The Device Manager is a voting system component that is part of the ElectOS election technology framework. The Device Manager (DM) manages the configuration of the ElectOS components that perform functions of ballot casting and counting. There are currently three components:
- Central Ballot Counter (CBC)
- Precinct Ballot Counter (PBC)
- Tabulator (Tab).
The DeviceManager manages the configuration and creation of the 3 tools above. It requires an Election Data File during the configuration, then acquires configuration for the selected tool (e.g. CBC), tars and compresses the EDF and config file onto the pre-prepared ISO and writes the combined ISO+Data to a new bootable DVD. When the DVD boots, it boots directly into the given tool, which reclaims the configuration and EDF and performs its job.
The DeviceManager resides at /opt/OSET/bin/deviceMgr.sh. This is the entry point to the various configuration tools. Those configuration tools are not meant to be run individually.
These instructions will get a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes.
This software is based on Fedora Workstation v26. That version can be found here.
After installing Fedora 26, you'll need this project. Git clone it to your local workstation and you will have the following layout:
/opt/OSET
bin
ISO
LiveISO
rpmRepo
The bin directory contains most of the scripts and executables. The ISO directory (should - see footnote) contains prebuilt ISOs for the DM, the PBC, CBC, and Tabulator. The LiveISO directory contains scripts to build the aforementioned ISOs, as well as create the repository of required RPMs that support the creation of bootable ISOs.
Also required (install with the given dnf commands):
- Lorax
dnf install lorax
- Anaconda
dnf install anaconda
- xml lint
dnf install libxml2
- dialog
dnf install dialog
Your Fedora v26 distribution probably already has these, but just in case isosize and sha512sum don't work, install these, too:
- sha512sum
dnf install coreutils
- isosize
dnf install util-linux
These last two are only used when reclaiming the EDF and tool configuration json files as piggyback data, which is really unimplemented at this point, but just in case you're curious and want to play with it.
I think that's all... Please let me know if I missed any!
If you'd like to rebuild the ISOs, ensure you've installed the prerequisites, then go to the /opt/OSET/LiveISO directory and run makeLiveISO.sh with the tool abbreviation name as a command line input: If you need to know the abbreviation, just run the command without a command line arg and you'll get usage info: ./makeLiveISO.sh Usage: makeLiveISO.sh [dm|tab|cbc|pbc]
So, for example, running the command ./makeLiveISO.sh pbc, you'll recreate the PBC ISO using the PBC kickstart configuration, lorax, anaconda, etc. The kickstart will use the rpmRepo as the repository; you can build the ISO without being connected to a network, which is intended to create more secure, reproducible builds since the inputs are git controlled and you're not picking up stray rpms.
When the build completes, look at the end of the output and it will tell you where the final ISO was placed (it's a randomly named directory). Copy that ISO to /opt/OSET/ISO and you're done.
You can run the DM directly, without recreating the ISO by running the deviceMgr.sh script in the bin directory: cd /opt/OSET/bin ./deviceMgr.sh
The UI will require an Election Data File. There are examples of good and bad EDFs in the /opt/OSET/bin directory. Navigate there to select either one. The XML EDF is validated against the XSD (in /opt/OSET/bin) using XML Lint.
You can burn your ISO to DVD many ways. I found wodim to be useful and quick. Try this: sudo wodim -v speed=2 dev=/dev/sr0 -dao You man need to install wodim: dnf install cdrkit
To aid the development process as well as demoing the software, there are a couple environment variables to make note of: DM_DUMMY_BURN and DM_FAKE_BURN. If you set these at the shell level, as in "export DM_DUMMY_BURN=1" or "export DM_FAKE_BURN=1" they will do the following:
DM_FAKE_BURN - won't do anything close to burning a DVD, it just puts a dialog on screen to show you that that's where the burning would normally happen. This is great for demoing.
DM_DUMMY_BURN - this will run the wodim burn command with the --dummy parameter, meaning it won't actually burn, but it exercises the full burning process, thus saving DVDs in development.
When you're ready to actually burn a DVD, unset the environment variable with: unset DM_FAKE_BURN
or
unset DM_DUMMY_BURN
NOTE - if you don't set EITHER variable a DVD will get burned!
You could burn the ISO immediately to disc and boot from it, but that takes a few minutes and may waste a DVD. The majority of testing was done using Qemu as a VM. You can install qemu with this command: dnf install qemu
Create an image file (this is a one-time requirement):
dd if=/dev/zero of=image.raw bs=1M count=5000
This will create a 5GB image file you can use in the next step.
Once installed, use this command to start a VM with your ISO:
qemu-system-x86_64 -drive file=<path to your image file>,format=raw -boot d -cdrom <path to your ISO file> -m 2048
This should pop up a VM window and let you select an Image to boot - select the topmost choice and continue. Once fully booted and you arrive at the command prompt, log in with a username and password of "osetuser" (without quotes). You should immediately see the tool's UI; if you're testing the DM ISO, you'll be in the DM's UI.
- Bret Schuhmacher - initial work - https://github.com/oset-bschuhma
Please feel free to provide feedback on any items required and missing in this "how-to". I really hate a README that isn't complete or leaves questions unanswered!!
See also the list of contributors who participated in this project.
**** NOTE regarding prebuilt ISO images ** I am currently tyring to check in the prebuilt ISO images. As ISOs, they are quite large - too large for git to handle natively. They require git lfs (large file storage), which, by default requires payment to GitHub. It was decided to put the files in S3, but git lfs and S3 support is not well supported; the 2 git lfs s3 implementations I found are years old, the git lfs spec has changed, and neither app has been maintained. The authors of the apps are not responding to email requests, either. I wanted to get the basic stuff I could get into git out there and then continue work on git lfs s3 support in the background. I didn't want putting the ISOs under source code control to block other development for those working on SELinux issues or other items. You will have to build your own ISOs until I get the ISOs checked into S3. Sorry. :-(
Update, 10/29/17 - all 4 ISOs are available in S3 if you have access to the project's s3://oset-large-file-storage bucket.