21 ms·

> There's going to be a lot of resistance to distros shipping a binary they didn't build from source. Tow-Boot appears to be MIT Licensed. There appears to be

> There's going to be a lot of resistance to distros shipping a binary they didn't build from source. Tow-Boot appears to be MIT Licensed. There appears to be nothing stopping them from building Tow-Boot from source.

MartijnBraam 5y ago
But distros's don't have to. On most hardware it should be possible to flash Tow-Boot to some form of on-board boot storage and after that the board Just Works(tm)
- edgyquant 5y ago
  After doing the thing that most people won’t know how to or want to do, it just works.
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
Sure, there's no technical blocker, but the article seems to be implying that they shouldn't: > One of the nice things about Tow-Boot is that it leverages the Nix build system to generate a nice reproducable build of the platform firmware. This should take away some of the doubts of having a prebuild platform firmware instead of every distribution figuring out how to do this from source. Also distributions not doing this from source would mean there's less chance of inconsistencies slipping in.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  What’s the difference between a reproducible binary and one they’ve built themselves? Can’t they just build it from source and check that the digests match?
  - LanternLight83 5y ago
    I mean heck, since it's a Nix Package, couldn't they just build it with Nix as the build system? And if for any reason that is the issue (installing Nix on a foreign distros can be pretty invasive, containerized?), the recipe for how to build it is right there.
    - octoberfranklin 5y ago
      > installing Nix on a foreign distros can be pretty invasive Is this some kind of joke? Installing nix on a non-nixOS computer doesn't even require root. You can even bootstrap the entirety of nixpkgs that way. That's one of the most awesome things about nix and nixpkgs.
      - edgyquant 5y ago
        It most certainly does require root to install nix, as it needs the /nix directory on Linux to work
        octoberfranklin 5y ago
        That's like saying that logging in as an ordinary user "requires root" because otherwise /home/ordinary_user wouldn't exist. This is silly. In any event, the nix store doesn't need to be in "/nix/store" anymore: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nix_Installation_Guide#nix_2.0.27s_native_method https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nix_Installation_Guide#nix_2.0.27s_n... If you're willing to recompile the nix interpreter and sacrifice cached binaries you don't even need namespaces or ptrace. Just ./configure --with-store-dir=xyz when you build the nix interpreter.

MartijnBraam 5y ago

But distros's don't have to. On most hardware it should be possible to flash Tow-Boot to some form of on-board boot storage and after that the board Just Works(tm)

edgyquant 5y ago
After doing the thing that most people won’t know how to or want to do, it just works.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago

Sure, there's no technical blocker, but the article seems to be implying that they shouldn't: > One of the nice things about Tow-Boot is that it leverages the Nix build system to generate a nice reproducable build of the platform firmware. This should take away some of the doubts of having a prebuild platform firmware instead of every distribution figuring out how to do this from source. Also distributions not doing this from source would mean there's less chance of inconsistencies slipping in.

edgyquant 5y ago
What’s the difference between a reproducible binary and one they’ve built themselves? Can’t they just build it from source and check that the digests match?
- LanternLight83 5y ago
  I mean heck, since it's a Nix Package, couldn't they just build it with Nix as the build system? And if for any reason that is the issue (installing Nix on a foreign distros can be pretty invasive, containerized?), the recipe for how to build it is right there.
  - octoberfranklin 5y ago
    > installing Nix on a foreign distros can be pretty invasive Is this some kind of joke? Installing nix on a non-nixOS computer doesn't even require root. You can even bootstrap the entirety of nixpkgs that way. That's one of the most awesome things about nix and nixpkgs.
    - edgyquant 5y ago
      It most certainly does require root to install nix, as it needs the /nix directory on Linux to work
      - octoberfranklin 5y ago
        That's like saying that logging in as an ordinary user "requires root" because otherwise /home/ordinary_user wouldn't exist. This is silly. In any event, the nix store doesn't need to be in "/nix/store" anymore: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nix_Installation_Guide#nix_2.0.27s_native_method https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nix_Installation_Guide#nix_2.0.27s_n... If you're willing to recompile the nix interpreter and sacrifice cached binaries you don't even need namespaces or ptrace. Just ./configure --with-store-dir=xyz when you build the nix interpreter.