Description

Inspired by mkosi the idea is to experiment with a declarative approach of defining Linux systems. A lot of tools already make it possible to manage the systems infrastructure by using description files, rather than manual invocation. An example for this are systemd presets for managing enabled services or the /etc/fstab file for describing how partitions should be mounted.

If we would take inspiration from openSUSE MicroOS and their handling of the /etc/ directory, we could theoretically use systemd-sysupdate to swap out the /usr/ partition and create an A/B boot scheme, where the /usr/ partition is always freshly built according to a central system description. In the best case it would be possible to still utilise snapshots, but an A/B root scheme would be sufficient for the beginning. This way you could get the benefit of NixOS's declarative system definition, but still use the distros package repositories and don't have to deal with the overhead of Flakes or the Nix language.

Goals

A simple and understandable system
Check fitness of mkosi or write a simple extensible image builder tool for it
Create a declarative system specification
Create a system with swappable /usr/ partition
Create an A/B root scheme
Swap to the new system without reboot (kexec?)

Resources

Ideas that have been floating around in my head for a while
https://0pointer.net/blog/fitting-everything-together.html
GNOME OS
MicroOS
systemd mkosi
Vanilla OS

Join this project Leave this project

Looking for hackers with the skills:

mkosi linux systemd exploration prototype distribution

This project is part of:

Hack Week 24

Activity

about 1 year ago: epaolantonio liked this project.

about 1 year ago: janvhs added keyword "mkosi" to this project.

about 1 year ago: janvhs added keyword "linux" to this project.

about 1 year ago: janvhs added keyword "systemd" to this project.

about 1 year ago: janvhs added keyword "exploration" to this project.

about 1 year ago: janvhs added keyword "prototype" to this project.

about 1 year ago: janvhs added keyword "distribution" to this project.

about 1 year ago: janvhs started this project.

about 1 year ago: janvhs originated this project.

Comments

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Uyuni is a configuration and infrastructure management tool that saves you time and headaches when you have to manage and update tens, hundreds or even thousands of machines. It also manages configuration, can run audits, build image containers, monitor and much more!

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openSUSE Leap 16.0

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Ways in which ZFS is better than BTRFS

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Censorship resistance - No single entity controls the relay; operators can spin up new nodes quickly.
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Digital sovereignty - Communities can host their own infrastructure under local jurisdiction, aligning with national data‑policy goals.

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Goals

As I indicated earlier, this project aims to drastically simplify the deployment of Chatmail relay. By converting this architecture into a portable, containerized stack using Podman and OpenSUSE base container images, we can allow anyone to deploy their own censorship-resistant, privacy-preserving communications node in minutes.

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Allow network decoupling by refactoring configurations to move from file-system constrained Unix sockets to internal TCP networking, allowing containers achieve stricter isolation.
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Allow the use of bind or remote mounted volumes for shared data (/var/vmail, DKIM keys, TLS certs, etc.).
Replace the local DNS server requirement with a remote DNS‑provider API for DKIM/TXT record publishing.

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Resources

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distribution

Testing and adding GNU/Linux distributions on Uyuni by juliogonzalezgil

Join the Gitter channel! https://gitter.im/uyuni-project/hackweek

The idea is testing Salt (including bootstrapping with bootstrap script) and Salt-ssh clients

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Reposync (this will require using spacewalk-common-channels and adding channels to the .ini file)
Onboarding (salt minion from UI, salt minion from bootstrap scritp, and salt-ssh minion) (this will probably require adding OS to the bootstrap repository creator)
Package management (install, remove, update...)
Patching
Applying any basic salt state (including a formula)
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Bonus point: Documentation (https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni-docs)
Bonus point: testsuite enablement (https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni/tree/master/testsuite)

If something is breaking: we can try to fix it, but the main idea is research how supported it is right now. Beyond that it's up to each project member how much to hack :-)

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In progress/done for Hack Week 25

Guide

openSUSE Leap 16.0

The distribution will all love!

https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Roadmap#DRAFTScheduleforLeap16.0

Curent Status We started last year, it's complete now for Hack Week 25! :-D

[W] Reposync (this will require using spacewalk-common-channels and adding channels to the .ini file) NOTE: Done, client tools for SLMicro6 are using as those for SLE16.0/openSUSE Leap 16.0 are not available yet
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Switch software-o-o to store repomd in a database by hennevogel

Description

The openSUSE Software portal is a web app to explore binary packages of openSUSE distributions. Kind of like an package manager / app store.

https://software.opensuse.org/

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Goals

I want to change the app to cache repomod data in a (postgres) database structure

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Repositories have many Packages
Packages have many Patches

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As an admin I setup Distribution and it's repositories
As an admin I sync all repositories repomd files into to the database
As a user I browse a Distribution by category
As a user I search for Package of a Distribution in it's Repositories
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Less traffic on the OBS API as the usual Packages are inside the database
Easier base to add features to this page. Like comments, ratings, openSUSE specific screenshots etc.
Separating the Distribution package search from searching through OBS will hopefully make more clear for newbies that enabling extra repositories is kind of dangerous.

And one con:

You can't search for packages build for foreign distributions with this app anymore (although we could consume their repomd etc. but I doubt we have the audience on an opensuse.org domain...)

TODO

Introduce a PG database
Add clockworkd as scheduler and delayed_job as ActiveJob backend
Introduce ActiveStorage
Build initial data model
Introduce repomd to database sync
- Adapt repomd sync to Leap 16.0 repomod layout changes (single arch, no update repo)
- Make repomd sync idempotent
Introduce database search
Setup foreman to run rails s and rake jobs:workoff
Adapt UI
- Build Category Browsing
- Build Admin Distribution CRUD interface