Set hostname

[meisenzahl]

Peek.2021-08-07.21-22.mp4

@cassidyjames I hope this is what you had in mind?

[cassidyjames]

Hmmm. I know a device name is not technically the same as the user, but I wonder if we could include it on that view since it’s just a single field?

[meisenzahl]

Hmm, I don't really like it because the field doesn't fit the title of the page thematically.

[cassidyjames]

Thoughts from @elementary/ux?

My worry is adding a whole extra page and step for something that most people probably should just leave with the defaults (since the installer chooses a hardware-based name with a unique hash). It feels really heavy to say, "here's a whole step, you probably don't want or need to change it, but here you go!" whereas it feels a bit more natural to include the single field along with the first user's details.

The fact that the device name is not technically part of the account is probably fine?

[danirabbit]

Maybe we can double space between the rest of the user details and the device name? It does feel a little bit awkward since it's kinda unrelated to creating the user

[vjr]

How about not doing this in initial setup and instead making the hostname editable in the about plug and/or sharing plug? This will allow people to change the name later on as well if they feel the need.

The default can be left as elementary-os initially...

See elementary/switchboard-plug-sharing#53

[meisenzahl]

With increased spacing to hostname:

[danirabbit]

Design looks good, but I can't confirm that this is working. Is there any validation that we need to be doing here? Like symbols that aren't allowed, spaces etc?

[meisenzahl]

@danrabbit I should have read the documentation first:

SetStaticHostname sets the device name.

[danirabbit]

@meisenzahl it looks like according to https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/org.freedesktop.hostname1.html we need to use SetPrettyHostname as well and we should be transforming the value of SetStaticHostname the same way we do username. So for example:

• The user inputs "Daniel's Yoga"
• SetPrettyHostname should use the value Daniel's Yoga
• SetStaticHostname should use the value daniels-yoga

[meisenzahl]

@danrabbit thanks for reviewing so accurately despite your stress with the release.

I hope that I have now taken everything into account.

[danirabbit]

Couple of other small comments. It also looks like there's a permissions issue. Adding the hostname interface to the pkla file in data seems to fix it

[meisenzahl]

The device name is now invalid if it is prefilled with the current hostname:

[danirabbit]

Hm I'm not sure we need to force people to change the name. It's possible that they're perfectly happy with the generated name

[iancleary]

This is something I did miss during Elementary OS 6 installation today and noticed was absent (relative to the Ubuntu 21.04 installer).

Certain users or organizations prefer to have a hostname naming convention for their machines (lp-icleary-eos, framework-laptop etc.). That may be handled in their processes after the OEM installation step (I'm not that close to that world, but just brainstorming if this option is useful to those folks).

I was able to edit /etc/hostname, /etc/hosts/ as normal to change it to my preference. I'm now just realizing that method may be ignorant of the pretty hostname concept (today I learned 😄 ).

I think giving users the option during the installer flow would be a clean improvement, especially to align with the paradigm of not needing the command line (while it being available if you need it). I say this assuming the above design considerations are met within the Users screen to make it less awkward and not knowing how many people change the generated name. So not a big deal for me to do it post install, but I just wanted to share my user experience.

---

Congrats on the release! 🥳 I'm excited to test it out on my Framework laptop!
Thanks again for all you do with elementary OS.

[meisenzahl]

@danrabbit sorry, I should have worded that differently. My problem is that by default the entry for the hostname is invalid. This is not intentional on my part, but I currently can't find a solution that validates the hostname properly when programmatically setting it:

hostname_entry = new Granite.ValidatedEntry () {
    activates_default = true,
    hexpand = true,
    text = Utils.get_hostname ()
};

I would appreciate some help 😃

[meisenzahl]

@danrabbit I think I got it right.

[danirabbit]

@meisenzahl I can confirm validation is working now. We're stilling running into some permission errors it looks like. I've tried updating the pkla file here but for some reason Polkit.Permission.sync is not returning with permission

[meisenzahl]

@danrabbit is there any way to test initial-setup in lightdm without deleting my user?

[meisenzahl]

Suggested change

	Action=org.freedesktop.hostname1.set-hostname;org.freedesktop.hostname1.set-static-hostname;
	Action=org.freedesktop.hostname1.set-pretty-hostname;org.freedesktop.hostname1.set-static-hostname;

I'm not familiar with the pkla file format at all, unfortunately, but that might work.

[davidmhewitt]

The current value is fine, see here for possible values: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/org.freedesktop.hostname1.html#Security

[danirabbit]

@meisenzahl not that I'm aware of, but as far as I can tell the userdel command doesn't delete your home directory, so if you recreate the same user it shouldn't really be noticeable. YMMV etc but that's been my experience on a test machine

[cassidyjames]

I can confirm that this works, displays the default hostname, updates the hostnames, and still creates users. 😄

addressed