On 09/04/2018 11:32 PM, Paul wrote:
Hi all,
some time ago I stumbled over the two difficulties for new users:
* Finding the initial firmware to flash a router
* Upgrade a modified image without reinstalling all packages
For this reason I created an *image on demand server*[0] which fetches
ImageBuilders and creates the desired image, allowing the modification
of installed packages and uci-defaults (if desired) via a simple API[1].
The images are build within seconds and offered to the user.
While the project was initially created to simplify sysupgrades the
service is mostly used with a *online ImageBuilder* fronted[2]. About
3000 firmware images where created over the last 6 month (some database
resets dilute the statistics).
I was wondering if this service could eventually become somewhat
officially used. It offers a great simplification for user to get
started with OpenWrt and also keep devices up to date.
Next steps would be two allow multiple builders in parallel [3] and use
ucert [4] to establish a trust chain. While build logs already contain
all required information to "rebuild" (and verify) the image locally,
sqaushfs needs to become reproducible[6] before it makes real sense.
Please share your thoughts regarding this project, I'd be happy to
receive some feedback!
Sunshine,
Paul
[0] https://github.com/aparcar/attendedsysupgrade-server
[1] https://github.com/aparcar/attendedsysupgrade-server#api
[2] http://as-test.stephen304.com/chef/
[3] https://github.com/aparcar/attendedsysupgrade-server/pull/126
[4] https://git.openwrt.org/?p=project/ucert.git;a=summary
[5]
https://as-test.stephen304.com/download/openwrt/18.06.1/ar71xx/generic/archer-c7-v2/ba5cbe70ba1237b//buildlog-26ac67a4132b017.txt
[6]
https://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt/staging/lynxis.git;a=commit;h=1ad9d341434e6cf123213928d9a2e86ceec59c55
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Hi Paul!
This is a great step toward the user friendliness. But as I know the
major difficulty for users who far from embedded system is to flash the
board from original firmware. Sometimes there is very tricky process,
sometimes there is huge red warning of the third word war in case of
installing non-official firmware, etc. So as I think, sometimes user who
can not find the wiki-page with device or build their own firmware with
ImageBuilder could stuck on this step.
For others, the set of packages is not the only way to customize the
firmware. I don't tell about hand-created software but about the
customization of packages (e.g. great list of busybox options or extra
kernel modules). This is one of the shortage of ImageBuilder and the
reason to use the BuildRoot more often. So maybe there is any sense to
thought about *online BuildRoot* too? When it is warm enough it takes
not much time to build a firmware for one board.
Regarding to clients. May be there is any reason to automate it more?
I.e. allow user to configure it to sysupgrage at night when the new
service release is out?
This was just thoughts as you ask. May be I was wrong in some cases,
please correct me then.
P.S. I mentioned the tricky process for flashing from original firmware.
Maybe there is any reason to automate building of additional software
for desktops? I.e. there is many scripts for flashing mikrotik devises,
so why not to build deb packages in the BuildRoot, which will rise dhcp
server and flash boards automatically?
--
Kind regards,
Yury Shvedov
WiMark Systems
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