Feature Request: better actions management ideas

[andrewcrook]

Hi think we chatted on another platform regarding fuse-t and anylinuxfs some time ago. I really like this project there are a couple of show stoppers for me personally which I should be able to overcome with custom actions. I think people could submit them to become apart of the project and/or may be there should be a repository and command arguments to treatment like a packages.

example commands:

• list database of packages
• list installed
• upgrade
• install
• uninstall

example custom actions

> cat /opt/homebrew/etc/anylinuxfs.toml

[custom_actions.ubuntu_zfs_unlock]
description = "Mount ZFS keystore encrypted with LUKS to unlock Ubuntu system disk"
before_mount = "cryptsetup open /dev/zd0 ks0 && mkdir -p $KS && mount /dev/mapper/ks0 $KS"
after_mount = ""
before_unmount = "umount /dev/mapper/ks0 && cryptsetup close ks0"
environment = ["KS=/run/keystore/rpool"]
capture_environment = []
override_nfs_export = ""

I think there should be a url setting added to custom actions for a source of help/tutorial/instructions/documentation regarding the action
documentation_url

I also think there is a need for install and uninstall options as well.

install = “apt add package or run setup script”
uninstall = “apt remove package or run uninstall script"

At the moment I think apt can deal with dependences, however, there is always the option to check etc via scripts.

[nohajc]

Good idea with the documentation link.

I welcome any contributions with custom actions. At the very least, there could be a separate folder with documented examples instead of just a section in the README.

Regarding install/uninstall, if I understand it correctly, you basically want to be able to declare what packages your custom action depends on?

I probably wouldn't install and uninstall a set of packages every time an action is run. Instead, there could be a check if all needed packages are already available or not. What do you think?

Then we could either auto-install as needed or ask the user if they want to proceed.

Otherwise there's already anylinuxfs apk for package management but I mostly use that when I need an ad-hoc tool for interactive shell when testing something.

[andrewcrook]

I probably wouldn't install and uninstall a set of packages every time an action is run.

No I suggest

install = “apt add package or run setup script”
uninstall = “apt remove package or run uninstall script”

these would be hooks for when the custom action is first installed or removed i.e the idea of packaging them

there could be a check if all needed packages are already available or not.

yes good to have I think before_mount could be used to include checks

Regarding install/uninstall, if I understand it correctly, you basically want to be able to declare what packages your custom action depends on?

Yes but also to run any setup scripts required to install and setup etc

I would be quite interested in adding some services that are network based

[nohajc]

Ok, so more generally, it's something like setup and teardown for whatever you want to do in your custom action?

I would be quite interested in adding some services that are network based

What do you have in mind exactly?

[andrewcrook]

@nohajc mounting a Borg backup repo from Borg server over sshfs is the main one.

[nohajc]

Ok. Fuse is already installed so this should work.

[nohajc]

@andrewcrook The idea of install/uninstall hooks is nice. There's just the question of how to implement it.

Currently, there is no explicit "install action" operation. You can simply use whatever is defined in your config files at any given time.

That means there would have to be a way of detecting changes in those configs in order to decide which hooks to run.

I only have a pretty basic setup now. I don't know if we should turn it into a whole VM provisioning solution.

In any case, I agree it should be made explicit what the dependencies are for every custom action. Installing missing packages is easy. With any sort of periodic cleanup of unused stuff, it gets more complicated.

[nohajc]

Also, if we go ahead with install hooks (could be semi-automated - let users do the cleanup if they need it), we will definitely need versioning too.

[nohajc]

@nohajc mounting a Borg backup repo from Borg server over sshfs is the main one.

Did you give this a try actually? There's already a success story with SMB/CIFS remote backup.

I'm still open to implementing improvements but I think what you need should technically be possible already.