Anaconda is getting a new suit (Fedora Community Blog) [LWN.net]

Anaconda is getting a new suit (Fedora Community Blog)

Posted Jan 11, 2022 18:45 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (10 responses)

I imagine it will be WebKit or Firefox. But it also means that I can hook up remotely with a laptop instead of dragging in a monitor and keyboard to an otherwise headless machine.

Of course, if it's "fancy" enough and w3m works, then even ssh can be used to handle a Fedora install :) .

Anaconda is getting a new suit (Fedora Community Blog)

Posted Jan 11, 2022 20:41 UTC (Tue) by bartoc (guest, #124262) [Link] (5 responses)

You could kind of do this with the GDK broadway backend, but it was weird. I really like cockpit and agree that that's probably one goal (and it's a good one).

It is unfortunate that a browser will be required, since even firefox (let alone chrome) is developed less out in the open than GTK.

Anaconda is getting a new suit (Fedora Community Blog)

Posted Jan 11, 2022 21:15 UTC (Tue) by dtlin (subscriber, #36537) [Link] (2 responses)

In principle, it should be possible to build alternative interfaces to Cockpit via websocket communication rather than embedding the full HTML/CSS/JS interface. Whether there's any interest in doing so, dunno.

Anaconda is getting a new suit (Fedora Community Blog)

Posted Jan 11, 2022 22:05 UTC (Tue) by adam820 (subscriber, #101353) [Link] (1 responses)

Cockpit themselves are building (have built) a desktop client that uses SSH to connect to the machine. So, theoretically you may not need a web browser to interact with it: "The server needs to have Cockpit installed, but the Cockpit webserver doesn't need to be enabled, and no extra ports need to be opened."

https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.cockpit_project.Cock...

Anaconda is getting a new suit (Fedora Community Blog)

Posted Jan 11, 2022 22:15 UTC (Tue) by dtlin (subscriber, #36537) [Link]

https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit/blob/main/src/... uses WebKit to run all the HTML/etc, it just runs the web server itself.

Anaconda is getting a new suit (Fedora Community Blog)

Posted Jan 13, 2022 3:18 UTC (Thu) by epg (guest, #34047) [Link] (1 responses)

We had this in PGI!

"Alternatively, you can run the graphical interface even when the target machine's video hardware is not supported by the XFree86 X server; simply set the display boot parameter and run the installer on an X server elsewhere on your local network."

https://web.archive.org/web/20031218123658/http://hackers...

Pretty sure Branden Robinson came up with that idea when we were at the office way too late one night, and that we were the first to do it...

Anaconda is getting a new suit (Fedora Community Blog)

Posted Jan 24, 2022 17:59 UTC (Mon) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link]

Aww, shucks. Thanks, Eric.

Reading through that manual (I think I wrote a lot of it?) brings back tons of memories.

It wasn't hard to do the remote X thing--that's one of the things the protocol was designed for.

I remember the main thing Ian Murdock having to say about our installer was that it looked like a "shoddy product". Good times.

Anaconda is getting a new suit (Fedora Community Blog)

Posted Jan 11, 2022 21:15 UTC (Tue) by epithumia (subscriber, #23370) [Link] (3 responses)

Anaconda has supported VNC for a very long time. I've done many thousands of Fedora installs, and RHL installs before that, without having to sit at the machines. You can also SSH in but as far as I know you can't actually use that to interact with the installer.

Perhaps soon you'll be able to connect with a browser, which I suppose is fine, but it doesn't really offer that much in the way of new capability. I imagine this is primarily an issue of simplification of code maintenance.

Anaconda is getting a new suit (Fedora Community Blog)

Posted Jan 12, 2022 5:36 UTC (Wed) by champtar (subscriber, #128673) [Link] (1 responses)

If I remember correctly once you are connected via ssh you can attach to the installer tmux session (tmux a).

Anaconda is getting a new suit (Fedora Community Blog)

Posted Jan 13, 2022 2:00 UTC (Thu) by m4rtink (guest, #95458) [Link]

Oh, that's clever! While I don't think this is officially supported (or even documented) it makes sense. The Anaconda TUI runs in a tmux session, so if you can connect to that somehow, you are good to go. :)

Anaconda is getting a new suit (Fedora Community Blog)

Posted Jan 13, 2022 1:58 UTC (Thu) by m4rtink (guest, #95458) [Link]

Current remote GUI support via VNC has several serious drawbacks:

- rendering happens on the machine, so slower machines (cheap ARM SBCs, etc.) might struggle
- all the graphical deps need to be on the image, making the image larger
- the rendered bitmaps are then transferred over network, which is not very efficient
- VNC traffic is not encrypted and VNC has a low maximum password leangth (!)
- lastly, you need a VNC client installed, while almost anyone will likely have a browser

In comparison a modern remote Web UI renders on client, transfers very little and all data goes over HTTPS.

Anaconda is getting a new suit (Fedora Community Blog)

Posted Jan 13, 2022 1:53 UTC (Thu) by m4rtink (guest, #95458) [Link]

We plan to use cockpit-desktop to run the Web UI locally:

https://cockpit-project.org/guide/latest/cockpit-desktop.1

This works very well so far and IMHO already quite well used and tested.

Its Python/GTK wrapper over Webkit, so it actually does not drag in any extra stuff on the installation image as all three are already present.

And of course if you wanted a really small image, you can make a headless one and still have a nice remote GUI support. :)

Anaconda is getting a new suit (Fedora Community Blog)

Posted Jan 13, 2022 23:46 UTC (Thu) by gerdesj (subscriber, #5446) [Link]

"Looks like now even a distro installer will run a copy of Chromium (or at least WebKit)."

All the installers I use in anger are console based. Yes, I have seen the pretty ones but I can't be arsed with them in general. Linux (and of course the BSDs etc) lends itself to a very simple install model: partition the disc and slap on enough code to get an interface up and running that can be used to get more stuff as needed.

I want my servers to be minimal and my desktops to be maximal.

Linux installers are streets ahead of Windows which has improved somewhat itself. I love the Debian and Ubuntu pretty jobbies way of slapping code on the box whilst still asking questions. Sadly Windows then fucks up by asking for permission to intrude on your life every time you create a new user profile. It's so needy that it is becoming embarrassing and quite hard to explain to end users.