Hi adrian15!
adrian15:
> So, what I have been trying to do is to tweak minimally tails-greeter so
> that it
> meets my needs. The final purpose of these tweaks is to convince you that
> some of
> them are useful for tails-greeter so that you include into its
> upstream code.
OK, great. It would be nice if we could share one single codebase
indeed. Of course, for it to not be cause problems to us this must be
done in a super nice way, that does not make the code harder to
maintain on our side (e.g. using polymorphism and specialized classes
when doable rather than if/then conditionals, etc., the usual design
patterns to achieve such results).
> My tweaks are not perfect and thus there are some doubts which I need to
> clarify
> with you. Let's start.
I'm sorry it took me so long to reply. I was trying to find time to do
it as well as I wanted, and obviously I won't have enough time soon,
so I'll at least answer whatever I can quickly.
> 1. tails-greeter Rescatux branch
> The branch can be found here:
> https://github.com/rescatux/tails-greeter/tree/rescatux_0.40b8
First of all: as told IRL last time we met, we have a WIP branch for
a totally revamped greeter, that rewrites most of the code and totally
changes the GUI. I think you'd better base your work on that one.
I'm not sure which one is the most up-to-date, I'll let you check
freshness of:
feature/5464-revamp-ui
feature/7550-revamp-phase1-prototype
feature/revamp_phase1
feature/revamp_phase1_user_strings
> 2. Configuration files for enabling / disabling features. (Python)
> When I talked to Intrigeri he pointed me to:
> https://git-tails.immerda.ch/whisperback/tree/whisperBack/whisperback.py?h=feature/jessie
> which used in turn config.py which was loaded from different places.
> As I have noticed that tails-greeter now has config.py I have just modified
> it as you
> can see in:
> https://github.com/rescatux/tails-greeter/commit/863b13b7378b21af70783d36b61d5a8254a74675
> .
I think the "if not" construction is OK for now as a tracer bullet
approach, but at some point that'll need to be refactored IMO.
> So I have added these boolean variables:
> * tails_persistence_support
> * tails_show_welcome_message
> which are self explanatory.
> 2.1. Are those names correct or do you prefer them to be written in another
> way?
> Or with another name?
Sounds good enough and easy to rename later while refactoring if needed.
> 2.2. I guess I should add more Tails specific features such as the one about
> physical security.
Your call obviously.
> 2.3. I personally only use the Keyboard feature. Do you think there are other
> options
> which could be useful for Debian by default?
No idea (but thanks for asking :)
Perhaps the "administration password" one? Also see the ones added or
planned in our new/future Greeter, such as local time & timezone.
> 3. user user instead of amnesia user .
> https://github.com/rescatux/tails-greeter/commit/f04280192440db280d53414e7cde99bc3017e52d
> Debian Live default user is 'user', not 'amnesia'.
> So that's a clear setting that should be set by Tails.
I certainly don't mind changing the default, as long as our own use
case is still supported. And we want to switch to "user" anyway:
https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/5655 :)
> 4. Configuration files for enabling / disabling features. (Bash)
> 4.1. One important part of tails-greeter is the PostLogin script from gdm3
> which it's
> written in bash.
> 4.2. So as I was advised by intrigeri I rewrote the different tasks into
> functions.
> I modified the code so that these functions were run conditioned to some
> boolean variables.
Cool. These functions need a verb in their name, given their main
responsibility implies having side-effects.
Looks like inter-dependencies between tasks are not handled, e.g.
some bits require GATHER_GENERAL_CONFIGURATION_ENABLED=yes to work.
> 4.4. I guess you would want another bash file to be sourced if someone wants
> to
> config / modify it to suit their needs. But which filename path exactly?
Maybe /etc/tails-greeter/PostLogin.conf or similar?
> 5. Apart from the tails-greeter branch with my changes, the fact that
> tails-greeter
> was changed from (Jessie - 1) to Jessie I also had to modify some files from
> the
> Debian Live project itself.
> 5.1.
> https://github.com/rescatux/rescatux/commit/f073ad5cd60fa6e85fe71d7f75f4c494c8dd8c68
I guess we should really include this in the tails-greeter package.
I don't know why we don't. Any clue?
> 5.2. And add some new packages:
> https://github.com/rescatux/rescatux/commit/e38cc70fa8cd3ddf7701137d1e4c5f28d971b928
> which increase the CD size by 60 or 70 MB.
> (This is more a Rescatux question than focusing to try to 'port'
> tails-greeter into
> Debian)
> Do you know by any chance if there are any specific packages asked by
> tails-greeter
> dependencies which might not be needed if you only want localisation support ?
> 5.3. You seem to
