Eleventh status update about reproducible live-build ISO images

[Roland Clobus]

Hello lists,

here is the eleventh update of the status for reproducible live-build 
ISO images [1].

Reproducible status:
* All major desktops build reproducibly with bullseye, bookworm and sid
* Number of patches performed by the live-build script that are not yet 
in sid:
** non-Cinnamon: 0 Cinnamon: 1 [7]

Functionality tests with openQA:
* Last month I focussed on getting openQA tests for the live images [8][9]
* The GNOME image is currently visible [10]
* Current functionality tests are:
** Try every single item from the boot menu (both for BIOS and UEFI 
non-secure boot)
** Run the Debian-installer and boot the resulting hard-disk image and 
start Firefox
** Start Firefox from the live image
** Install the CUPS PDF printer in the live image and verify its output
** Start all major GNOME applications and verify that they start 
properly (which already finds a bug [11])
* In my local instance, these tests are running for XFCE as well (and 
passing)
* Current work in progress:
** Testing the Calamares installer
** Booting with UEFI secure boot
** Automatic starting of the openQA tests, e.g. by an image from Jenkins 
or the image builder script
** Simulating diverse hardware (e.g. laptop, low-memory, no network, ...)
** Boot the ISO image as a USB-stick instead of a CDROM

Work to be done:
* Jenkins does currently not create ISO files that are tested by openQA
** Soon the snapshot server will be running again (h01ger will be 
working on that during bornhack.dk)
** This will be my primary target during the next month
* Functionality testing with openQA could be extended
** Both in supporting more desktops (which is an ideal task for someone 
new to openQA)
** Or by adding completely new tests (which requires some more Perl and 
openQA knowledge)
** Please write to the debian-qa mailing list if you are interested on 
working on this
* Live images are not generated officially by Debian yet
** I'm entered some notes during the DebConf22 Debian Installer BoF [12]
** Needs some changes in 'live-setup'
** After openQA has verified the images, the official images can be 
generated
** This will be my second target during the next month
* Adjusting the content of the live-build image
** Make the boot menu more similar to the live-wrapper menu
** Add a 'persistent' option (as seen in Kali)
** Keep the accessibility improvements made in the live-wrapper boot menu
** Verify the package lists
*** e.g. the Debian Reference is installed for es and it, but not en
* Figure out the actual timestamp of the snapshot
** At this moment 
https://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20220727T154516Z/ is the 
latest snapshot at snapshot.d.o
** But 
https://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20220727T154516Z/dists/sid/InRelease 
says 'Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2022 14:20:47 UTC', which is not exactly the 
same timestamp

Unchanged, but low priority due to [7], patch available but not released 
yet:
* texlive-base: Reported differences in the generated ls-R [2]
* texlive-binaries: Randomness in .fmt files due to Lua hash seeds [3]
* texlive-binaries: updmap creates a logfile with the timestamps of 
files that it just has generated [4]

Future plans/ideas:
* Reprotest might be used instead of just 2 builds without a short time 
frame, to capture more variations
* Use disorderfs
* Long term: When live-build images are working fine, the work could be 
extended to other images, e.g. the netinst images or perhaps even Docker 
images
* Transfer the special features of the (now disabled) live-wrapper live 
images to live-build
* Start building official live-images again [6][12]

With kind regards,
Roland Clobus

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleInstalls/LiveImages
[2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1003449
[3] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1009196
[4] 
https://salsa.debian.org/live-team/live-build/-/commit/f1a98e4da62c3551f523553c6e23774aaf5e41b4
[5] Unreported, patch is in [4]
[6] https://lists.debian.org/debian-live/2022/03/msg00012.html
[7] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1006472
[8] 
https://salsa.debian.org/qa/openqa/openqa-tests-debian/-/merge_requests/9
[9] 
https://salsa.debian.org/qa/openqa/openqa-tests-debian/-/merge_requests/10
[10] https://openqa.debian.net/group_overview/14
[11] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/5180
[12] infinote://gobby.debian.org/debconf22/bof/debian-installer
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