Hi, for the past few months I have been working on my website Installies. It is a site for managing, organizing, and retrieving shell scripts for use to install, remove, update or compile apps on Linux and Unix-based systems.
You might be asking why can’t you just use your system’s built-in package manager. While that will work for most apps there might be some problems with others:
- Some apps might not be on your system’s package manager. This would make it so you might have to compile the app, which might be difficult for newer Linux users.
- Apps you have to run through wine generally are not in package manager’s repositories. They also might need extra libraries that might be complicated to install.
- There might be some weirder software that isn’t really an app, or is not traditionally installed on your computer e.g. TempleOS in a VM.
- Some apps have different packages for similar versions of the app, so a script that lets you choose between all the options would make it easier to decide which one to install, such as QEMU.
As for script security, Installies has a voting and reporting system to help make sure that scripts are safe.
There are some design choices I am yet to make, so I would like your guy’s input. One of them is if app maintainers should be able to stop non-maintainers from creating scripts on apps. Please comment what you think (also any other feedback).
Future Plans
- Utility Scripts: General purpose shell scripts.
- CLI: This will allow for a universal interface to install things on Linux. It will also allow for easier use of Installies on servers.
- Collaboration: Allowing multiple people to directly contribute to scripts without being a maintainer.
- User ranking system: A system to rank users by how popular their scripts. This will make it easier for users to judge if a script is good without having to analyze the source.
As it is in beta, there will be many bugs. If you find any bugs please report them on the GitHub. Feedback and feature requests are also welcome.
Happy Scripting!
Thank you for the feedback. I think I will remove the voting system for now while I figure out of solution. I will probably not be adding the user reputation system, unless I figure out a way to do it without facing the problems you have mentioned. As for collaboration, I will add a feature allowing app maintainers to set whether or not non-maintainers can add scripts without maintainer permission. Thank you again for the feedback, it was very useful!
Have you considered some form of CI? I.e: Spin up a VM, run the script, reboot, report what changed? Might be a little expensive, but could help auditing?
I have, but I think it would be a bit too expensive on my VPS, but might use it if my site ever catches on. I have also considered using something like Try, but it isn’t a full sandbox.
Very understandable. And from a security standpoint not necessarily indicitive of anything. A good malicious script would just check its environment first.
Would it know if it was a VM? I think KVMs can host only the kernel if I’m not mistaken
I think you can detect when your in a VM, not sure exactly how though. But they could even be checking for other environment factors, like network addresses, system language, or timezone details.
Maybe add a comment/review system (if you haven’t already) in the meantime? Far from foolproof but better than nothing nonetheless.
It does have a discussion system at the moment where you can comment on a script, but there is no system to rate the script and have the total of all the ratings combined.