Hi,
As a followup to a conversation I had with Alexander (asac) on IRC, i'd like to request the addition of some packages to the headless image. This is to make the images more useful out-of-the-box.
- ifplugd (dhcp networking) - screen (multiple terminals over a serial console) - vim (or any other more complete editor than the vi that ships with busybox) - openssh (atleast server)
More useful tools to consider (but might be more insteresting only to kernel devs) - lsusb - latencytop - input-utils - iotop
Regards, Amit
On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 4:56 PM, Amit Kucheria amit.kucheria@linaro.org wrote:
Hi,
As a followup to a conversation I had with Alexander (asac) on IRC, i'd like to request the addition of some packages to the headless image. This is to make the images more useful out-of-the-box.
- ifplugd (dhcp networking)
- screen (multiple terminals over a serial console)
- vim (or any other more complete editor than the vi that ships with busybox)
- openssh (atleast server)
More useful tools to consider (but might be more insteresting only to kernel devs)
- lsusb
- latencytop
Latencytop just became less useful after it was redone in GTK. *sigh*
- input-utils
- iotop
Regards, Amit
I'll get these added to the ui image as well.
Regards, Tom
On Aug 9, 2010, at 9:13 AM, Amit Kucheria wrote:
On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 4:56 PM, Amit Kucheria amit.kucheria@linaro.org wrote:
Hi,
As a followup to a conversation I had with Alexander (asac) on IRC, i'd like to request the addition of some packages to the headless image. This is to make the images more useful out-of-the-box.
- ifplugd (dhcp networking)
- screen (multiple terminals over a serial console)
- vim (or any other more complete editor than the vi that ships with busybox)
- openssh (atleast server)
More useful tools to consider (but might be more insteresting only to kernel devs)
- lsusb
- latencytop
Latencytop just became less useful after it was redone in GTK. *sigh*
- input-utils
- iotop
Regards, Amit
"We want great men who, when fortune frowns will not be discouraged." - Colonel Henry Knox w) tom.gall att linaro.org w) tom_gall att vnet.ibm.com h) tom_gall att mac.com
linaro-dev mailing list linaro-dev@lists.linaro.org http://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo/linaro-dev
On Mon, Aug 09, 2010 at 04:56:18PM +0300, Amit Kucheria wrote:
As a followup to a conversation I had with Alexander (asac) on IRC, i'd like to request the addition of some packages to the headless image. This is to make the images more useful out-of-the-box.
- ifplugd (dhcp networking)
ifplugd has always been avoided by default in Ubuntu because at least in the past, trying to use the cable sense support wouldn't work with all chips and could even cause kernel lockups with some of them. Do we know for sure that this is no longer an issue? I'm wary of having our images diverge from Ubuntu on something as fundamental as network configuration, as I don't believe we have the breadth of coverage to avoid regressions.
- screen (multiple terminals over a serial console)
Easy enough to include, but the disk footprint should not be ignored IMHO. I think we need to better define the intended use cases for the headless images; cf. the other thread on linaro-dev about trying to get the image /smaller/ by pruning cached apt data. A single preinstalled image isn't going to be everything to everyone, so we should try to get a clear set of requirements so that it doesn't fail to be anything to everyone.
- vim (or any other more complete editor than the vi that ships with busybox)
ubuntu-minimal, which the linaro images inherit, includes vim-tiny. Is that not sufficient?
- openssh (atleast server)
This is something I always install, but I'm not sure it's a given that we want to install and run it by default in the stock image.
More useful tools to consider (but might be more insteresting only to kernel devs)
- lsusb
--> usbutils
- latencytop
- input-utils
- iotop
usbutils is actually part of ubuntu-standard, a small set of packages we aren't currently including in the preinstalled image but that I think we should consider for inclusion if we're willing to accept a larger footprint. The others are IMHO very niche (not only are they not installed by default in Ubuntu, they're in universe no less) and don't belong on a general-purpose image.
Cheers,
On 10 Aug 09, Steve Langasek wrote:
On Mon, Aug 09, 2010 at 04:56:18PM +0300, Amit Kucheria wrote:
As a followup to a conversation I had with Alexander (asac) on IRC, i'd like to request the addition of some packages to the headless image. This is to make the images more useful out-of-the-box.
- ifplugd (dhcp networking)
ifplugd has always been avoided by default in Ubuntu because at least in the past, trying to use the cable sense support wouldn't work with all chips and could even cause kernel lockups with some of them. Do we know for sure that this is no longer an issue? I'm wary of having our images diverge from Ubuntu on something as fundamental as network configuration, as I don't believe we have the breadth of coverage to avoid regressions.
I am not aware of the cable-sense problems or if they have been resolved. I was just making a case for out-of-box networking since the headless images don't ship with N-M. When networking isn't working, it is hard to install new packages. We should atleast document how to enable networking (dhclient eth0, etc.)
- screen (multiple terminals over a serial console)
Easy enough to include, but the disk footprint should not be ignored IMHO. I think we need to better define the intended use cases for the headless images; cf. the other thread on linaro-dev about trying to get the image /smaller/ by pruning cached apt data. A single preinstalled image isn't going to be everything to everyone, so we should try to get a clear set of requirements so that it doesn't fail to be anything to everyone.
- vim (or any other more complete editor than the vi that ships with busybox)
ubuntu-minimal, which the linaro images inherit, includes vim-tiny. Is that not sufficient?
Will recheck.
- openssh (atleast server)
This is something I always install, but I'm not sure it's a given that we want to install and run it by default in the stock image.
Is security that much of an issue for linaro images, given that the images are not meant as end-user/product-focused images but rather technology demos.
More useful tools to consider (but might be more insteresting only to kernel devs)
- lsusb
--> usbutils
- latencytop
- input-utils
- iotop
usbutils is actually part of ubuntu-standard, a small set of packages we aren't currently including in the preinstalled image but that I think we should consider for inclusion if we're willing to accept a larger footprint. The others are IMHO very niche (not only are they not installed by default in Ubuntu, they're in universe no less) and don't belong on a general-purpose image.
Fair enough, I did suspect those were more focused towards kernel developers.
But it does bring up the question of who these images are catered for.
* Who is the target for these images?
In my mind, it is developers and engineers from various ARM vendors, distributions such as Meego and tinkerers.
* What is the use of headless images?
Very useful for Kernel and Power WG for low-level verfication and experiments w/o the overhead of the entire userspace stack. Provides ability to use things like perf/ftrace/latencytop/powertop to diagnose low-level problems.
* What can we do to lower the barrier to entry?
- Support more boards. (I know it is WIP) - Reduce the amount of time required to get the images and get them running on supported boards (mostly solved with linaro-media-create) - Get working networking on the board (onboard, usb-ethernet, usb-net) (Provide pointers to documentation for getting usb-networking working) - Provide tools for when networking isn't available and only serial console is available (hence screen) - Reasonable download size (define reasonable) - perhaps we could provide separate headless and headless+devel-tools). - or a script to configure networking and download useful tools?
/Amit
Amit Kucheria wrote:
Is security that much of an issue for linaro images, given that the images are not meant as end-user/product-focused images but rather technology demos.
Demos tend to get turned into products rather quickly in some cases. :-) I wouldn't be at all amazed to find Linaro images forming the core of small products.
Thanks,
Dnia poniedziałek, 9 sierpnia 2010 o 22:00:11 Steve Langasek napisał(a):
The others are IMHO very niche (not only are they not installed by default in Ubuntu, they're in universe no less) and don't belong on a general-purpose image.
But Linaro is not Ubuntu. Our images are rather targeted at developers then at normal users. And developers (especially low level ones) likes to use utils which are useless^Whard to understand for users.
Regards,
Dnia poniedziałek, 9 sierpnia 2010 o 15:56:18 Amit Kucheria napisał(a):
As a followup to a conversation I had with Alexander (asac) on IRC, i'd like to request the addition of some packages to the headless image. This is to make the images more useful out-of-the-box.
- ifplugd (dhcp networking)
Check what is installed in ubuntu-server instead of N-M and use it. Probably ifupdown + something to generate /etc/network/interfaces file.
- openssh (atleast server)
Or dropbear when space is limited.
More useful tools to consider (but might be more insteresting only to kernel devs)
I would also add:
- evtest - lsof - strace - devmem2 - i2c-tools
Regards,
-
Amit Kucheria -
Marcin Juszkiewicz -
Mark Mitchell -
Steve Langasek -
Tom Gall