Hi! On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 08:51:23AM -0700, Philip Prindeville wrote: > > > > This is just about the default configuration, it's not a choice between > > conflicting compile time options with varying security implications. While > > key authentication may be best practice, allowing SSH password logins isn't > > on the level of reimplementing LuCI in PHP 4. The change is *literally* a > > handful of sed commands, why can't advanced users take care of that > > themselves? Why do we want to make it easier to build a soft-bricking image > > than it is today? > > > Conversely, why can’t advanced users have a clear, standardized way of doing > this? That they’re “advanced” doesn’t mean they don’t also appreciate > convenience, an easy way to save and export/import configurations, etc. > > In a perfect world, no one should ever have to build with patches, anything > in files/, cherry-picked commits, etc. Everything would be expressed in the > .config (or kernel-config). > > And again, not every box would be bricked. Like I said, all of mine have > serial consoles and most of them have VGA. > > > > > > How about adding a configuration flag to menuconfig for OpenSSH, which runs > > said sed commands if the flag is set (disabled by default, for the reasons > > above). It makes it easier to set for those who want it, and it will also > > be saved in a diffconfig output if they set that. > > > Did exactly that in the original PR but it was vetoed.
Watching this going back and forth I must admit that there is no good way of handling config-overlay provisioning of images. (or is there?) The informal idea of the workflow goes like buildroot -> imagebuilder -> run-time while in each phase only the truely neccessary choices are made and provisioning of the image happening using the imagebuilder FILES= parameter (ie. when rootfs is created, after packages are installed). Obviously this approach does have flaws, to illustrate that, lets look at the options you got in order to achieve your goal in that model: - keep a synced copy of the file and pass it to imagebuilder using FILES=... - have an additional package which sed-patches the config file in post-install *and* run-time in case of the openssh package being updated via opkg - have a local VARIANT=nopwdauth of the openssh package which PROVIDES=... the former and has a deviating default config shipped. All three don't look particularly 'clean' to me... Even if you had abstracted all or at least the part of the opensshd configuration necessary for you in UCI, there would be no particularly more clean option to divert from the defaults -- you'd end up with /etc/config/opensshd.opkg-new every time you update openssh via opkg unless you implement a way to migrate updated config options (which is what we do for some very fundamental packages because users may decide to keep the configuration when using sysupgrade, so also there config-migration has to be taken care of, but for opkg we just don't care) My feeling is still that 'keeping it flat' by simply overloading that one file using the FILES= statement of either imagebuilder or buildroot and having that local config kept in-sync is still the best option you got -- for now the increased complexity and maintainance of any of the infrastructural changes which came up to better model such use-cases don't seem to really be worth it (in terms of actually solving the problem). The deep problem we are looking it imho is the fact that UCI in its current form is insufficient. It doesn't model the difference of generic configuration (think: dhcp) which is applied for any service implementing that functionality (think: dnsmasq, odhcpd, isc-dhcp) and implementation-specific configuration (think: the odhcpd section inside the dhcp config vs. dropbear having its indidivual config). It also doesn't model on which layer a configuration change was made (distribution/build-time, uci-defaults/firstboot, provisioning, management or user) neither the scope of the change (global, target-platform, device-type-specific, organisational structures or individual boxes). Not even mentioning the disadvantages of UCI's 'dynamic typing' when on the other hand, ubus and json got defined basic types. And the debate about anonymous config sections still causes pts for many of us... These and many other reasons made people talk about replacing UCI with something more modern for almost a decade -- it's simplicity and popularity with users, however, made UCI survive up to now. Maybe we should have a configuration/modelling/management/provisioning track at the upcoming OpenWrt Summit...? Cheers Daniel _______________________________________________ Lede-dev mailing list Lede-dev@lists.infradead.org http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/lede-dev
