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v2.1.0 Stable
released this
2026-08-04 23:17:31 +00:00 | 0 commits to main since this releaseHighlights
- Remote shell jobs — administrators can queue arbitrary shell commands
(or one-click presets) against a kiosk from the admin UI; the device runs
them as root and reports back the exit code and output. Off by default,
per device. - Touchscreens now follow screen rotation — touch input is re-mapped
withxinput map-to-outputafter every rotation, at cold boot, and when
a USB touchscreen reconnects. - Agent startup crash fixed — the 2.0.0 agent could crash on launch
with"'http' is not a package"due to asys.pathshadowing bug. - Image fixes for real-world hardware — NTP time sync for devices with
dead RTC batteries, and AMD GPU firmware so rotation works on AMD APUs.
No breaking changes. 2.0.0 agents keep working against a 2.1.0 server —
they simply ignore the newjobsfield in check-in responses. Remote shell
jobs require a 2.1.0 agent and an explicit per-kiosk opt-in.Upgrading already-deployed kiosks: the agent package now depends on
xinputandx11-xserver-utils, soapt install --only-upgrade kioskos-agentpulls the touch-mapping tools onto devices imaged before they
were in the ISO. For the image-level fixes (time sync, AMD firmware) run the
one-shotscripts/hotfix-amd-firmware-timesync.sh
on each device — idempotent, and it reboots only when the GPU fix requires it.
Control (Django control server)
Remote shell jobs
- New
KioskJobmodel and full job lifecycle:pending → running → succeeded / failed / timed_out, pluscancelled(before delivery),
expired(not delivered within the 1-hour TTL — a device unplugged for a
fortnight must not come back and run last month's upgrade), andlost
(delivered but no result within timeout + grace, e.g. the command rebooted
the device). - Jobs are pulled, not pushed: the server holds them until the device's
next check-in, so the feature works for kiosks behind NAT on customer
networks. Delivery latency is bounded by the check-in interval. - Each job is handed out exactly once — rows are claimed with a
compare-and-swap onstatus, so two racing check-ins cannot both be told
to run the same command. Up to 5 jobs are delivered per check-in. - Named presets for routine fleet operations: update all packages,
upgrade the agent, restart the agent, reboot, report disk usage, tail the
agent journal.rebootandrestart_agentdetach and delay so the job
can report success before taking the agent down with it. - Off by default: a new per-kiosk
shell_enabledflag gates both
queueing and delivery. The agent runs jobs as root, so the capability is
granted deliberately per device, never fleet-wide. - Kiosk detail page grew a shell job panel: queue a preset or a custom
command, watch status, and read captured stdout/stderr; jobs not yet
delivered can be cancelled. - Expired/lost transitions are applied lazily on the check-in and job-list
paths — the deployment has no worker process, and check-in is the only
clock the server can rely on. - Every queue, delivery, and completion is recorded as a
KioskEvent
(newjobevent type), so the audit trail shows what ran where, who
asked for it, and how it ended. Thecreated_byadmin is kept even if
the account is later deleted. - Output is truncated server-side at 64 kB per stream (keeping the tail,
where failures explain themselves) as a backstop behind the agent's own
32 kB cap. - Test suite extended with full coverage of queueing, claiming, result
reporting, cancellation, expiry/lost reaping, and permission boundaries.
KioskOS Agent (
kioskos-agent2.1.0)Remote shell jobs
- New
agent/shell.pyjob runner: jobs execute on a dedicated worker
thread, one at a time — a ten-minute package upgrade must not freeze the
check-in loop, which is also the dead-browser watchdog; serial execution
keeps twoaptruns from fighting over the dpkg lock. - Commands run via
bash -cin their own process group (a timeout
SIGTERMs, then SIGKILLs the whole tree, not just the shell), with stdin
closed (anything that prompts fails fast instead of hanging) and a fixed
environment (DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive, sanePATH,
LC_ALL=C.UTF-8). - Captured output is capped at 32 kB per stream, keeping the tail.
- Results that cannot be posted (device offline) are held and retried
on later check-ins, bounded to the 50 most recent. - Device-side veto: a new
shell_enabledkey in
/etc/kioskos/config.json(defaulttrue) lets an operator mark a
device as never accepting remote commands regardless of what the control
server says; refused jobs report exit code 126 so the admin sees a reason
instead of a job that silently never finishes. - On shutdown the runner stops taking new jobs but lets a running job
finish — interrupting an upgrade mid-dpkgwould be worse than losing
the result. New test moduletests/test_shell.py.
Touchscreen rotation (2.0.1)
- Fixed touch input staying in the panel's native orientation after screen
rotation:set_orientation()now re-maps every calibratable touch device
onto the rotated output viaxinput map-to-output. Touch devices are
identified by the libinputCalibration Matrixproperty, so mice and
other relative pointers are never affected. - The agent package now depends on
xinputandx11-xserver-utils— the
toolsdisplay.pyactually shells out to — so upgrading the package
pulls them onto devices imaged before they were added to the ISO.
Startup crash & self-update fixes (2.0.2)
- Fixed an agent crash on startup (
No module named 'http.client'; 'http' is not a package): the service ran with
WorkingDirectory=/opt/kioskos/agent, andpython -mputs the working
directory first onsys.path, so the agent's ownhttp.pyshadowed the
stdlibhttppackage thatrequestsimports. The service now runs from
/opt/kioskosand setsPYTHONSAFEPATH=1so the working directory can
never leak ontosys.pathagain. - Self-update now refreshes all apt sources instead of only the kioskos
repo — dependencies introduced by a new agent version come from the
Debian repos, which ISO-imaged devices have no cached lists for — and
tolerates a skewed clock during the refresh (dead RTC batteries make apt
reject Release files as "not valid yet").
Multi-display & cold-boot touch mapping (2.0.3)
- Touch devices are no longer all mapped to the primary output: one display
gets every touch device (the common kiosk); equal counts of touch devices
and displays are paired deterministically (device IDs ascending, outputs
left-to-right); a count mismatch falls back to the primary output with a
warning. Mirrored layouts share one rectangle, so any pairing is correct
there. - Fixed touch mapping not applied on cold boot: the agent rotates the
screen as soon as the X socket exists — before Xorg has enumerated input
devices via udev — so there was nothing to map yet. A startup thread now
polls for touch devices and maps them as soon as they appear, and the
check-in loop re-applies mappings every cycle, so a USB touchscreen that
reconnects mid-session heals within one interval instead of staying on
the identity matrix.
KioskOS OS (image & build system)
systemd-timesyncdadded to the image and enabled at provision time:
kiosks often have dead RTC batteries, and a skewed clock breaks both apt
("Release file not valid yet") and TLS to the control server.firmware-amd-graphicsadded: without it theamdgpudriver cannot
load on AMD APUs, X falls back to the EFI framebuffer, and screen
rotation is unavailable.xinputadded for the agent's touch-input remapping.- New one-shot hotfix script
(kiosk/scripts/hotfix-amd-firmware-timesync.sh) brings already-deployed
devices in line with the image fixes above — idempotent, fleet-friendly
over SSH, and reboots only when the GPU fix requires it (--no-rebootto
suppress). - Calamares installer branding now reports the real product version
(2.1.0 — it had still claimed 1.0.0). ARCHITECTURE.mddocuments the full remote shell job design (lifecycle,
the two-switch permission model, endpoints, and device-side execution).
Protocol (agent ↔ server API
v1)New in check-in responses
jobs: an array of{id, command, timeout, preset}shell jobs
claimed by this check-in. Each job appears in exactly one response.
Absent/empty for kiosks withoutshell_enabled; older agents ignore it.
New endpoints
Endpoint Auth Purpose POST /api/v1/jobs/{id}/result/device token Device reports exit_code,stdout,stderr,duration_seconds,timed_out.POST /api/v1/kiosks/{uid}/jobs/admin session Queue a job ( commandorpreset, plus optionaltimeout,expires_in).GET /api/v1/kiosks/{uid}/jobs/admin session Job history for a device, filterable by status.GET /api/v1/jobs/{id}/admin session One job with its captured output. POST /api/v1/jobs/{id}/cancel/admin session Cancel an undelivered job ( 409once it has been handed out).GET /api/v1/job-presets/admin session Named commands offered by the UI. Security model
- The result endpoint is scoped to the reporting device — a kiosk can
only close out a job that was handed to it, so a leaked device token
cannot forge results for the rest of the fleet. - Queueing requires an admin session; a device token is refused, so a
compromised kiosk cannot queue work for itself. - Two switches, both required: the server-side per-kiosk
shell_enabled
flag (default off, checked at queue time and delivery time) and the
device-sideshell_enabledconfig key (default on, the operator's veto).
- Remote shell jobs — administrators can queue arbitrary shell commands