Alpine Linux:Ideas

This is the place to put feature requests and share ideas for Alpine. From these we'll update our Roadmap, which in turn populates our Todo list. Discussions of ideas should probably take place on the Alpine-Devel mailing list, but feel free to use the discussion function of the wiki too.

User documentation

It would be nice with specific howto's. Not only the basics (setting ut a NAT'ing gateway) but some really different, wierd stuff, like setting up encrypted partitions, storing configs on subversion, connect a webcamera to a cgi script, things that you cannot do on the standard SOHO routers.

Signing packages

Make a port of the freebsd pkg_sign, stripping out everything but the x509 part. Using this will allow us to ship a certificate with the distro and make it possible to verify that updates really comes from the same (or authorized) origin.

It is possible to sign single packages or the INDEX file, or any other file, as long as it is gzipped.

Booting from net

Provide ip address and remote hostname as kernel parameter and run directly from network. The only thing needed for this would probably be a special initramfs image.

Local backups of the configs

There are lot of ways to do this. We should support a few. Things that is really interesting is stoing them on a subversion repository.

rcs might be an alternative.

Webconfig framework

I have no idea how this should be done. But i think we should support and encourage ssl from the very beginning.

on 16 Aug 2006, Natanael posted to the mailing list:

Some ideas for the webconf.
 
1. Log changes.

Log changes and add a posibility to add user comments. Something like
blogging. You can add comments.

Log could look like:
 
<id> <when> <who> <what> <where> <comment>
 
For example:
admin changed ip of eth0 from 192.168.0.100 to 192.168.0.1 "Just testing"
admin added firewall rule <bla bla> "Disallow web traffic thats not proxied"
admin changd password for root
ncopa removed static ip from DHCP server "This device is no longer used"
 
 
2. User comments on the web pages.
 
ncopa <date>
The static routes are there as a workaroud for ....
 
admin <date>
Note that this is the second DHCP server so don't change the ip range withough checking rtr-02

Regarding item 1, busybox diff is built into alpine. The model could run a diff from the previous config file and the current config file; also noting ip addr / timestamp / username for the person making the change. This has the very interesting possiblity of rollbacks - playing a diff "backwards" (patch -R) could allow for undo/redo within the web framework.

Item 2 is just another text file for the controller to manage.

Running from read only media

One of the concepts are that the media from where the sytem loads should be readonly. We could have a check in the boot process if media is readonly. If it is not, refuse to start. This is specially good for USB sticks, where a USB stick that is possible to physically write protect would be required.

Installer templates

Have some "templates", or presseeds or something similar so you can easily install a lot of alpine boxes.

Autorun program/script on CD

Could be nice with an autorun program that will be executed when cd is inserted in a windows computer. It could have a menu with the following options:

• create boot floppy for CDROM
• create boot floppy for USB
• install Alpine on an USB drive

Package database

A database with all the packages and their status.

Possibility to rate/vote packages? Some easy way for users to give feedback on what packages they think we should focus on.

Version number on floppy

As Alpine progresses, the data stored no the floppy needs to be converted from version tho the other. It would be nice to be able to see what version of Alpine the data on the floppy belongs to. Then the conversion script will have to do less magic to upgrade the data.

SSL signed floppies

Make it possible to sign/encrypt the data on the floppies. the floppies contain the most valuable data of alpine. It would be nice if setup-alpine would ask if I want to create a new key, or import an existing key and then encrypt or sign the contents of the floppy with it. On a reboot the admin would have to give the password for the system to run. Since mission critical systems have an UPS, this should not really be a problem.

Packages we would like to add or investigate to be added, to alpine

To be used with Asterisk:

• [zgsmplay], see also [here] - This package will give the possibility to listen to the gsm (sound-)files on the server.

Maybe later:

• Cherokee (in unstable Gentoo atm)

Comment: See FAQ

Installer for headless installs

Installer that would create a bootable iso/usbdrive + a working config. Could be written in wxWidgets so it could be run from either Windows or Linux.