Landscape client snap - Managed Mode attribute

store-requests
1

Hi Store-requests,

Can we please request the modification of the snapdcontrol interface on the Landscape Client snap to include the managed mode attribute? This won’t change functionality but adds another mechanism by which to manage the snap refresh timer.

Thanks,

Michael

1 Like
2

So from what I can see, your snap wants the ability to specify:

plugs:
  snapd-control:
    refresh-schedule: managed

Is that correct? (as per https://snapcraft.io/docs/snapd-control-interface)

3

Yes… that is the one.

4

hi @mikecw - just to get a better idea of the change, what is the reasoning for the managed mode attribute with landscape-client?

Thanks!

5

Hi @cav,

The managed mode attribute was the original way of disabling automatic snap updates to ensure that updates were only applied when directly commanded via Landscape. This is Field Engineering’s preferred mechanism for controlling that for IoT devices and as such it is their request.

Functionally, inside snapd it is now the same as disabling the refresh timers which can be achieved using snapdcontrol - but as there are existing customers using this method it made sense to allow consistency for them.

Thanks,

6

That makes sense and fits the purpose of the snap. Given the snap has already been vetted for and granted the snapd-control, I will go ahead and the make the change.

@mikecw - I saw the landscape-client app in the snap has:

plugs:
...
    - snapd-control-managed
    - snapd-control
...

Please remove the snapd-control plug and keep the snapd-control-managed and submit a new revision. review-tools complains when it is tries to plug it twice with the new declaration update. Let me know once this change is submitted and I’ll make the changes live!

Thanks!

7

Hi @cav, sorry for the slight delay. I’ve made that change and the newly build snap should be in the edge and beta channels. Is that sufficient to get the change applied?

Thanks.

8

That should be fine! I have gone ahead and made the change which is now live. Let me know if you run into any issues.
Thanks!

9

@cav I just came across this https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/s/UunWhLqw94 which looks like a regression due to this change. Can we please revert it for now? Thanks

10

@alexmurray - I have just reverted the declaration to before i.e snapd-control is still auto-connected but without the managed mode attribute.

11

Ah….

That may have come about because the change to the snap is on the edge track and not the stable so the store has propagated the change to those with stable. Ok, thanks for reverting, I will investigate more when I am back from holiday.

Thanks.

12

Hi, just to close this out - after a lot of discussion about this topic as to the best way to proceed, the landscape client snap has now been amended to achieve the same result (enabling managed mode) without the need to change the existing snap declaration.

The issue it highlights to some extend is that snap declarations are global to the snap and not to any specific track - accordingly we have to be more careful if we make a change to any channel (i.e. edge) that needs a change to the declaration as this will also be applied to stable channels. We will look to see if this can be mitigated against in the future or more clearly documented. Thanks all.