — 2012-10-28T16:10:45

As I said before:

The code I have for sysinst can be got from here: cvs
-danoncvs< at >anoncvs.netbsd.org:/cvsroot checkout src/distrib/utils/sysinst/

Re: Anyone working on an automated install?

Rares Aioanei — 2012-10-28T18:47:27

Give me a chance to look at the code for sysinst and we'll take it from there.