BOINCOS Minimal v1.1 Alpha Release
Introduction
BOINC OS Minimal spin has reached version 1.1 of its Alpha and I am pleased to present some changelogs via a Steemit post as per usual. It has been a diligent few afternoons of development and programming to produce this.
Be sure to test out BOINC OS for your ease of distributed computing and of course, enjoy the following changelog!
You can find the latest release here.
Changes
Networking:
In the previous version, networking was a bit "iffy" and I concluded that it didn't work very effectively so I made some very drastic changes. Many of these modifications come as a result of the BOINC OS Helper which was incorporated (discussed below) however many of the changes involved reconsidering controlled invocation (sudoer) rules and organising a few scripts to set things up perfectly.
As a result, we have ethernet and wireless interfaces supported in this version.
Permissions Considerations:
Work has been done in deciding on certain permissions and rules the main user has to follow in regards to the security of the OS. It has been concluded that the user must have full access to the BOINC data directory in the event that command-line-based debugging is required in addition to permissions for the networking configuration folder in the event that the helper software or manual methods of configuration fail so that the user is not left in the dark.
The Permissions for the BOINC OS Helper have been chosen carefully too. As a security measure, the folder where the program resides is write-locked so that no malicious program can modify one of the (intended to be) most used program on the system.
As stated previously, I take security very seriously in this system and make it my role to ensure that users are provided with safe and secure software.
BOINC OS Helper:
If you have been keeping up-to-date with the commit history of the repository you would've noticed that I made some progress on a python program for BOINC OS Minimal. It is a fully functional curses terminal interface that provides a user with a variety of tools to access capabilities in addition to configuring their OS.
The above is a screenshot of the current layout and appearance of the interface.
Currently it can handle:
- Opening a BOINC manager
- Allowing the user to access monitoring tools
- Configuring the firewall
- Resetting and configuring network interfaces
Conclusion
Other Developments:
Funnily enough, while I was waiting for the base system to download, I came up with the idea to produce an installation script. I hadn't before due to some limitations in my knowledge but now being more confident in my development skills, I think I can take the challenge.
As a result of this, development should be much faster and allow for much larger changes. I'm excited to get started trying this out.
Testing:
We always accept testers and any form of reporting on faulty or requested functionality is appreciated.
As we approach beta, I will be testing this OS more rigorously to ensure that it can meet stability and functionality requirements.
Thanks for reading!
After setting up a PXE server today, I ran across this. I'd like to help turn this into a PXE bootable distro if possible.
My Linux fu is not strong, but my google fu exists.