website/content/_index.md

+++ title = "Baguette - OS, tools and stuff" +++

Baguette OS - concise overview

Baguette OS status: Work In Progress. A beta will be available circa mid-2020.

Objectives, for simple users

BaguetteOS aims at provide a simple unix-like system, with an unified web interface.

No command-line required for simple users. let users be just users
Simplicity should not only comes from an interface, but be inherent to the whole system. If the OS is simple, there is no need to hack it.

Unified interface is better than features.
We will provide the basic features then build up. We do not want a patchwork of very different software, each of them having their own particularities.

Online services. day-to-day use
The web interface should cover online services, providing an unified experience for main usages: mails, calendar, instant messaging, personal website, file sharing, etc.

One-click management. service installs, updates, etc.
The web interface should handle basic system and network configurations, such as adding users, dhcp, DNS, backups, etc.

Well-known, reliable software.
BaguetteOS relies on robust and independant software. At no point the user should be forced to reinstall, a borked configuration has to be easily fixed.

Hardware support. new or old, fast or slow, it doesn't matter
We provide support for RPi and other small cards: if our kernel runs on it, it has to work. Minimal hardware requirement should be around 100 MB RAM, 50 MB disk.

Documentation. simple, reliable, useful, all-in-one-place
Similar to the OpenBSD FAQ: updated, complete, concise and well-written.

Objectives, for advanced users and contributors

A knowable OS. simplicity at (almost) all cost
Any interested user should be able understand the role of every part of the base system: no compromise. This means having a very small and consistent set of tools, easy to learn, easy to remember.

Basic system and network management. with the simpliest tools ever
We provide a web interface that should handle basic system and network configurations, such as adding users, firewall management, dhcp, DNS, backups, etc. CLI tools are available to manage your services, they are design to be simple, consistent and reliable.

Robust system. for real
Static compilation for system tools (at least): there is almost no way to get a borked system with an update (yes, almost, people are creative these days).

Officially supported and documented services. so you are sure to get them working
We use some services for our own personal usage, so we will provide support for them. For instance: gitea, postgresql, a building plateform and a continuous integration tool, etc.

Simple to contribute to. We want fewer and simpler tools as possible: Baguette OS has very few requirements, and automatic verifications. Baguette OS do not suffer from any cumbersome historical decisions: no overly engineered package format, no stupidly complex tooling, etc.

One need, one tool. this time for real
Installing an application or a library is done by package. Other methods are not supported and the base system will never require them. We avoid to rely on pip, cpanm, or other third party package manager and dependency tree. More on that in the technical section.

Starting, stopping, or configuring a service is done by service. This program alone is used to manage services on the OS. Users should not be required to manually configure each software; instead, most of the configuration should be done upstream using templates. Users should be able to change the default configuration through command-line options. Manual configuration is the last option.

Slotting. Slotting by default helps to install many programs with peculiar library version requirements. No difference between stable and development versions.

Easy to write documentation. Online documentation is written in Markdown (thanks Zola), and man pages too thanks to scdoc. Every tool is shipped with a man page: no man page, no integration in base.

OS content

• kernel: linux + headers (but most of the system should be kernel-agnostic)
• libc: musl, but any other libc can be easily added
• init: sysv init
• /etc/rc: CRUX-like
• coreutils: toybox (or busybox)
• shadow (todo: check if not already included in busybox)
• building tools:
  • LLVM + Clang
  • autotools (for sysv init and libarchive)
  • libarchive
  • m4 (required at least for bootstrapping)
  • make: gnu-make for compatibility reasons
• shells:
  • zsh for users (not root by default)
  • ash (because of busybox) or ksh
• documentation:
  • a full hand-book like the OpenBSD FAQ
  • manpages, written mostly with scdoc so anyone can contribute
• our tools
  • services: service
  • package management: package
  • packaging: packaging

Inspiration

• OpenBSD: security, therefore simplicity, no compromise
• PFSense: system and (even advanced) networking administration, yet through a simple website
• Plan9: everything is a file no seriously guys
• suckless and cat-v: simplicity, code readability and reusability
• morpheus: static compilation for the OS, demystified

Baguette OS - detailed explanation

Features and objectives

custom tools

• package: package manager
  • basics: install, remove, search and provide informations about a package
  • rootfs creation
  • used by packaging to create low-cost build environments
    package knows the minimal set of binaries and configuration required to build the target, so it only installs the minimal environment to perform compilation.
    This environment is low-cost since we hardlink binaries into the building rootfs.
    Inspired by the proot tool on OpenBSD.
  • slotting by default: no need for custom environments for each software
  • packages format:
    • .tar
      • meta.spec
      • files.tar.xz
  • db format:
    • world
    • installed
    • [package-name]/[slot]/manifest
    • [package-name]/[slot]/meta.spec
  • configuration:
    • list of repositories
    • authorized package signing keys
    • packaging variables (cflags, makeflags, and so on)
• packaging: create packages
  • uses simple, declarative recipe files
  • create build environments to test packages before validation
• service: service management
  • add an init script for a service, for a specified domain
    • example: service add wordpress example.com
  • the init script verifies if a configuration file is installed
    The configuration file is created if not present.
    Configuration templates are provided for all services.
  • the service can be installed in a specific environment (read: a custom rootfs) ← NOT IMPLEMENTED (also, environments == domains atm)
    • example: service add wordpress example.com testingenv
  • service provides an unified way to configure the system
    It alleviates the need for manual configuration. For example, adding a wordpress service will automatically change the nginx configuration, create a new database and a new user in mariadb for this specific service.
    If several nginx are required, ports will be registered and automatically managed for each instance, no need for user input.
    Behind the scene, it's a simple token system with configuration templating!
    No heavy machinery here, and we'll keep it that way.
• build.cr (temporary name): Makefile creation
  • create makefiles from simple declarative configuration file
  • can replace most build systems
  • FIXME: design something using .spec format
• tap-aggregator: quality assurance & test results aggregation
• webhooksd
  • automatic verification of the recipes on new application or library version
  • automatic cross-compilation (x86_64, ARM, others will follow)
• libipc: an IPC communication library
  • currently used for
    1. the administration dashboard
    2. the web interface for the services
    3. todod (a kanban) 4. several other tools we use for collaboration
  • provides a way to communicate between clients and services
  • uses simple unix sockets behind the scene
  • transparent remote communications
    • clients and services do not need remote communication
    • any client can join remote services via any communication protocol
    • any service is implicitly accessible from anywhere, anyhow
  • C library with Crystal bindings (other languages coming soon)
  • we create services, not libraries
    Therefore, languages are irrelevant: you can use any library in any language.

Technical choices

Linux kernel, but we are lurking on the OpenBSD one.
Linux is compatible with most hardware and software, it is fast and we can easily compile a custom version to remove most of the bloat for server usage. Still, we don't want to rely on Linux-specific components. At some point, our system will be kernel-agnostic and will be able to run on any BSD as well.

Musl libc.
It has a reasonable amount of features, it is efficient, provides reasonable binary sizes and static compilation. Musl is simple, reliable and remove all glibc-specific functions. Others can be added easily, which is useful for compatibility and comparisons, through slotting.

Bootable system and rootfs available.
A bootable system to install in virtual machines or bare metal, a rootFS to use BaguetteOS from any other OS, including non-Linux ones.

SysV-style init + CRUX rc.
The init could come from toybox or another minimalist project. No systemd BS.

Slotting.

Custom file system hierarchy.
Our FS is not FHS-compliant, partially because of the origin-based slotting. There is a strict separation between core system and third party software.

• /usr/baguette for core system programs
• /usr/bad for unslottable software
• /usr/third-party for other software

Crystal language for system tools. Syntax and productivity of Ruby, the speed of C
It is as simple to learn as a dynamic language, while at the same time being almost as fast as C. Technically, Crystal is strongly typed which catches errors at compile-time, but with type inference so it is not cumbersome to use. Applications are compiled in a simple (static) binary, easy to deploy. There is a good documentation, we used it for long enough to tell. Technical choices are reasonable and documented. Finally, Crystal has a large library with all we need for our system components.

• coreutils: busybox
  
• /etc/rc/: forked from CRUX
  
• Building tools
  
  • LLVM + Clang
  • tar -> bsdtar
  • webhooks (libarchive), cpio -> bsdcpio (libarchive)
  • autotools (for SySV init and libarchive)
  • m4
  • make: gnu-make (since it is required for many projects)
  • crystal since we use this language for our tools in the base system
• shells
  
  • sh -> zsh

Still in discussion

For the simple users, we want to provide an unified web interface to manage the system and online services. We currently use Crystal to work on service back-ends for a variety of projects, we are satisfied on a technical level and we are productive, it is highly probable we continue using it. The front-end is still in discussion: we currently use livescript and it is way more usable than plain JS, but it is painful to debug.

So, we need a language for both administration dashboard and online services, here some examples we find interesting for the job:

• Purescript
  • haskell-like syntax, with a smaller set of notions
  • strongly typed, with type inference
  • good documentation
  • useful compilation errors
  • no runtime error
• Elm
  • as Purescript but with way fewer documentation
  • less generic code
  • still very young
• WASM
  • seems to be a very young tech, with no real good language or documentation
  • Zig has wasm as a Tier 1 support, we should investigate

Providing software: the right way

The usual way to provide software is to maintain a version of a software or a library, package it into a distribution, then provide it as the OS version of the software. In the long run, software and libraries change, which is no big deal since maintainers verify the consistency of the different versions provided by the OS. TODO

Problem: what happens when two programs need a different version of a library?

Problem: what happens when two libraries are compatible but you want both on your system (see libressl and openssl)?

Problem: what happens when you want to provide a very long term support for your users (see companies running decade-old databases)?

Baguette OS has a simple and safe way to let users and maintainers provide packages: slotting. Official OS packages are installed under /usr/baguette/, for non-essential programs. Here, the slot is baguette. Any package outside the official ones are in another named slot.

TODO

This in nothing new, however not often used, and still maybe the best way to handle the problem.

• usual directories under root: bin, sbin, lib, boot, dev, proc, sys, home, mnt, root, run, tmp
• etc
  • rc
    • services
    • environments
  • templates
• var
  • cache
• srv
  • "env-name" (see service)
    • etc
    • data
    • cache
    • run
• usr
  • local: things that are installed by the local system administrator without using packages
  • baguette: things provided by the system that are not necessary for it to run (and boot, and restart, and do system things)
  • "repo"
    • lib
    • libexec: try to avoid using it whenever possible. May or may not stay.
    • bin
    • share
    • man
    • include
  • bad: things that cannot be properly installed or slotted somewhere else

Roadmap

We currently aim at providing a rootfs with our tools, when we will have enough spare time to contribute.