bsdinstall and current (possible stable) snapshots

[Nathan Whitehorn]

On 03/23/15 09:47, Sergey V. Dyatko wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Mar 2015 09:15:57 -0700
> Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn at freebsd.org> wrote:
>
>> On 03/23/15 09:06, Devin Teske wrote:
>>>> On Mar 22, 2015, at 10:47 PM, Sergey V. Dyatko <sergey.dyatko at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Devin,
>>>>
>>>> Recently I'm trying to install FreeBSD CURRENT from bootonly image
>>>> ( FreeBSD-11.0-CURRENT-amd64-20150302-r279514-bootonly.iso)
>>>> on IBM HS22 blade via bladecenter's kvm but I faced with problem on
>>>> checksum stage, bootonly doesn't contain base, kernel,etc distributions
>>>> but it contain manifest file.
>>>> On mirrors we have  pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/${ARCH}/11.0-CURRENT/*txz and
>>>> MANIFEST, sha256 sums from _local_ manifest doesn't match sha256 sums for
>>>> fetched files. I suppose it will be fine with RELEASE bootonly iso but not
>>>> with stable/current.
>>>> there is 2 ways how we can handle it:
>>>> 1) download remote MANIFEST if spotted checksum mismatch and trying to use
>>>> it 2) allow user to continue installation with 'broken' distributions
>>>>
>>>> I had to first put 10.1 then update it to HEAD :(
>>>>
>>>> What do you think ?
>>> When I get some time I’ll have a look and see what I can do.
>>> —
>>> Cheers,
>>> Devin
>>>
>>>
>> Using the local manifest is a security feature -- there is otherwise
>> zero protection against a man-in-the-middle attack. Ideally, you'd use
>> the ISO that matches the posted files. There are three options here:
>> 1. Add a dialog that lets you move ahead in the event of checksum
>> failure, which makes me very nervous.
>> 2. Use the boot1 disk.
>> 2a. For release engineering: if the posted tarballs change too fast, the
>> bootonly disk isn't actually useful for -CURRENT and should probably be
>> removed from the FTP server.
> I don't think so. I use only bootonly ISOs when I (rare) setup new
> fbsd instances, disk1 contain to much useless (for me) things.  I
> haven't fast internet (in 2015, yes) so download data1 image is a pain.

What useless things, out of curiousity? If you want source (which you 
probably do if you are running -CURRENT), boot1 + downloading kernel, 
base, and source code is 80% the size of disc1 for amd64. It's just not 
a huge difference.

> What about STABLE images/tarballs  ? If I understand correctly it is also
> uploaded too fast...

The same issue applies there, yes.

>> 3. You could reroll the ISO (just untar and run makefs again),
>> commenting out line 180 of /usr/libexec/bsdinstall/scripts/auto.
>> -Nathan
> sure I can.
> Idea with a dialog is  a good idea, IMO :)
>

That's so@'s lookout. I'd prefer actual signatures to checksum 
verification + an option to skip.
-Nathan