seattletestbed / installer-packaging

Everything required to build and package Seattle installers for different platforms

installer-packaging

This repository provides the various parts (code, tools, other content) that are necessary to build and package Seattle base installers for the main operating systems and platforms we support. In their current form, the tools are intended for use only in the Custom Installer Builder and/or CIB admins, not end users.

Each base installer contains the Seattle runtime, nodemanager, etc., and all of the platform abstractions required to install, run, and autostart Seattle, but lacks the user keys (in the form of the vesselinfo file) required to actually perform the installation and provide remote-accessible resources afterwards. The CIB knows how to create this vesselinfo file and add it so that the resulting installer is complete.

Tools include

• A packaging script that generates Seattle installers for different platforms, and
• A script to sign and "push" (put in the appropriate web server dir) software updates.

---

Using this repo

Clone this repo, then run the initialization script (which git-clones all of installer-packaging's dependencies) and build script (which prepares the Python source files and platform-specific installer stuff).

$ git clone https://github.com/SeattleTestbed/installer-packaging
$ cd installer-packaging/scripts
$ python initialize.py
$ python build.py

Several new directories are created thus:

• ../RUNNABLE now contains the script to build new base installers,
• ../RUNNABLE/seattle_repy holds the general Seattle runtime, nodemanager, etc.,
• and ../RUNNABLE/seattle_linux, ../RUNNABLE/seattle_mac and so on have the platform-specific files.

Change into ../RUNNABLE, and adapt rebuild_base_installers.py to reflect your local installation. This includes the softwareupdater cryptographic key pair to use, and the username for whom and the destination path into which to package and copy the base installers.

Once configured, run rebuild_base_installers.py. This copies the generic and platform-specific stuff into base installer directories, and creates the actual base installer zip/gz/tar.gz files that the Custom Installer Builder expects. Lastly, copies over the newly-built base installer to the CIB's installers/base directory.

installer-packaging's Issues

`rebuild_base_installers.py` should focus on building

rebuild_base_installers.py currently populates and packages (tars, gzips or zips) base installer directories for the Custom Installer Builder. However, it does other things that might be out of scope as they are tied closely to the layout and config of the CIB: It copies tarballs to the deployment dir, backups previous base installers, chowns files, etc.

All of these things are important for deploying a set of new base installers, none of them are actual packaging tasks however. I think we should remove the unrelated parts.

(However, it will probably make sense to still include checking for the softwareupdater URL and key etc., just so that CIB operators don't shoot themselves in the foot).

Install as unprivileged user on OpenWrt

The current OpenWrt installer (in the form of @XuefengHuang's .ipk) will install Seattle as the root user. We should provide an option to use a non-privileged account if the user has (or is willing to install) the required tools such as useradd. See the OpenWrt docs for details: http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/secure.access

Use only lower-case for `installInfo` filename

seattleinstaller.py creates a file installInfo.old (or .new) in the servicevessel directory where it stores results of the system benchmark, donated percentage, and amount of resources that will be used by Seattle. However, on installs running a V2 nodemanager, files in vessels can only be accessed if their names have lower-case characters (and a few other things) exclusively. As a result, you cannot retrieve or otherwise manipulate installInfo via seash (see below).

This issue is RepyV2-specific. RepyV1 files may contain upper-case characters. We need to be able to see the information contained in the file for debugging purposes on any version of Seattle, so let's make the base filename installinfo (all lower-case) instead.

This requires changes in anything that depends on this exact file name:

• Seattle Installer, https://github.com/SeattleTestbed/installer-packaging/blob/master/all-platforms/seattleinstaller.py#L2146
• Seattle Uninstaller, https://github.com/SeattleTestbed/installer-packaging/blob/master/all-platforms/seattleuninstaller.py#L604
• Android app (1), https://github.com/SensibilityTestbed/sensibility-testbed/blob/e2907df340ec08f6d6c12b241b65bf7de28679b0/SensibilityTestbed/src/com/sensibility_testbed/InstallerService.java#L125-L133
• Android app (2), https://github.com/SensibilityTestbed/sensibility-testbed/blob/359dc6b17ec4d0d8734d86b0f71ce033a0d05412/SensibilityTestbed/src/com/sensibility_testbed/ScriptActivity.java#L311

---

seash log:

servicevessel@%1 !> cat installInfo.old
An error occurred: Node Manager error 'Filename has disallowed character 'I''
Affected vessels: ee7eb6c1bb4389a62812a9c47b76a0c5f47b0b3e:1224:v9.
servicevessel@%1 !> download installInfo.old
An error occurred: Node Manager error 'Filename has disallowed character 'I''
Affected vessels: ee7eb6c1bb4389a62812a9c47b76a0c5f47b0b3e:1224:v9.
servicevessel@%1 !> delete installInfo.old
An error occurred: Node Manager error 'Filename has disallowed character 'I''
Affected vessels: ee7eb6c1bb4389a62812a9c47b76a0c5f47b0b3e:1224:v9.