CD auto-run

[Michael Vogt]

On Sat, Feb 12, 2005 at 07:07:35PM +0000, adel wrote:
> I'm late on talk but I was thinking a bit about it

Thanks for sharing your ideas. We are rather late in the hoary
development cycle, I don't think we can include this into hoary. But
it interessting stuff for hoary+1.

> 1) insert CD
> 2) nautilus pop up window
> 3) double clicks on "install" launcher... which have command like:
> 	synaptic --install=foo.deb --resource=cd

We decided that we mount removable devices (like cds) with "noexec" by
default and autorun off (for security reasons). That means that most
users can't just click on a executeable lanucher on a cd (or get a
automatic install window).

We added a feature into update-notifier that will detect ubuntu-cds
and asks what to do with them (try to auto-upgrade, scan and start
package manager). It would be nice if we could extend this feature for
general "install" cds. 

> 4) synaptic start and try to install foo.deb which dependents on
> libfoo.deb (found on CD) and bar.deb (not found on CD) bar.deb can be
> another software like media player, or system library

This pretty much works today as long as the cd has a valid Packages
file on it.

> 5) you're not online: synaptic avoid setup and asks you to install bar
> first (maybe found on another CD)
> you are online: synaptic download bar and install them all

A desktop wide online/offline detection (many apps needs it) is
something that would be great to have. Maybe the system-tool-backends
can help here.

> some points, the CD have to be structured as respondent, needs some
> hacks on synaptic, XML configuration to do stuff like "license
> agreement" and "insert serial number"

Most of this can be handled in the package preinst/postinst script. 

> I can help hacking on synaptic!

Help is always welcome :) I think a wikipage (maybe a sub-page of the
package managment page) is a good start to get the design process
going. 

bye,
 Michael

-- 
Linux is not The Answer. Yes is the answer. Linux is The Question. - Neo