Hi Alex

Thank you for looking into this.

On Sat, 2025-12-27 at 19:18 +0100, Alexander Kanavin via
lists.openembedded.org wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Dec 2025 at 18:23, Adrian Freihofer via
> lists.openembedded.org
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Add a configuration fragment that enables devtool ide-sdk workflow
> > for development and remote debugging.
> > The configuration is intended to streamline the development
> > workflow
> > where developers can modify recipes with devtool and debug them
> > remotely on target devices using IDEs like VSCode.
> 
> There are tests for ide-sdk in
> meta/lib/oeqa/selftest/cases/devtool.py, should they be adjusted to
> use the fragment?

Sure, I can change that. But I have already many patches pending
against these tests which I would like to send before adding more
changes. And we need more discussion on that, as you pointed out
bellow.

> 
> > This also includes the EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES from
> > root-login-with-exmpty-password.conf. Ideally there would be a
> > possibility
> > to define fragment dependencies, so that this fragment could just
> > depend on
> > that one instead of duplicating the content here.
> 
> This is somewhat more worrying. Having the settings bundled into the
> fragment this way quietly opens a big security hole in users'
> configuration, something they did not necessarily consent to. The
> original fragment at least warns the users of the dangers involved,
> this one doesn't.

You are right, insecure development features must be visible and
copying this is not ideal. We need a better solution.

> 
> I would much rather take an opportunity to set up proper key-based
> authentication or something else better than simply not having a
> password. There was already reluctance to having the original
> empty-password fragment (because it's the easy way out that only
> delays solving the problem properly), and spreading these settings to
> other fragments makes the situation worse.

I think we are aiming for different goals: security versus usability
and reproducibility. All are important. We need to find implementations
where the sstate-cache, packages, MACHINE parts, and DISTRO parts are
secure by default, while still allowing developers to quickly generate
images suitable for development and testing tasks. That's what this
fragment basically does: it converts a secure-by-default image into a
developer image.

The problem: Fragments currently affect all images, not just those
intended for development.

We could introduce new variables:
- INSECURE_IMAGE_FEATURES
- INSECURE_IMAGE_CLASSES

These variables would be used exclusively by development images, such
as oe-selftest-image.

Additionally, we could add a new directory (e.g., classes-insecure)
containing bbclass files that remove security features. Classes in this
directory could set a variable to mark the image as insecure.
Checks could enforce that classes from classes-insecure can only be
added to INSECURE_IMAGE_CLASSES, not to IMAGE_CLASSES.

This approach would allow fragments to append to INSECURE_IMAGE_CLASSES
without risking the security of potentially released images.

However, that's not the right place for this discussion. Maybe the CRA,
meeting series could be. I will send a v2 which does not change the
security related parts. That will allow us to proceed and the user can
enable the existing no password fragment in addition.

Regards,
Adrian

> 
> Alex
> 
> 
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