Url handlers #5059

halfline · 2023-08-21T02:22:29Z

cockpit.spawn isn't a good command to run UI tools because it doesn't know the user event that lead to it getting called. UI applications need to be run with that sort of context in their environment or compositors won't start them in the foreground. This is so if a user is typing, a slow starting program doesn't steal focus inadvertently when it finally starts.

Firefox has a mechanism for launching applications with the appropriate context, however: Url Handlers.

This commit registers a url handler "anaconda-storage:" and changes the Web UI to use it instead of cockpit.spawn.

halfline · 2023-08-21T02:22:54Z

(note this is still work in progress. it's not ready to go in yet)

jkonecny12

Looks good to me, thanks for this. Just a note - the desktop file will end up in the installed system the same way as Anaconda. I guess it's not ideal but works.

jkonecny12 · 2023-08-21T10:57:27Z

@martinpitt do you think the cockpit.spawn could be enhanced to solve this? I guess not but I would like to ask you first.

halfline · 2023-08-21T11:53:03Z

@martinpitt do you think the cockpit.spawn could be enhanced to solve this? I guess not but I would like to ask you first.

Not in future proof way without firefox changes. Right now firefox uses X11, and the "context" i mentioned is just a timestamp which I believe can be accessed by javascript. So in theory, i think, it could be made to work today by passing the timestamp through cockpit.spawn. With wayland, the "context" is a token that has to be requested from the compositor. This isnt available from javascript, and would need some api worked out and implemented in firefox.

martinpitt

Thanks @halfline for improving this!

the desktop file will end up in the installed system the same way as Anaconda

That seems fine, though -- anaconda isn't installed on the final system anyway.

do you think the cockpit.spawn could be enhanced to solve this

I don't think so, no -- as @halfline said this is not a stable/public API in the general case between compositors, and it may not even work with Chromium or webkit.

Also, this is the only case of a graphical app being launched through the cockpit API -- this hack only works at all due to the "special nature" of webui-desktop. So this doesn't generalize well.

Do you have an integration test that this button works? By the sound of it, it needs to be continuously tested with changing browsers, GNOME, etc.

martinpitt · 2023-08-22T05:40:01Z

ui/webui/src/components/storage/InstallationMethod.jsx

-        <Button variant="link" icon={<WrenchIcon />} onClick={() => cockpit.spawn(["blivet-gui"])}>
+        <Button variant="link" icon={<WrenchIcon />}
+                onClick={() => {
+                    var onBeforeUnload = window.onbeforeunload;


Use const instead of var.

martinpitt · 2023-08-22T05:40:29Z

data/url-handlers/anaconda-storage.desktop

+[Desktop Entry]
+Name=Anaconda Storage


Does this appear anywhere visible to the user? I.e. does this need i18n?

nope, it's NoDisplay=true, shouldn't show up anywhere in the ui

VladimirSlavik · 2023-08-22T12:16:07Z

Um, anaconda is definitely installed. It just so happens that when you have a live environment with anaconda, that is installed verbatim, so you get anaconda.

M4rtinK · 2023-08-22T12:27:36Z

Thanks @halfline for improving this!

the desktop file will end up in the installed system the same way as Anaconda

That seems fine, though -- anaconda isn't installed on the final system anyway.

Anaconda is installed on the final system - everything that is installed on the Live image when its created ends up on the installed system. That's how Live image installation works - its is just an rsync of the Live image rootfs to the target system.

That's also why Blivet GUI does not have a desktop icon on the Live image - so that it won't visibly show on the installed system (this was requested by the Workstation SIG long ago).

There have been some attempts to uninstall Anaconda and possibly other things from the image after the installation (either by Anaconda or some first-run systemd unit) but this is tricky, as there might not always be network connectivity and even uninstalls apparently can require new packages to be installed, which will fail without network connectivity.

This is the latest effort, that was eventually abandoned: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/AutoFirstBootServices

do you think the cockpit.spawn could be enhanced to solve this

I don't think so, no -- as @halfline said this is not a stable/public API in the general case between compositors, and it may not even work with Chromium or webkit.

Also, this is the only case of a graphical app being launched through the cockpit API -- this hack only works at all due to the "special nature" of webui-desktop. So this doesn't generalize well.

Right now we need to be able to launch Blivet GUI and another Firefox window for error reporting to satisfy core requirement.

Do you have an integration test that this button works? By the sound of it, it needs to be continuously tested with changing browsers, GNOME, etc.

Looks like this could be tested by OpenQA - @AdamWill will know more.

Still, there is the unresolved matter of how will launching of Anaconda from the Live session work - another run in a separate environment or somehow switching back to the minimal session as suggested by Alan ?

AdamWill · 2023-08-22T15:23:50Z

openQA could test this; as things stand it will not at first, because we don't do any custom installs from the Workstation live (all the custom install testing happens on the Server DVD). I guess we will need to move or duplicate some such tests on the Workstation live, if we're going forward with the webUI change for F39, as we'll need to actually check that the custom workflow works on webUI :/

halfline · 2023-08-22T16:21:26Z

ui/webui/src/components/storage/InstallationMethod.jsx

@@ -130,6 +130,7 @@ const InstallationDestination = ({ deviceData, diskSelection, dispatch, idPrefix
    });

    const rescanDisksButton = (
+


odd extra space here

halfline · 2023-08-22T16:35:22Z

Anaconda is installed on the final system - everything that is installed on the Live image when its created ends up on the installed system. That's how Live image installation works - its is just an rsync of the Live image rootfs to the target system.

Couldn't anaconda and related packages be installed a in separate payload on the live cd and just get mounted to /var/lib/extensions/anaconda by the livesys scripts? systemd should automatically overlay it into the live image I think, and the rsync shouldn't see it since you're just rsyncing from the base layer if i understand things right.

to be clear i mean something like this in lorax (untested):

# Step 1: Allocate an fsimage to store the anaconda systemd extension
fallocate -l 1G /mnt/sysroot/var/lib/extensions/anaconda.img
mkfs.ext4 /mnt/sysroot/var/lib/extensions/anaconda.img
mkdir -p /mnt/overlay
mount -o loop /mnt/sysroot/var/lib/extensions/anaconda.img /mnt/overlay

# Step 2: Create a /mnt/overlay/.overlaywork hidden directory in it that overlayfs needs
mkdir -p /mnt/overlay/.overlaywork

# Step 3: Mount an overlayfs over /usr
mount -t overlay overlay -o lowerdir=/sysroot/usr,upperdir=/mnt/overlay,workdir=/mnt/overlay/.overlaywork /sysroot/usr

# Step 4: Run dnf install -y anaconda
dnf install -y anaconda

# Step 5: Unmount the overlayfs
umount /sysroot/usr

# Step 6: Remove /mnt/overlay/.overlaywork
rm -rf /mnt/overlay/.overlaywork

# Step 7: Unmount /mnt/overlay
umount /mnt/overlay

# Step 8: Shrink the filesystem on the systemd extension to its minimum size
e2fsck -f /mnt/sysroot/var/lib/extensions/anaconda.img
resize2fs -M /mnt/sysroot/var/lib/extensions/anaconda.img

before packing up the iso. Then at boot systemd should put anaconda in /usr automatically but the rsync won't see it.

halfline · 2023-08-22T20:56:48Z

okay so one issue i'm running into is firefox wants to get confirmation from the user that the external url handler is okay.

That's less than optimal...

I've found I can stop this confirmation request by doing this:

sqlite3 ${FIREFOX_PROFILE_PATH}/permissions.sqlite "INSERT INTO moz_perms VALUES(2,'http://127.0.0.1','open-protocol-handler^anaconda-storage',1,0,0,strftime('%s','now'));

but it's a little ugly... Also, we don't ship sqlite3 on the live image.

We should maybe be pre-generating the firefox profile at build time

martinpitt · 2023-08-23T02:01:58Z

I suppose Anaconda has a lot of control over how it starts firefox. It ought to start it with a temporary $HOME anyway, so that it doesn't interfere with normal firefox usage on the live system. Then you should indeed be able to generate permissions.sqlite at build time.

However, we can assume Python in the live system, no? That can talk to sqlite3 natively.

jkonecny12 · 2023-08-23T11:13:11Z

@bcl @ondrejbudai what do you think about #5059 (comment) as future improvement?

ondrejbudai · 2023-08-24T09:55:07Z

@supakeen can you take a look?

supakeen · 2023-08-24T10:07:35Z

We don't currently do overlay mounts in osbuild, nor do we use dnf to install the packages (we use RPM directly). It'd be a fair bit of work to support such a scheme but possible and well worth it to not have anaconda on the installed system.

halfline · 2023-08-29T12:48:20Z

so I chatted with @stransky and he has a much better solution: We just need to make sure the url handler is listed in mimeapps.list and firefox won't do any warning! I tested it and it seems to work great. So I'll rebase this branch to master and drop draft status shortly.

cockpit.spawn isn't a good command to run UI tools because it doesn't know the user event that lead to it getting called. UI applications need to be run with that sort of context in their environment or compositors won't start them in the foreground. This is so if a user is typing, a slow starting program doesn't steal focus inadvertently when it finally starts. Firefox has a mechanism for launching applications with the appropriate context, however: Url Handlers. This commit registers a url handler "anaconda-storage:" and changes the Web UI to use it instead of cockpit.spawn.

halfline · 2023-09-05T20:09:08Z

Okay this is pretty much ready to go in. Some caveats:

I did end up having to add user_pref("network.protocol-handler.external.anaconda-storage", true); I'm not quite sure why. Having it in mimeapps.list is supposed to be enough. Not a big deal, but an oddity.
When firefox is run as root it gets a little confused and requires "Modify Storage" to be clicked twice the first time it's run. Again, no clue why, but the problem completely vanishes if Dont run browser as root #5058 is in. So maybe we should land Dont run browser as root #5058 first.
we'll need to do something similar for bug reporting I think (anaconda-bug-report: ?)

VladimirSlavik

LGTM, I think...

VladimirSlavik · 2023-09-06T12:16:47Z

ui/webui/src/components/storage/InstallationMethod.jsx

+                onClick={() => {
+                    const onBeforeUnload = window.onbeforeunload;
+                    window.onbeforeunload = null;
+                    window.location.href = "anaconda-storage:";


Will it have the correct address afterwards?

it's not redirecting away from anaconda if that's what you mean. It's akin to having a "mailto:" link in a web page. it just fires up the email client^W^Wblivet

KKoukiou · 2023-10-18T12:13:35Z

@halfline do you mind if I rebase you PR and get it in asap? I don't see why it was delayed merging - thanks for improving this.

KKoukiou

@halfline I just realized that this will soon become obsolete, as we are planning to replace in f40 the blivet-gui with the cockpit-storage.
The later has not need of this hack, so I advice to not include this, as we would need anyhow to revert it soon.

I will close this, please don't spend extra time on this. Thanks and sorry for the delayed action.

halfline · 2023-10-18T13:09:08Z

okay you might want to use this as the basis for bug reporting (unless that's getting done in process too)

KKoukiou · 2023-10-18T13:19:57Z

@halfline for bug reporting we open the URL with window.open(reportURL, "_blank", "noopener,noreferer")

From my understanding of this PR, we will not get any gain from switching that, since it's not a UI application spawned. Am I maybe missing something? So the blivet-gui was the only case where we would launch another UI application from the anaconda Web UI.

halfline · 2023-10-18T13:48:39Z

at some point someone (@jkonecny12 ? @M4rtinK ? not sure ) mentioned to me that the bug reporting ui was going to be turned into separate program. if thats not happening, nevermind!

AdamWill · 2023-10-18T14:12:37Z

@KKoukiou the other case I'm aware of where oldUI at least spawns another app is nm-connection-editor. is that not going to be a thing in webUI?

jkonecny12 · 2023-12-05T13:55:46Z

Right now @AdamWill it seems that we will be able to avoid that. However, networking is not yet resolved so the path is unclear there.

github-actions bot added webui f39 labels Aug 21, 2023

jkonecny12 reviewed Aug 21, 2023

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martinpitt reviewed Aug 22, 2023

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halfline commented Aug 22, 2023

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halfline mentioned this pull request Aug 29, 2023

webui: Use client side decorations for browser #5057

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halfline force-pushed the url-handlers branch from 08a344c to bea7d30 Compare September 5, 2023 20:03

halfline changed the title ~~Draft: Url handlers~~ Url handlers Sep 5, 2023

VladimirSlavik reviewed Sep 6, 2023

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KKoukiou reviewed Oct 18, 2023

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Url handlers #5059

Url handlers #5059

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jkonecny12 commented Dec 5, 2023

		@@ -130,6 +130,7 @@ const InstallationDestination = ({ deviceData, diskSelection, dispatch, idPrefix
		});

		const rescanDisksButton = (

		[Desktop Entry]
		Name=Anaconda Storage

Url handlers #5059

Url handlers #5059

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