Service-based experimental installer

The idea of this repository is to build a proof-of-concept of a Linux installer that runs as a service. At first sight, we have identified these components:

• A YaST-based library that performs the system installation. It represents the installer itself and it features an API to query and set installation options (product to install, disk, etc.).
• A D-Bus service that exposes the installer's API.
• A user interface. We decided to use Cockpit's infrastructure to communicate the UI with the D-Bus service.

Quickstart

⚠️ This is a proof-of-concept. Please, use a virtual machine to give it a try. ⚠️

The easiest way to give D-Installer a try is to install the rubygem-d-installer and d-installer-web packages in an openSUSE Tumbleweed Live image.

You need to perform some additional steps, like starting the Cockpit service or setting a password for the "linux" user. However, the repository contains a script that takes care of everything. So after booting the image, just type:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yast/the-installer/master/deploy.sh
# inspect content to ensure that nothing malicious is done there
sh deploy.sh

This process may take a while. Use linux/linux when the browser opens the log in form.

Setup

If you want to contribute to the project or just have a closer look, you can run D-Installer from sources. The first step should be to install Git (if it is not already installed) and clone the repository:

sudo zypper --non-interactive in git
git clone https://github.com/yast/d-installer
cd d-installer

If you want to save some time, run the setup.sh script and follow the instructions at the end. Alternatively, just go through the following process if you want to do it manually.

Dependencies

To build and run this software, you need a few tools. To install them on openSUSE Tumbleweed just type:

sudo zypper in gcc gcc-c++ make openssl-devel ruby-devel augeas-devel npm cockpit

The user interface uses Cockpit infrastructure to interact with the D-Bus interface, so you need to make sure that the cockpit service is running:

sudo systemctl start cockpit

Running the d-installer service

d-installer is a YaST-based service that is able to install a system. You can interact with that service using the D-Bus interface it provides.

Beware that d-installer must run as root (like YaST does) to do hardware probing, partition the disks, install the software and so on. So you need to tell dbus about the service by copying service/share/dbus.conf to /usr/share/dbus-1/system.d/org.opensuse.DInstaller.conf.

To run the service, type:

cd service
bundle install
sudo bundle exec bin/d-installer

To check that d-installer is working, you can use a tool like busctl (or D-Feet) if you prefer a graphical one:

busctl call org.opensuse.DInstaller /org/opensuse/DInstaller/Language1 \
  org.opensuse.DInstaller.Language1 AvailableLanguages

If you want to get the properties, just type:

busctl call org.opensuse.DInstaller /org/opensuse/DInstaller/Language1 \
  org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties GetAll s org.opensuse.DInstaller.Language1

Starting the web-based user interface

The current UI is a small web application built with React. On production it is meant to be served by cockpit-ws from a directory in XDG_DATA_DIRS (e.g., /usr/share/cockpit/static/installer). Building the code might time some time, so there is a development mode available that reloads the code every time it changes.

Development mode

It allows to set a few installation parameters and start the installation (not implemented yet).

cd web
npm install
npm run dev

Point your browser to http://localhost:3000 and happy hacking!

Production-like mode

cd web
npm run build
sudo mkdir /usr/share/cockpit/static/installer
sudo mount -o bind dist /usr/share/cockpit/static/installer

Point your browser to http://localhost:9090/cockpit/static/installer/index.html and enjoy!

References

• Development Notes