RFC: Comfy - a CLI framework to bring the Ubuntu cloud feeling to snappy Ubuntu Core

[Martin Pitt]

Alexander Sack [2015-01-13 13:51 +0100]:
> > For crashes in ubuntu-core itself it might be useful, but only in the
> > restricted "phone" mode -- i. e. auto-submitting crashes to
> > errors.u.c., not Launchpad bugs (as these need a web browser and
> > interactivity).
> 
> Right; maybe we should see if we can make a mini apport for just crash
> submission? Is it worthwhile wrt to disk footprint etc.?

With python3 already installed, apport's foot print is tiny. We won't
install apport-gtk and similar, just apport-cli. So I don't think it
can be downsized in a meaningful way.

> >>     + Y: cryptsetup
> >>     + Y: cryptsetup-bin
> >
> > If we want to support encrypted devices, this belongs into snappy
> > itself, not comfy.
> 
> We just yesterday discussed a related topic and Steve brought up that
> at least root encryption won't be theoretically needed as the content
> will be the immutable, public ubuntu-core. I assume having crypted
> writable partitions etc. makes surely sense though. If cryptsetup is
> needed for runtime mounting such rather than after install admin bits,
> then I agree that if we do it it should move to ubuntu-core.

cryptsetup-bin is needed for runtime mounting. cryptsetup is needed if
you have encrypted partitions in /etc/fstab which you want to boot
from, but I don't think we need to support that case.

> >>     + Y: fuse
> >>     + Y: ntfs-3g
> >
> > If we want to support such file systems, then these should be !!
> 
> You could be right; do we need those for runtime mounting such FS's or
> just for admin operations? Think that would give us guidance what to
> do here.

You need them for runtime (mounting). ntfs-3g also contains mkntfs for
creating file systems (i. e. "admin"); we don't strictly need that at
runtime, but it's just an 80kB binary..

> >>     + Y: gdisk
> >
> > Why? Repartitioning snappy sounds rather dangerous..
> >
> 
> I assumed an admin likes a tool to manage additional harddisks and
> partition that are not part of the standard snappy partitions (e.g.
> boot, system-a, system-b, writable). You feel this tool would be
> useful for such cases?

There might be some corner cases where you'd want to do that. I have
no strong opinion about this though.

> >>     + ?: xauth - not clear why xauth is needed on cli comfy systems
> >
> > It would be useful to install and run an X app in snappy with X
> > forwarding (e. g. ssh -X).
> 
> OK, guess we could bring this back - potentially elsewhere - once we
> solve this scenario (in case we do) :). marking as N for now.

Ack. It's a corner case anyway, and it's not strictly needed to run X
apps anyway. I successfully ran an X app under snappy without any of
these installed (just ssh -X won't work, it looks a tad more
complicated).

Martin
-- 
Martin Pitt                        | http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com)  | Debian Developer  (www.debian.org)