OpenPKG Advent Calendar 2006

You know to receive full access to the OpenPKG Project download area you must register and use your credentials for manual downloads. To use "openpkg build" with direct access to the download area the instance must be registered first and then manually associated to your account. This can be a tedious job. Worse, putting credentials in scripts is obnoxious and due to the manual association it still inhibits full automation. Here is the scoop to work around all of these deficiencies and open even more posibilities.

The registry supports "tokens" to replace the user credentials. These tokens have properties for different fields of application. You issue a token on your own. Just login to the web interface of the registry, go to the "profile" tab and tell us about you. Some mandatory information must be submitted to enable availability for token "link" and "assoc" features. The profile allows management of tokens including issuing new tokens, changing the description, enabling and disabling features and delete tokens.

Token with "user" feature

Any registered user can issue a token for himself with the "user" feature enabled and use it as username replacement just to keep his registry email address (=login) secret in scripts and documentation. Instance association still calls to visit the web user interface unless the token also has the "assoc" feature enabled.

Just replace

      $ openpkg register --user=username

      $ openpkg register --user=usertoken

to hide the username. In case someone captures your user token and misuses it, just discard it and issue a new one.

Token with "assoc" feature

Registered users which fill out some mandatory fields in their profile are eligible to enable the "assoc" (auto association) feature for their token(s). Using such prepared tokens allows them to stay away from the web user interface and fully automate instance registration including association.

Token with "link" feature

Works in addition to the "user" token and links the instance to a 3rd party, making it appear read-only in the 3rd parties' association page. Think of it as kinda "carbon copy" registration to tell your friend, manager, solution provider, whatever. The 3rd party can unlink the instance from itself.

Just use

      $ openpkg register --user=usertoken --link=linktoken

A "link" token can also trigger user association which means that only the 3rd party issuing the link+assoc token must fill out the profile and any registered user can use his "user" token along with the 3rd party "link" token association. The idea is that a 3rd party takes the burden of filling out the profile on behalf of others and receives the data from linked instances in return.

We need to know you and your needs

Keep in mind that registering instances helps the OpenPKG Project to understand the distribution and application of the software by using registered accounts and basically uploading "openpkg rpm -qa --provides" (packages and options, find details in "openpkg man register" under --data).

DropXML

Firewall impaired users please note that data and token features also work with dropxml copy'n'paste page in the web interface.