Hello,
This is a question about the debian installation mechanism.
Linaro is all about Open Source, but must be able to manage closed source binaries from member companies. Typically h/w packs.
Some legal depts. requires a conscious action as proof of acceptance of the license. This produces various technical problems in automation, e.g. update management or creation of images because the software scripts that updates or create images are not conscious :)
The Snowball s/w design team decided to use the debian mechanism for license acceptance of h/w-pack binaries, so there are pop-ups when you run Linaro-Media-Create.
Here's the problem:
When Validation creates new images all the time, the conscious action "click through" must be replaced by the conscious action "I am the maintainer of this Validation farm, I hereby accept the license once and for all and from now on l-m-c will not pop up the licenses in any of *these* packages that are automatically installed in my lab".
How can this be done *technically*?
Doesn't automated installation of Ubuntu systems containing non-free packages encounter the same problem?
BR, Tony
On Wed, Sep 07, 2011, Tony Mansson wrote:
The Snowball s/w design team decided to use the debian mechanism for license acceptance of h/w-pack binaries, so there are pop-ups when you run Linaro-Media-Create.
Is this a debconf note or prompt?
When Validation creates new images all the time, the conscious action "click through" must be replaced by the conscious action "I am the maintainer of this Validation farm, I hereby accept the license once and for all and from now on l-m-c will not pop up the licenses in any of *these* packages that are automatically installed in my lab".
if it's debconf based, you want to preseed the debconf database with debconf-set-selections to set the relevant flag before installing the packages. Image creation tools could be patched to allow running a custom script before installing hwpacks; you would pass a script which would run debconf-set-selections.
See also debconf-get-selections to dump your debconf question db.
On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 11:39 AM, Loïc Minier loic.minier@linaro.org wrote:
On Wed, Sep 07, 2011, Tony Mansson wrote:
The Snowball s/w design team decided to use the debian mechanism for license acceptance of h/w-pack binaries, so there are pop-ups when you run Linaro-Media-Create.
Is this a debconf note or prompt?
When Validation creates new images all the time, the conscious action "click through" must be replaced by the conscious action "I am the maintainer of this Validation farm, I hereby accept the license once and for all and from now on l-m-c will not pop up the licenses in any of *these* packages that are automatically installed in my lab".
if it's debconf based, you want to preseed the debconf database with debconf-set-selections to set the relevant flag before installing the packages. Image creation tools could be patched to allow running a custom script before installing hwpacks; you would pass a script which would run debconf-set-selections.
See also debconf-get-selections to dump your debconf question db.
I think they might want the validation owner to explicitly/manual accept the license once instead of just hard coding accepting it in a script.
I think one way to do that is to assume that the same license has been accepted on the control node manually by the admin and then lmc grows feature to preseed certain debconf keys on the target by taking their current values from the host machine.
On Wed, Sep 07, 2011 at 11:39:08AM +0200, Loïc Minier wrote:
On Wed, Sep 07, 2011, Tony Mansson wrote:
The Snowball s/w design team decided to use the debian mechanism for license acceptance of h/w-pack binaries, so there are pop-ups when you run Linaro-Media-Create.
Is this a debconf note or prompt?
When Validation creates new images all the time, the conscious action "click through" must be replaced by the conscious action "I am the maintainer of this Validation farm, I hereby accept the license once and for all and from now on l-m-c will not pop up the licenses in any of *these* packages that are automatically installed in my lab".
if it's debconf based, you want to preseed the debconf database with debconf-set-selections to set the relevant flag before installing the packages. Image creation tools could be patched to allow running a custom script before installing hwpacks; you would pass a script which would run debconf-set-selections.
See also debconf-get-selections to dump your debconf question db.
Then couldn't this preseeding operation be considered the conscious action?
Much depends on exactly which legal department we are talking about...
Thanx, Paul
On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 3:48 PM, Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com
wrote:
On Wed, Sep 07, 2011 at 11:39:08AM +0200, Loïc Minier wrote:
On Wed, Sep 07, 2011, Tony Mansson wrote:
The Snowball s/w design team decided to use the debian mechanism for license acceptance of h/w-pack binaries, so there are pop-ups when you run Linaro-Media-Create.
Is this a debconf note or prompt?
When Validation creates new images all the time, the conscious action "click through" must be replaced by the conscious action "I am the maintainer of this Validation farm, I hereby accept the license once and for all and from now on l-m-c will not pop up the licenses in any of *these* packages that are automatically installed in my lab".
if it's debconf based, you want to preseed the debconf database with debconf-set-selections to set the relevant flag before installing the packages. Image creation tools could be patched to allow running a custom script before installing hwpacks; you would pass a script which would run debconf-set-selections.
See also debconf-get-selections to dump your debconf question db.
Then couldn't this preseeding operation be considered the conscious action?
Much depends on exactly which legal department we are talking about...
I agree that this is one way to lay it out.
One thing discussed/requested was that for human users/engineers the decision about accepting a license is remembered on the host so they dont get asked for the next install.
This would involve copying certain keys off the target after install and preseeding those next time you use lmc and we would have one solution suitable for humans and non-humans.