Kolibri finish_install.sh assumes the KOLIBRI_USER is root

[richsegal]

I figured this was the best place to report module bugs as they do not have a repository of their own. Please let me know if there is a better place to report this bug.

The Kolibri modules have a finish_install.sh script that gets run after downloading the module. This script in turn calls the establish_content_symlinks.sh script. Both of these scripts assume that Kolibri is installed as root. However, it is fairly straightforward to run /etc/default/kolibri and check the value of KOLIBRI_USER to determine the locally defined Kolibri user. This would allow Kolibri content modules to work on machines in which Kolibri is installed using a user account other than root.

Note, it is considered a security risk to run applications as root so supporting a non-root Kolibri installation is good practice.

[richsegal]

I put together a fix for the above issue. Please add the following lines to the top of finish_install.sh:

# set kolibri environment variables                                                                                                                                             
KOLIBRI_USER=root
if [ -e "/etc/default/kolibri" ]; then
    . /etc/default/kolibri
fi
export KOLIBRI_HOME=$(getent passwd $KOLIBRI_USER | cut -d: -f6)/.kolibri

then replace the line:

oldchannelversion=$(echo "SELECT version FROM content_channelmetadata WHERE id = '$channelid';" | sqlite3 /root/.kolibri/db.sqlite3)

with:

oldchannelversion=$(echo "SELECT version FROM content_channelmetadata WHERE id = '$channelid';" | sqlite3 $KOLIBRI_HOME/db.sqlite3)

Finally, in establish_content_symlinks.py, replace the line:

kolibri_home = "/root/.kolibri"

with:

kolibri_home = os.environ['KOLIBRI_HOME'] if 'KOLIBRI_HOME' in os.environ else "/root/.kolibri"

You may also want to update the comments in establish_content_symlinks.py to refer to kolibri_home rather than /root/.kolibri.

[richsegal]

One more thought. The above fix is based on the current version of Kolibri. The current Kolibri scripts have a bug that sets the value of KOLIBRI_HOME incorrectly. I have submitted a bug report and hopefully the issue will be addressed in a future release.

The above code is designed to work correctly until LEF fixes this bug by calculating the value of KOLIBRI_HOME from KOLIBRI_USER. Once Kolibri fixes this bug, it would be best to get KOLIBRI_HOME directly from /etc/default/kolibri. I would recommend something like the following on top of finish_install.sh when the bug is corrected:

KOLIBRI_HOME=/root/.kolibri
if [ -e "/etc/default/kolibri" ]; then
    . /etc/default/kolibri
fi