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lnussel

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using YaST firstboot wizard in WSL

November 21st, 2019 by

When starting a WSL distribution for the first time, a text prompt for user name and password appears:

The code for that is partially in the Windows launcher. The Windows side actually prompts for the user name:
https://github.com/microsoft/WSL-DistroLauncher/blob/master/DistroLauncher/DistroLauncher.cpp#L44

and passes it to ‘adduser’:
https://github.com/microsoft/WSL-DistroLauncher/blob/1f8551f7e2ea22bba2e6fb02f01e7a5f7fb757f3/DistroLauncher/DistributionInfo.cpp#L14

That seems to be a Debian specific tool that also prompts for a password. We don’t have it in openSUSE. When done, the Windows part actually calls into the Linux environment again with ‘id -u’ to get the uid of the added user:
https://github.com/microsoft/WSL-DistroLauncher/blob/1f8551f7e2ea22bba2e6fb02f01e7a5f7fb757f3/DistroLauncher/DistributionInfo.cpp#L44

So in order to also prompt for the password we’d have to write a wrapper like the Debian one or implement another prompt in the launcher. Implementing such a prompt in Windows code seems boring to me. When writing a wrapper, I’d do something dialog based to make it look more fancy. There’s already jeos-firstboot that does something similar already and more. But then the WSL image doesn’t have to be really minimal, which means we have YaST!

So even though WSL doesn’t really boot as it has no systemd it would be still possible to run the YaST firstboot wizard on first start. What modules it launches is configurable via xml file. So leaving out hardware/VM specific things like network configuration it works pretty well:


For the launcher to know the name of the created user a small YaST module was needed to write the name into /run/wsl_firstboot_uid. The launcher fetches it from there.

Using the YaST firstboot wizard also allows to use e.g. the existing registration dialogs on SLE or add other useful configuration steps. One feature I have in mind would be for example is the role selection screen to offer some pre defined package selections for WSL use cases.

Tumbleweed and Leap appx files to test this are available from download.opensuse.org. Keep in mind that one needs to import the certificates used by OBS for signing first.

Tags:
Posted in Distribution, Uncategorized, YaST | 1 Comment »

openSUSE WSL images in OBS

October 9th, 2019 by

A fundamental concept of all openSUSE packages as well as any image offered for download is a fully transparent, reproducible and automatic build and development process based on sources.

In openSUSE developers do not perform manual builds on some specially crafted machine in their basement and then upload the result somewhere. Instead all sources are stored in a version control system inside the open build service (OBS) instance at build.opensuse.org. OBS then automatically builds the sources including all dependencies according to defined build instructions (eg spec files for rpms). OBS also automatically adds cryptographic signatures to files that support it to make sure nobody can tamper with those files.

The WSL appx files are basically zip files that contain a tarball of a Linux system (like a container) and a Windows exe file, the so called launcher. Building a container is something OBS can already do fully automatic by means of Kiwi. The launcher as well as the final appx however is typically built on a Windows machine using Visual Studio by the developer.

Since the goal of the openSUSE WSL offering is to have the appx files officially and automatically be produced along with other images such as the DVD installer, Live images or containers, the appx files have to be built from sources in OBS.

Fortunately there’s already a MinGW cross toolchain packaged as rpms OBS and a tool to generate appx files on Linux.

Combining that all together OBS can actually build the WSL appx from sources. The current state of development can be found in the Virtualization:WSL project in OBS. The generated appx files are published on download.opensuse.org.
The current images for Leap 15.2 Alpha and Tumbleweed there are good enough for some testing already so please go ahead and do so, feedback welcome!
Note that since the appx files are signed by OBS rather than Microsoft, there are a few steps required to install them.

Going forward there is still quite some work needed to polish this up. Kiwi for example can’t build the appx directly itself but rather the fb-util-for-appx is called by a spec file. That requires some hacks with the OBS project config to work. On Linux side there’s currently no password set for the root user, so we need a better “first boot” solution. More details on that in a later article. Meanwhile, remember to have a lot of fun…

Posted in Build Service, Distribution | Comments Off on openSUSE WSL images in OBS

Testing Android in openQA

January 6th, 2015 by

The other day Richard described in his blog how how he used openQA to test drive Fedora. Around the same time I read about Android x86 and saw that they offer iso images for download. So I wondered how hard it would be to get that one tested in openQA.
(more…)

Posted in Quality Assurance, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Testing Android in openQA

Configuring an IPv6 DSL connection

January 19th, 2011 by

The German company rh-tec offers free IPv6 internet connections for people that already have T-DSL. Configuring such a connection on openSUSE 11.3 is not as straight forward as with IPv4. It’s not hard either if you know where to put the settings though.

  1. start the yast2 DSL module
  2. follow the instructions of the wizard to set up a new PPPoE device. Enter your user name and password at the provider screen.
  3. At the “Connection Parameters” screen uncheck “Automatically Retrieve DNS”. Enter an arbitrary IPv4 address as first DNS server (yast doesn’t accept IPv6 there yet, bug 665516).
  4. finish the wizard and leave yast
  5. open /etc/sysconfig/network/providers/provider0 (or whatever name was chosen by yast) in an editor
  6. change DNS1 and DNS2 to the actual IPv6 addresses of your provider’s name servers
  7. add the following line to the file:
    PPPD_OPTIONS="noip +ipv6 ipv6cp-accept-local"
  8. save and quit
  9. Done! You may now use cinternet or qinternet to dial in and enjoy the (rather empty) IPv6 internet.

Posted in Network | Comments Off on Configuring an IPv6 DSL connection

updated permissions handling in 11.4

November 24th, 2010 by

In addition to supporting file system capabilities (fate#307254) I’ve also updated the permissions handling in 11.4 slightly.

There have been complaints that every SuSEconfig run also calls SuSEconfig.permissions which leads to changed file permissions at unexpected times. Therefore I’ve modified SuSEconfig.permissions to only actually set permissions when called explicitly (ie SuSEconfig –module permissions). When called by a generic SuSEconfig run SuSEconfig.permissions now only shows files with wrong permissions but doesn’t actually fix them anymore.

Since packages that have files with special permission handling do call SuSEconfig.permissions explicitly via %run_permissions in %post the change above alone isn’t sufficient to avoid surprises. Therefore I’ve introduced the new macro %set_permissions. This macro expects file names as arguments. Only permissions of those files are adjusted then. To notify packagers of that new method an rpmlint check now issues an informal message if %run_permissions is used.

Posted in Base System, Distribution, Factory, Security | 2 Comments »

Hackweek V: mkdiststats

June 16th, 2010 by

When Coolo mentioned that he is looking into improving the rebuild time of Factory
I couldn’t resist to try the script he was using myself. It turned
out that the script was extremly slow, it took about 15 minutes for
the calculation on my computer. The script was originally written a
long time ago for the old autobuild with a much lower number of
packages and dependencies to take care of. The ad-hoc method used
for the ‘rebuild simulation’ just didn’t scale well. Hackweek was a
good opportunity to improve the performance and to add some more
options.
(more…)

Posted in Build Service, Hackweek | Comments Off on Hackweek V: mkdiststats

Check your WPA2 Enterprise setup

April 20th, 2010 by

Do you have to enter user name and password to establish a link with
your wireless network? If so chances are good that WPA2 Enterprise
with EAP-TTLS or PEAP are used. Sounds familiar? Better check your
setup then. An attacker might easily impersonate your access point
and steal your password if the client you are using isn’t configured
properly.
You are likely vulnerable if you’ve disabled certificate checks
or you’ve checked some button to use a public CA but didn’t specify
any “Subject” or “Common Name” that has to match. NetworkManager for
example doesn’t even allow to enter the latter.
Read more in the paper I’ve written.

Posted in Security | 1 Comment »

A distro without packages?

October 30th, 2009 by

Yesterday i noticed that openal-soft on 11.2 is broken, it just locks up with current pulseaudio. It’s not surprising noone noticed as there are no packages in Factory that use it anymore. Even Chromium BSU which roughly has a 0% chance that it will ever need maintenance, security or otherwise was dropped from Factory and moved to the build service games dumpsi^Wrepo. Please, put your packages back to Factory. Chances that people find and use the software are much bigger if the distro has it rather than some random build service repo. Yes, there are some rules you have to follow then but that’s also a sign of quality for our users. Yes, it won’t be the latest and greatest version always but that doesn’t matter for most packages. So please put your packages back to Factory [unless they are full of security bugs ;-)], a distro without packages is not useful.

Posted in Distribution, Factory | 3 Comments »

Firewall Zone Switcher Updated

August 28th, 2009 by

I have updated the Firewall Zone Switcher.
It now starts with a main window by default instead of
directly going to the system tray. There’s a settings dialog that
allows to enable the system tray icon and optionally also enables
starting the applet on log-in. Furthermore the daemon now uses
PolicyKit for access control and the applet supports i18n.
(more…)

Posted in Network | 6 Comments »

Firewall Zone Switcher

July 10th, 2009 by

So you got that shiny new Netbook, installed Linux on it and carry
it along everywhere you go. The default enabled Firewall blocks
incoming traffic so you feel safe when connecting to that anonymous
WiFi network at your favorite fastfood restaurant. Unfortunately the
very same Firewall becomes quite annoying at home where it prevents
your system from discovering printers or blocks ssh.
(more…)

Posted in Network | 10 Comments »

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