Agama installer on-line demo by lslezak

Description

The Agama installer provides a quite complex user interface. We have some screenshots on the web page but as it is basically a web application it would be nice to have some on-line demo where users could click and check it live.

The problem is that the Agama server directly accesses the hardware (storage probing) and loads installation repositories. We cannot easily mock this in the on-line demo so the easiest way is to have just a read-only demo. You could explore the configuration options but you could not change anything, all changes would be ignored.

The read-only demo would be a bit limited but I still think it would be useful for potential users get the feeling of the new Agama installer and get familiar with it before using in a real installation.

As a proof of concept I already created this on-line demo.

The implementation basically builds Agama in two modes - recording mode where it saves all REST API responses and replay mode where it for the REST API requests returns the previously recorded responses. Recording in the browser is inconvenient and error prone, there should be some scripting instead (see below).

Goals

• Create an Agama on-line demo which can be easily tested by users
• The Agama installer is still in alpha phase and in active development, the online demo needs to be easily rebuilt with the latest Agama version
• Ideally there should be some automation so the demo page is rebuilt automatically without any developer interactions (once a day or week?)

TODO

• Use OpenAPI to get all Agama REST API endpoints, write a script which queries all the endpoints automatically and saves the collected data to a file (see this related PR).
• Write a script for starting an Agama VM (use libvirt/qemu?), the script should ensure we always use the same virtual HW so if we need to dump the latest REST API state we get the same (or very similar data). This should ensure the demo page does not change much regarding the storage proposal etc...
• Fix changing the product, currently it gets stuck after clicking the "Select" button.
• Move the mocking data (the recorded REST API responses) outside the Agama sources, it's too big and will be probably often updated. To avoid messing the history keep it in a separate GitHub repository
• Allow changing the UI language
• Display some note (watermark) in the page so it is clear it is a read-only demo (probably with some version or build date to know how old it is)
• Automation for building new demo page from the latest sources. There should be some check which ensures the recorded data still matches the OpenAPI specification.

Changing the UI language

This will be quite tricky because selecting the proper translation file is done on the server side. We would probably need to completely re-implement the logic in the browser side and adapt the server for that.

Also some REST API responses contain translated texts (storage proposal, pattern names in software). We would need to query the respective endpoints in all supported languages and return the correct response in runtime according to the currently selected language.

Resources

• Agama sources
• Experimental proof of concept demo
• The respective source code change

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Grapesss: a physical Shamir's Secret Sharing application [ESP32-C3 + Mobile] by ecandino

Description

A couple of years ago I created StegoSecretS, a small cli used to encrypt and split a secret into multiple keys, using the Shamir's Secret Sharing algorithm.

The idea is to re-implement the project using physical devices. One device alone will be useless, but when close together they can be used to decrypt the secret.

On a practical side the user encrypts the secret with a mobile application. The same application is used to split the secret, and load the partial keys into different micro-controllers. Another user will be able to decrypt the secret only having at least N devices close together (using the application).

I'm planning to use a couple of ESP32-C3 I bought, and build a very simple Android mobile application.

Goals

• Learn about Rust and micro-controllers (ESP32-C3)
• Learn about mobile applications (Android and Kotlin)

Resources

• Shamir's Secret Sharing
• The esp-rs Book
• Android - Kotlin

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Hack on isotest-ng - a rust port of isotovideo (os-autoinst aka testrunner of openQA) by szarate

Description

Some time ago, I managed to convince ByteOtter to hack something that resembles isotovideo but in Rust, not because I believe that Perl is dead, but more because there are certain limitations in the perl code (how it was written), and its always hard to add new functionalities when they are about implementing a new backend, or fixing bugs (Along with people complaining that Perl is dead, and that they don't like it)

In reality, I wanted to see if this could be done, and ByteOtter proved that it could be, while doing an amazing job at hacking a vnc console, and helping me understand better what RuPerl needs to work.

I plan to keep working on this for the next few years, and while I don't aim for feature completion or replacing isotovideo tih isotest-ng (name in progress), I do plan to be able to use it on a daily basis, using specialized tooling with interfaces, instead of reimplementing everything in the backend

Todo

• Add make targets for testability, e.g "spawn qemu and type"
• Add image search matching algorithm
• Add a Null test distribution provider
• Add a Perl Test Distribution Provider
• Fix unittests https://github.com/os-autoinst/isotest-ng/issues/5
• Research OpenTofu how to add new hypervisors/baremetal to OpenTofu
• Add an interface to openQA cli

Goals

• Implement at least one of the above, prepare proposals for GSoC
• Boot a system via it's BMC

Resources

See https://github.com/os-autoinst/isotest-ng

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Implement a CLI tool for Trento - trentoctl by nkopliku

Description

Implement a trentoctl CLI for interacting with a trento installation

Goals

• learn rust
• implement an initial trentoctl tool to enhance trento automation
• have fun

Resources

trento rust. TUIs listed on this other hackweek project Hack on rich terminal user interfaces

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SMB3 Server written entirely in Rust by dmulder

Description

Given the number of bugs frequently discovered in the Samba code caused by memory issues, it makes sense to re-write the smbd service purely in Rust code. Meanwhile, it would be wise to abandon backwards compatibility here with insecure protocol versions, and simply implement the SMB3 spec.

Goals

Get a simple server up and running and get it merged into upstream Samba (which now has Rust build support).

Resources

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Create a DRM driver for VGA video cards by tdz

Yes, those VGA video cards. The goal of this project is to implement a DRM graphics driver for such devices. While actual hardware is hard to obtain or even run today, qemu emulates VGA output.

VGA has a number of limitations, which make this project interesting.

• There are only 640x480 pixels (or less) on the screen. That resolution is also a soft lower limit imposed by DRM. It's mostly a problem for desktop environments though.
• Desktop environments assume 16 million colors, but there are only 16 colors with VGA. VGA's 256 color palette is not available at 640x480. We can choose those 16 colors freely. The interesting part is how to choose them. We have to build a palette for the displayed frame and map each color to one of the palette's 16 entries. This is called dithering, and VGA's limitations are a good opportunity to learn about dithering algorithms.
• VGA has an interesting memory layout. Most graphics devices use linear framebuffers, which store the pixels byte by byte. VGA uses 4 bitplanes instead. Plane 0 holds all bits 0 of all pixels. Plane 1 holds all bits 1 of all pixels, and so on.

The driver will probably not be useful to many people. But, if finished, it can serve as test environment for low-level hardware. There's some interest in supporting old Amiga and Atari framebuffers in DRM. Those systems have similar limitations as VGA, but are harder to obtain and test with. With qemu, the VGA driver could fill this gap.

Apart from the Wikipedia entry, good resources on VGA are at osdev.net and FreeVGA

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Improve various phones kernel mainline support (Qualcomm, Exynos, MediaTek) by pvorel

Similar to previous hackweeks ( https://hackweek.opensuse.org/projects/improve-qualcomm-soc-msm8994-slash-msm8992-kernel-mainline-support, https://hackweek.opensuse.org/projects/test-mainline-kernel-on-an-older-qualcomm-soc-msm89xx-explore-mainline-kernel-qualcomm-mainlining) try to improve kernel mainline support of various phones.

Result

In the end I concentrated again to msm8994:

• 507aae9a3549c ("arm64: dts: qcom: msm8994-angler: Enable power key, volume up/down") (will be in kernel 6.14)
• Testing of c910544d22347 ("arm64: dts: qcom: msm8994: Describe USB interrupts") (will be in kernel 6.14)
• WIP USB support for msm8994

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Modernize ocfs2 by goldwynr

Ocfs2 has gone into a stage of neglect and disrepair. Modernize the code to generate enough interest.

Goals: * Change the mount sequence to use fscontext * Move from using bufferhead to bio/folios * Use iomap * Run it through xfstests

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Contributing to Linux Kernel security by pperego

Description

A couple of weeks ago, I found this blog post by Gustavo Silva, a Linux Kernel contributor.

I always strived to start again into hacking the Linux Kernel, so I asked Coverity scan dashboard access and I want to contribute to Linux Kernel by fixing some minor issues.

I want also to create a Linux Kernel fuzzing lab using qemu and syzkaller

Goals

1. Fix at least 2 security bugs
2. Create the fuzzing lab and having it running

The story so far

• Day 1: setting up a virtual machine for kernel development using Tumbleweed. Reading a lot of documentation, taking confidence with Coverity dashboard and with procedures to submit a kernel patch
• Day 2: I read really a lot of documentation and I triaged some findings on Coverity SAST dashboard. I have to confirm that SAST tool are great false positives generator, even for low hanging fruits.
• Day 3: Working on trivial changes after I read this blog post: https://www.toblux.com/posts/2024/02/linux-kernel-patches.html. I have to take confidence with the patch preparation and submit process yet.
  • First trivial patch sent: using strtruefalse() macro instead of hard-coded strings in a staging driver for a lcd display
  • Fix for a dereference before null check issue discovered by Coverity (CID 1601566) https://scan7.scan.coverity.com/#/project-view/52110/11354?selectedIssue=1601566
• Day 4: Triaging more issues found by Coverity.
  • The patch for CID 1601566 was refused. The check against the NULL pointer was pointless so I prepared a version 2 of the patch removing the check.
  • Fixed another dereference before NULL check in iwlmvmparsewowlaninfo_notif() routine (CID 1601547). This one was already submitted by another kernel hacker :(
• Day 5: Wrapping up. I had to do some minor rework on patch for CID 1601566. I found a stalker bothering me in private emails and people I interacted with me, advised he is a well known bothering person. Markus Elfring for the record.

• Wrapping up: being back doing kernel hacking is amazing and I don't want to stop it. My battery pack is completely drained but changing the scope gave me a great twist and I really want to feel this energy not doing a single task for months.

  I failed in setting up a fuzzing lab but I was too optimistic for the patch submission process.

The patches

1

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early stage kdump support by mbrugger

Project Description

When we experience a early boot crash, we are not able to analyze the kernel dump, as user-space wasn't able to load the crash system. The idea is to make the crash system compiled into the host kernel (think of initramfs) so that we can create a kernel dump really early in the boot process.

Goal for the Hackweeks

1. Investigate if this is possible and the implications it would have (done in HW21)
2. Hack up a PoC (done in HW22 and HW23)
3. Prepare RFC series (giving it's only one week, we are entering wishful thinking territory here).

update HW23

• I was able to include the crash kernel into the kernel Image.
• I'll need to find a way to load that from init/main.c:start_kernel() probably after kcsan_init()
• I workaround for a smoke test was to hack kexec_file_load() systemcall which has two problems:
  1. My initramfs in the porduction kernel does not have a new enough kexec version, that's not a blocker but where the week ended
  2. As the crash kernel is part of init.data it will be already stale once I can call kexec_file_load() from user-space.

The solution is probably to rewrite the POC so that the invocation can be done from init.text (that's my theory) but I'm not sure if I can reuse the kexec infrastructure in the kernel from there, which I rely on heavily.

update HW24

• Day1
  • rebased on v6.12 with no problems others then me breaking the config
  • setting up a new compilation and qemu/virtme env
  • getting desperate as nothing works that used to work
• Day 2
  • getting to call the invocation of loading the early kernel from __init after kcsan_init()

• Day 3

  • fix problem of memdup not being able to alloc so much memory... use 64K page sizes for now
  • code refactoring
  • I'm now able to load the crash kernel
  • When using virtme I can boot into the crash kernel, also it doesn't boot completely (major milestone!), crash in elfcorehdr_read_notes()

• Day 4

  • crash systems crashes (no pun intended) in copy_old_mempage() link; will need to understand elfcorehdr...
  • call path vmcore_init() -> parse_crash_elf_headers() -> elfcorehdr_read() -> read_from_oldmem() -> copy_oldmem_page() -> copy_to_iter()

• Day 5

  • hacking arch/arm64/kernel/crash_dump.c:copy_old_mempage() to see if crash system really starts. It does.
  • fun fact: retested with more reserved memory and with UEFI FW, host kernel crashes in init but directly starts the crash kernel, so it works (somehow) \o/

• TODOs

  • fix elfcorehdr so that we actually can make use of all this...
  • test where in the boot __init() chain we can/should call kexec_early_dump()

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