Using Kiwi to Create Customized PoS Images

Cleber Paiva de Souza / Gabriel Cavalcante

{cleber,gabriel}@ssys.com.br

S-SYS Systems and Solutions

2

S-SYS and SUSE

• S-SYS officially born

Jan/2014

• SUSE partner since

beginning

• Formed by professionals

with experience in SUSE

products, Linux in

general, training and

software development

• Acting together with

SUSE engineers in pre-

sales and project delivery

Scenario

4

Retail customer profile

• NDA (Non-disclosure agreement) in place

• ~300 stores in Brazil

• >1.5k Kiosks

• 2Mbps connection between IT HQ and stores

• Application developed in Java + Adobe Flash

• OpenSUSE 11.2 was installed on all Kiosks

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Kiosks

Manufactures:• IBM• Toshiba• Itautec• OKI

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Brazil size

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Kiosk hardwares

• Composed of old (>5 years) and new hardware.

– VIA C7-D Processor 2000MHz, 384 MB RAM

• Wifi USB dongle diversity, many unsupported on Suse

Linux 11 by default.

• PinPads

• Barcode scanners

• Printers

• Touchscreen displays

8

Daily problems

• Infeasible to keep one IT staff at each store.

• New kiosk setup requires following a 12 pages manual by store manager with many IFs.

• Store manager should look at the hardware and detect the device combination available.

• A USB keyboard is required to perform installation.

• More steps to configure the kiosk and deploy application.

• Kiosk passwords are written on manual.

• Constant file system corruption. There is only a power on/off switch key.

Plan

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Improvement plan

• Migrate from OpenSUSE 10.2 to SLES 11 SP4 as the

operating system base.

• Reduce image size (JeOS concept).

• Reduce distribution complexity (number of services,

lighter window manager etc).

• Support legacy hardware.

• Detect and apply changes in the set of supported

hardwares.

• Develop a configuration utility to help non-IT staff in

the deployment process at the store.

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Desired Process

Solution

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Kiwi

• Version 7.

• Image build tool

– Command line tool.

– Multiple formats generation (iso, img, oem etc).

– Use configuration files to guide the generation.

– Very flexible workflow.

– Possible to use standard and custom packages.

– Enables the use of a root directory template.

14

Kiwi usage

config.xml

*.rpm

/ template

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Kiwi – 2-step Image Creation Process

• Create target root directory.

• Install packages.

• Apply the overlay tree.

• Apply archives.

• Execute user defined config.sh script.

• Manage the new root tree.

• Extra:

– Execute user defined images.sh script.

– Create requested image type (Live, CD, DVD, USB stick, Xen,

KVM, Amazon etc).

16

Migration process

• On kiwi migrate from OpenSUSE to SLES 11 required

only setting:

– boot="oemboot/suse-SLES11"

• Required SLES 11 SP4 32 bits image due to legacy

applications.

• Cleanup image:

– Remove unused packages

– Disable unnecessary services

– Remove documentation files

– Remove info and man page files

– Activate and configure essential services (NTP, SSH etc)

17

Migration process

• Select a lightweight window manager (sorry GNOME).

• Opted for Xfce, simple, lightweight and attends

customer needs.

– Problem 1: No official packages for Xfce on SLES 11.

– Problem 2: No community Xfce package on Open Build

Service (OBS).

– Problem 3: Xfce latest version requires Gtk+ 2.20 and Glib

2.24, but SLES 11 SP4 provides Gtk+ 2.18 and Glib 2.11.

• Xfce 4.8 was the latest version compatible with SLES

11 SP4.

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XFCE

• After 3 days working on OpenSUSE RPMs:

– Compiling

– Minor changes on code

– Solving libraries conflicts

• Xfce4 RPMs for Suse 11 SP4 (32 bits only):

– http://www.ssys.com.br/susecon/cas20057

• Warning: Packages deployed with OpenSUSE

trademarks and logomarks.

• Apply customizations for Xfce in /etc/xdg/xfce4

(window manager, session, panel, desktop,

background etc).

19

Wireless

• Suse Kernel support a wide range of wifi devices

– USB and PCI

• However the devices variety keeps increasing. Probably hard to test all models for official releases.

– Usually kiosk assemblers ship cheap wifi devices.

– In our case, 3 out of 4 kiosk wifi devices were not supported by default SuSE kernel driver modules.

– We compiled drivers from manufacturers and from backports.

– To achieve this, we installed a preliminary image version into each kiosk to have a complete compilation environment.

– We shipped all compiled drivers and firmwares in the final image.

20

Touchscreen display

• Each kiosk have a different touchscreen display, each one

with different ways for calibration.

• On EloGraphics touchscreen serial devices, touchcal

calibration utility was able to configure the device correctly.

New to SLES 11 SP4.

• On touchscreen USB devices, it was necessary to load

”usbhid” module to emulate touchscreen as a input device.

• On another touchscreen USB, it was necessary to install

and run a service to control the device.

21

Rules to create /dev shortcuts

• The kiosk application uses devices directly from /dev

for:

– Barcode scanner

– Printer

– Pinpad

• Kiosks had many variations of this set.

• Devices were mapped in udev to provide meaningful

devices:

– /dev/BScanner

– /dev/Printer

– /dev/Ppad

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Rules to create /dev shortcuts

• For USB devices we could create udev rules:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb",SUBSYSTEMS=="usb",

ATTR{idVendor}=="0dd4", ATTR{idProduct}=="015d",

SYMLINK+="Printer” ,GROUP="users", MODE="0660”

• Serial devices are a little bit harder, but the kiosk manufacturer ships, for example, serial printers always in the same port (/dev/ttyS0, /dev/ttyS1 etc)

• Sometimes manufacters provide tools for testing communication with serial devices.

• Sometimes no, so we try on our own (pyserial).

• Our setup detect the hardware model and hardcode serial device path on application configuration file.

23

Using configuration file templates

• Preparing application

• Devices configuration

• Networking configuration (wireless)

• Display configuration

• Templates for store application

– Store number

– Kiosk number

– Kiosk device configuration to application

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Using configuration Templates

• atm.printerPortType=usb

atm.printerModel=VKP80II

atm.printerFont=Courier 12 Pitch

atm.printerFontSize=19

scope.modo=2

scope.empresa={{{COMPANY_NAME}}

# four digit stored id

scope.filial={{{STORE_ID}}}

# three digit kiosk id

scope.pdv={{{KIOSK_ID}}}

• scope.dummyMode=false

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Auto Install Image

<type image="iso" bootloader="grub" bootpartition="true" bootpartsize="206" boottimeout="5"

bootfilesystem="ext3" filesystem="ext3" checkprebuilt="false" boot="oemboot/suse-SLES11"

bootkernel="std" installiso="true" devicepersistency="by-label" installboot="install"

installprovidefailsafe="false" volid=“Installation" kernelcmdline="quiet rootflags=data=journal

splash=silent">

<oemconfig>

<oem-boot-title>SUSE 11.4 KIOSK</oem-boot-title>

<oem-reboot>true</oem-reboot>

<oem-bootwait>false</oem-bootwait>

<oem-swap>true</oem-swap>

<oem-swapsize>1024</oem-swapsize>

<oem-unattended>true</oem-unattended>

<oem-skip-verify>true</oem-skip-verify>

<oem-kiwi-initrd>true</oem-kiwi-initrd>

<oem-inplace-recovery>false</oem-inplace-recovery>

</oemconfig>

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Creating first boot configuration

• The image is decompressed to the system, with all the templates.

• Template files are filled with store and kiosk information.

• Solution:

– Build a configuration utility that ask some questions to the store manager.

– Minimal information required:

– store and kiosk id.

– kiosk model and it devices (if we are not able to detect it automatically).

– WIFI information.

– *We could do better if network infrastructure helped.

27

Configuration Utility

• Python using pydialog

PROBLEMKIOSK DOESN’T HAVE KBD!!!

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Add a Virtual KBD and lock windows

• Create a autologin setup user in /etc/inittab.

• Remove all startup code of Xfce.

• Add lines to Xfce xinitrc setup startup:

– /usr/bin/xterm -geometry 142x30+0+0 -uc +l -title "Setup Kiosk"

/usr/bin/setup &

– /usr/bin/xvkbd -compact -geometry 800x150+0-25 -secure -no-repeat

-no-functionkey -window "Setup Company" &

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Configuring kiosk

• Simple but useful configuration screen:

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Final reboot

• After the configuration process, the system is ready to

a final reboot.

• Setup switches default user to application user.

• On application user login some remediation are still

necessary:

– echo "079b 0028" > /sys/bus/usb-

serial/drivers/cp210x/new_id

• Start Xfce:

– nohup startxfce4 >/dev/null 2>&1

• Run kiosk application using Xfce autostart.

31

Grub

• By default kiwi add entry to boot from local hard disk:

– Set: bootkernel="std”

• By default kiwi sets --disk-start-sector to 2048.

Does not work on some old hardware:

– Set: --disk-start-sector 32

• Alternatively use syslinux:

– Set: bootloader="grub”

– /boot must be in FAT32.

– No GFX boot menu.

• rootflags=data=journal

32

Consideration

• Read full documentation before starting.

• Try an example from

/usr/share/doc/packages/kiwi/examples.

• Check Kiwi schema documentation for options and

special parameters (some kiwi options and

parameters are documented only on the schema

documentation).

• Be careful, some errors will raise only 20-30 minutes

after Kiwi build process.

Can we do more?

34

Possibilities

• Centralize frequent builds and dispatch new images

with PXE in each store (for non-wireless computers)

• Self deploy environments

• Images for store server

• Insert pre-configured services in the image:

– Monitoring

– Configuration Management

– Authentication

– Auditing

– etc

Drawing the process in

Suse Studio Online

36

Select Default Software

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Upload a zip with custom RPMs

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Add a tar.bz2 file with custom /

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Add custom RPMs

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Adjust startup parameters (post scripts)

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Limitations

• EULA Accept process (free version).

• Accept installation process.

• 15 GB limit for storage.

• Lack enterprise features.

Suse Studio Onsite

43

Working with Suse Studio Onsite

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Suse Studio Onsite

• Same options as Suse Studio Online.

• Setup internal servers infrastructure for schedulers,

queues, repositories etc.

• Without restrictions imposed by Suse Studio Online.

45

Suse Studio Onsite Advantages

• More build format available.

• Import of kiwi template file available (experimental

feature on Suse Studio Online).

• Update appliance using SUSE Lifecycle Management

Server (SLMS).

• Build images for System Z (additional license

required).

• Suse Manager integration.

• Suse Cloud integration.

46

References

• http://docs.xfce.org/xfce/building

• https://doc.opensuse.org/projects/kiwi/doc/

• https://doc.opensuse.org/projects/kiwi/schema-doc/

47

Thank you.

Going further by breaking things

www.ssys.com.br

49

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