Re: Issue 36011 in chromium-os: Disambiguate developer warning screens based on the configured state: signed, unsigned, usb boot, etc

[chrom...@googlecode.com]

Updates:
Summary: Disambiguate developer warning screens based on the configured
state: signed, unsigned, usb boot, etc

Comment #32 on issue 36011 by w...@chromium.org: Disambiguate developer
warning screens based on the configured state: signed, unsigned, usb boot,
etc
http://code.google.com/p/chromium-os/issues/detail?id=36011

First off, I'm changing the title of this bug :)

Now some replies:
1. At present, we have a bright line test: developer and verified. As the
product has matured and we've gained field experience, we've added more
knobs for developer mode -- like dev_boot_usb and dev_boot_signed_only.
They don't change the fundamental modification of guarantees that happen
when the developer switch is flipped. That said, it's certainly useful to
disambiguate the cases because pressing Tab every time is not ideal.

2. Please don't take the frowning computer as a judgement :) In
particular, we've always considered the linux/power user to fall into this
case, and it's one reason why we don't leave the system blocked at the
warning screen. For the non-linux user and non-power user, the safest
thing we could do is keep them stopped at the dev warning screen, imo.
However, we instead went with a boot delay so that Linux users and
developers can still get automatic boot with no user interaction. We just
assumed that if you've decided to go this route, you will be able to
overlook a 30s warning screen or press ctrl+d to make it go away faster.
We're all developers and Linux users too.

That said, there is still a fundamental difference in a booted system when
a random person has root privileges and when no one should. So while I
agree with the idea of disambiguating the dev warning screen,
dev_boot_signed_only is still different than verified mode. Communicating
the subtleties in a internationalized warning screen may still prove
challenging.

Re, Usecases:
1. The file manager should be able to do this right now just not with mv -
cut and paste :) I understand preferring mv though.
2. I regularly open ASCII text files on my chromebox. I tend to use the
CodeViewer extension, but there are others. Also, Write Space let's you
import files from disk. I'm sure there are other usable editors in the
store too.
3. This is less easy to do without that shell, definitely.

Thanks for the feedback, enthusiasm, thoughtfulness, and hopefully,
patches! And we'll be continuing to put thought into the direction
developer mode goes too and how it is communicated to the users. Both
operating modes are important!

[chrom...@googlecode.com]

Comment #33 on issue 36011 by trr...@gmail.com: Disambiguate developer

warning screens based on the configured state: signed, unsigned, usb boot,
etc
http://code.google.com/p/chromium-os/issues/detail?id=36011

Great. Thank you!

I myself am still exploring around, so don't fully understand the
difference between dev_boot_signed_only=1 and verified mode. So I've tried
to be a little tentative... seems like though basically we do get a
verified boot (the PKI chain of trust), and those screens were (as you've
seen) quite confusing. Disambiguate = good.

Thanks again.