Ubuntu Server Is Making It Easier To Deploy Let's Encrypt SSL Certificates

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu Server Is Making It Easier To Deploy Let's Encrypt SSL Certificates

The Ubuntu Server developers are looking to make it easier to deploy free SSL/TLS certificates from Let's Encrypt...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-Server-Snap-Certbot

[BillBroadley]

Snaps seem like a pretty poorly thought out idea. So now my df is polluted with a bunch of random loop mounts. My boot times are often crazy slower because of some stupid snap package I didn't even ask for. NFS had the same problems, but then there was an automounted to ensure you could boot cleanly, even if some stupid NFS server is down, as a benefit the mounts you don't need consume no resources.

Does gnome-calculator really justify a snap mount? It was too hard to build with the rest of the gnome tree? Maybe I want to install multiple versions of the gnome calculator? Oh wait, I already have two, er, 3:
$ df | grep calculator
/dev/loop5 2304 2304 0 100% /snap/gnome-calculator/222
/dev/loop7 2432 2432 0 100% /snap/gnome-calculator/199
/dev/loop18 2304 2304 0 100% /snap/gnome-calculator/238

The above is with no gnome-calculator running.

Regardless of what's in a snap, it shouldn't be able to slow down boot. If you can't cleanly boot without depending on weird things like a snap install you are doing it wrong.... sure maybe in a tech preview, but not in a LTS.

So now I have to garbage collect my snap installs? They seem like PARTICULARLY bad builds. Do I really need 100 lines of errors about Trinidadian dollar, Tunisian dinar, and the Sri Lankan rupee? Frankly I find it pretty disappointing in a LTS release (I'm using 18.04).

Almost as bad as netplan.

[lucrus]

BillBroadley It's your fault, 'cause you should not install gnome calculator on a server. I'm just trolling.

Actually, I wonder what's the added value of a certbot snap like this. Certbot already obtains LE certificates and already adjusts Apache configuration accordingly on my DEBIAN server, no snaps involved there. And I hadn't to do anything special: just installed it and used it, from the plain old DEB package.

Seems to me this is just a repackaged certbot with the "snap" buzzword added. Well done Canonical, I look forward to the day snaps will end up like Unity.

[BillBroadley]

BillBroadley It's your fault, 'cause you should not install gnome calculator on a server. I'm just trolling.

Heh, I prefer bc personally. I think it's just part of the default desktop environment.

Actually, I wonder what's the added value of a certbot snap like this. Certbot already obtains LE certificates and already adjusts Apache configuration accordingly on my DEBIAN server, no snaps involved there. And I hadn't to do anything special: just installed it and used it, from the plain old DEB package.

Seems to me this is just a repackaged certbot with the "snap" buzzword added. Well done Canonical, I look forward to the day snaps will end up like Unity.

Indeed, pretty weird. Sure I can see it with something large and complex. Like maybe google chrome, Libre office, gimp, or similar that has tons of code, tons of dependencies, and would ideally work on every linux distribution without any extra work.

But gnome calc or certbot generally should "just work". Additionally certbot should get patches/updates as quickly as possible, not sure what's broken about the default ubuntu setup. I do wonder if I have 3 identical copies of gnome calc, or if I have 3 versions. This is a common problem with containers and you typically need a container orchestration system... which seems to be lacking for snaps.

[F.Ultra]

Heh, I prefer bc personally. I think it's just part of the default desktop environment.



Indeed, pretty weird. Sure I can see it with something large and complex. Like maybe google chrome, Libre office, gimp, or similar that has tons of code, tons of dependencies, and would ideally work on every linux distribution without any extra work.

But gnome calc or certbot generally should "just work". Additionally certbot should get patches/updates as quickly as possible, not sure what's broken about the default ubuntu setup. I do wonder if I have 3 identical copies of gnome calc, or if I have 3 versions. This is a common problem with containers and you typically need a container orchestration system... which seems to be lacking for snaps.

I think lucrus simply meant that even a Desktop does not belong on a server

Regarding gnome-calc I would say that you have 3 different versions or should we say snaps, installed, where only one is in use. The very same happens on my desktop so I think that this is just normal on 18.04:

f.ultra@ubuntu:~$ df | grep calc
/dev/loop7           2304       2304            0 100% /snap/gnome-calculator/222
/dev/loop3           2432       2432            0 100% /snap/gnome-calculator/199
/dev/loop14          2304       2304            0 100% /snap/gnome-calculator/238
f.ultra@ubuntu:~$ ls -hl /snap/gnome-calculator/
totalt 0
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 167 aug 21 16:56 199
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 167 sep  4 16:48 222
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 167 sep 10 20:50 238
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   3 sep 14 18:16 current -> 238

f.ultra@ubuntu:~$ snap list
Name                  Version    Rev   Tracking  Publisher   Notes
core                  16-2.35.2  5548  stable    canonical✓  core
gnome-3-26-1604       3.26.0     70    stable/…  canonical✓  -
gnome-calculator      3.30.0     238   stable/…  canonical✓  -
gnome-characters      3.29.91    124   stable/…  canonical✓  -
gnome-logs            3.30.0     45    stable/…  canonical✓  -
gnome-system-monitor  3.30.0     57    stable/…  canonical✓  -
gtk-common-themes     0.1        701   stable/…  canonical✓  -
f.ultra@ubuntu:~$

So as you can see we have three whole directories with gnome-calculator where v238 is "current" and presumebly the one that is called when we execute gnome-calc. Wonderful times indeed...

[brrrrttttt]

Um, last I checked distro packages, and pip, already do this... is there anything this achieves other than the additional complexity of snaps?