[Maas-devel] Getting shim-signed with python-apt on non-amd64 system?

[Gavin Panella]

Hi Steve,

In https://code.launchpad.net/~blake-rouse/maas/abstract-boot-methods-hwe/+merge/212228,
UEFIBootMethod.install_bootloader (starting at line 1780 in the diff,
for now) Blake has had to reproduce what looks like a lot of the logic
that apt already implements. For one, it downloads, validates, and
extracts the shim-signed package.

The reason is does this instead of installing or depending on
shim-signed is because shim-signed is only available for amd64 (Julian
mentioned that it's also arch-indep, which causes build issues when
depending on it, but I didn't understand), but MAAS might be running
on i386 or another platform.

In MAAS we're using it as part of UEFI net-booting of amd64 systems,
so we're adhering to its intended arch, but apt obviously isn't
designed for our use-case.

Colin Watson suggested that python-apt might be useful in some way to
us, but it seems to be only geared toward the local system. I assume
I'm missing something. Can you help us understand how we might be able
to use it?

I also assume you're very busy right now. If delving into python-apt
is more work than you can afford in the next couple of days, would you
be able to do a sanity-check of Blake's approach? It looks sane to me,
but I'm not qualified to make an absolute statement of that.

Thanks, Gavin.