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Re: Apps corrupting the system and apps conflicting with each other

Retired_Member
Not applicable

Apps corrupting the system and apps conflicting with each other

Before starting to research on my own I wanted to play the lazybone and ask the community a few general questions around installation of apps on ReadyNas'es:

(1) How is the operating system taking care, that the installation of an app is not compromising the whole system?

(2) If more than one app will be installed (which is very likely, I assume), how is the operating system taking care, that the most recent installion is not compromising the already existing apps?

 

During the last few years I saw several cases on my nas'es, where installation of an additional app somehow crippled already existing apps. Sometimes simply de-installing and re-installing helped. Sometimes de-installing and changing the installation sequence helped. Sometimes nothing helped (sigh, resetting the system does not count as a (smart) solution). Amongst those apps were (alphabetically ordered) : Ajaxplorer, bzeetr6, Antivirus (now being integral part of the OS), Linux dash, Netdata NT, PHP SysInfo for ReadyNAS, Recoll and Smb plus.

 

Is anybody out there able to give a short abstract on this or guide me into the direction, where to start researching. Thanks in advance for any contribution and kind regards.

Message 1 of 8

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StephenB
Guru

Re: Apps corrupting the system and apps conflicting with each other


@Retired_Member wrote:

Could you potentially provide a link to more information about this?


https://apps.readynas.com/pages/?page_id=30

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Sandshark
Sensei

Re: Apps corrupting the system and apps conflicting with each other

Short answer:  not very well.  Recent issues with PHP and the OS 6.10 upgrade testify to that.

 

Much of this could be avoided if Netgear would embrace Docker, but they have fictitiously labeled it as "implemented" in the idea exchange and ignored posts that call them out for it.

 

I suspect the idea of the "approved" apps was supposed to take care of a lot of it, but one just doesn't see new, or even updated, approved apps coming out much.

Message 2 of 8
Retired_Member
Not applicable

Re: Apps corrupting the system and apps conflicting with each other

Hi @Sandshark , you mentioned "the idea of the "approved" apps". Was that a Netgear initiative? Could you potentially provide a link to more information about this? To me it sounds like a potential framework how to develop, propagate and support apps. Please let me know more, if possible.

Thanks for your feedback and kind regards

Message 3 of 8
StephenB
Guru

Re: Apps corrupting the system and apps conflicting with each other


@Retired_Member wrote:

Could you potentially provide a link to more information about this?


https://apps.readynas.com/pages/?page_id=30

Message 4 of 8
Retired_Member
Not applicable

Re: Apps corrupting the system and apps conflicting with each other

Thanks for pointing me to the "ReadyNAS SDK documentations sites". It gives a lot of info how it is (should be 🙂 currently done. Kind regards

Message 5 of 8
Retired_Member
Not applicable

Re: Apps corrupting the system and apps conflicting with each other

@Sandsharkwrote: "I suspect the idea of the "approved" apps was supposed to take care of a lot of it, but one just doesn't see new, or even updated, approved apps coming out much."

 

I looked at the Readynas SDK documentation info behind the link provided by @StephenB. The framework does not look too bad. Requirements for apps to be developed are straight forward and comprehensible as far as I can judge. However, I have two hypotheses, why there is some room for improvement with the available apps and new apps to be developed:

1) Existing Apps are not developed further to match the new properties of the os, when it is shifted to a new level. Will say, an app, which is running fine with os release 5 is not necessarily behaving well when the os is going up to release 6. As a consequence in Netgear's shoes I would discontinue offering those apps, which are not maintained accordingly by their developers when the os shifts to a new level.

2) Netgear should develop more apps under its own responsibility. With the current approach the incentive for independent developers seems not to be high enough to make issue described in 1) go away.

Whether you will use docker or any other kind of containering to provide application services to my opinion is not that important as long as the application lifecycle management is taken care efficiently. There was an interesting article the other day on the red hat developer platform you might be interested to read:

https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2019/06/11/application-lifecycle-management-for-container-native-...

Nevertheless, the fact, that ReadyNAS apps are not maintained as they should sheds a gloomy light on the way of communication between Netgear on the one hand and the concerned independent developers on the other.

"Ending up in a "Conways law" situation is a total waste of time and effort for all concerned" (cited from the above article).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

Thanks for your feedback and kind regards

Message 6 of 8
StephenB
Guru

Re: Apps corrupting the system and apps conflicting with each other


@Retired_Member wrote:

 

1) Existing Apps are not developed further to match the new properties of the os, when it is shifted to a new level. ... . As a consequence in Netgear's shoes I would discontinue offering those apps, which are not maintained accordingly by their developers when the os shifts to a new level.

 


This has certainly already happened ( see https://github.com/ReadyNAS/sdk/wiki/App-Archive ).  

 


@Retired_Member wrote:

2) Netgear should develop more apps under its own responsibility. With the current approach the incentive for independent developers seems not to be high ... .

 


Totally agree that they should develop more apps.  FWIW, I think that would also result in better tools for app developers.

 

I also agree that the incentives to maintain / develop third party apps aren't high enough.  I'm not sure what they can do to fix that (especially on the maintenance side).

Message 7 of 8
Sandshark
Sensei

Re: Apps corrupting the system and apps conflicting with each other

One of the remaining (though independent) developers, WhoCares, had the rug pulled out from under him when 6.10.0 came out.  His PHP package, upon which a lot of his other packages depended, no longer worked.  From what I read, Netgear basically had a "we don't care" attitude when it was pointed out that they failed to provide all the necessary repository updates.  That says "Go away, we don';t need you" better than anything else they could do.  Fortunately, he's stubborn and hasn't gone away.

 

I'd love to take some common Linux applications and compile/package them for the ReadyNAS.  I'm not much of a programmer, but I should be able to do that.  But the materials provided by Netgear just don't give me enough information.  And since I know how to install them via SSH and APT and then move most of it to the /apps directory manually, that's what I do for my own use.  But it provides no help for others.

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