[Freeipa-devel] [RFE] Logging and output in install & management commands

[Rob Crittenden]

Petr Viktorin wrote:
> Hello,
> Please take a while to comment on this proposal before I post it on the
> wiki.
> This is about user-visible changes I plan to make for #2652 (Framework
> for admin/install tool) -- consistent behavior will (in addition to not
> confusing users) enable the framework to do common work without too much
> special-casing.
>
>
> = Overview =
>
> The output, logging, and command-line options of our install/management
> tools are inconsistent. This RFE aims to clean up some of the
> inconsistency.
>
> Specifically it addresses:
> - Inconsistencies between console output and log files
> - Tools using either --verbose or --debug used for the same purpose
> And some collateral issues:
> - The --version option missing in some tools
> - The problem of e.g. an accidental ipa-server-install overwriting
> ipaserver-install.log by the useless message, "The server is already
> installed"
>
> This is part of [https://fedorahosted.org/freeipa/ticket/2652|#2652
> Framework for admin/install tools]
>
>
> = Design=
>
> Each command will have these command-line options (added automatically
> by the framework):
>
>    --version        show program's version number and exit
>    -h, --help       show the help message and exit
>
>    output and logging options:
>      -q, --quiet    Output only errors
>      -v, --verbose  Print debugging information
>      --log-file     (alternate) log file name
>
> The precise meanings of the output options are:
>    (nothing): print INFO-level messages and above to stderr
>    -q: only print ERROR-level messages and above to stderr
>    -v: print all messages to stderr, prefixed with severity level
> In all cases, if there is a log file, all messages go to it
>
> In commands that currently have it, the `-d, --debug` option will become
> a deprecated alias for --verbose.
>
> Note that this RFE only adds new options, so backwards compatibility is
> maintained.
>
>
> The tools will use the following log message severities:
> - CRITICAL for fatal errors
> - ERROR for critical things that the admin must see even in --quiet mode
> - WARNING for things that need to stand out in the log
> - INFO to display normal messages
> - DEBUG to spam about everything the program does
> - a plain print statement for things that should not be log, for
> interactive prompting should use the console and follow up with a DEBUG
> mentioning the final value
>
>
> The commands check their arguments and most do some validation and
> possible interactive prompting before doing any modification of the
> system. Since the system is not changed, the user can always re-run with
> --verbose if there are problems in this phase. Logging information from
> this phase to a file is useless.
> The file logging will start after the validation/prompting. The first
> logged message(s) will mention the command and options used.
>
>
> = Use Cases =
>
> User runs some /usr/sbin/ipa-* commands with the --help option to see
> that the logging-related options are the same in all of those programs.
>
> User runs an ipa-* command with the -q option to only see errors.
>
> User runs an ipa-* command (possibly with --log-file, if the command
> doesn't log by default), and later reviews the log file to find all
> relevant information.
>
>
> = Implementation =
>
> The RFE will be implemented gradually as new commands are ported to the
> framework.
>
>

Can you list exactly which commands you're targetting?

At least some (ipa-replica-manage, ipa-replica-prepare) don't have 
logging but may still benefit from this structure. Did you have those in 
mind as well?

It may be time to rewrite ipa-upgradeconfig too. It started as a one-off 
and has grown considerably over the past year. It would benefit from 
this as well (though other enhancements would be beyond this scope).

rob
rob