[Freeipa-devel] [PATCH] 1106 IPA REST smart proxy

[Rob Crittenden]

Dmitri Pal wrote:
> On 02/14/2014 03:09 PM, Rob Crittenden wrote:
>> Dmitri Pal wrote:
>>> On 02/14/2014 03:43 AM, Martin Kosek wrote:
>>>> On 02/14/2014 12:07 AM, Rob Crittenden wrote:
>>>>> Martin Kosek wrote:
>>>>>> On 01/28/2014 09:35 PM, Rob Crittenden wrote:
>>>>>>> Petr Viktorin wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 01/23/2014 02:17 PM, Petr Viktorin wrote:
>>>>>> ...
>>>>>>>> The URL endpoint /ipa/rest suggests that if we implement a
>>>>>>>> complete REST
>>>>>>>> API for IPA it would live here. Is the API supposed to be
>>>>>>>> future-compatible? (The API itself seems to be a good subset of a
>>>>>>>> complete REST API, but can we easily add an frontend with
>>>>>>>> authentication, i18n, etc. here later, and keep the limitations for
>>>>>>>> unauthenticated access?)
>>>>>>>> Perhaps /ipa/smartproxy would be a better choice?
>>>>>>> It was future-proofing. I'm fine with changing the URI, it is
>>>>>>> probably a good
>>>>>>> thing to save that name.
>>>>>> +1 for moving to /ipa/smartproxy/rest, we will want a complete REST
>>>>>> interface
>>>>>> in ipa/rest/ in the future. I rather opened a ticket to track that:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://fedorahosted.org/freeipa/ticket/4168
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Martin
>>>>>>
>>>>> I think I've addressed most of Petr's suggestions with the exception
>>>>> of the
>>>>> global ipa handle and I stuck with *args, **options as this is pretty
>>>>> much
>>>>> standard in IPA calls.
>>>>>
>>>>> The gssproxy.conf.snippet just makes it easier to copy/paste. I can
>>>>> drop it if
>>>>> you want, I suppose it is duplication.
>>>>>
>>>>> Note that I ran this past the Foreman design again and as a result
>>>>> added
>>>>> another interface, /realm. It was my understanding that this Foreman
>>>>> design
>>>>> wasn't set into stone but a patch is working its way through their
>>>>> system that
>>>>> followed the spec so I went ahead and added it. It isn't a big deal,
>>>>> the Host()
>>>>> class handles it out of the box.
>>>>>
>>>>> I also updated the design page a bit to reflect some of the changes
>>>>> made.
>>>>>
>>>>> Right now there are no plans to backport python-kerberos to F20.
>>>>>
>>>>> rob
>>>> I will leave functional testing to others, I just read the code. I am
>>>> still
>>>> quite concerned about the positioning, naming and "branding" of this
>>>> feature.
>>>>
>>>> 1) Package name
>>>>
>>>> Currently, it is a host/hostgroup smartproxy, primarily for Foreman
>>>> integration
>>>> use case.
>>>>
>>>> Packaging it as freeipa-server-smartproxy may be ok, but only if we
>>>> plan to use
>>>> this proxy for all other projects. I.e. if we one day implement user
>>>> smartproxy, it would need to be part of this otherwise it would lead
>>>> to strange
>>>> organization, like having freeipa-server-smartproxy and
>>>> freeipa-server-smartproxy-users packages. Maybe it should be named
>>>> differently?
>>>>
>>>> freeipa-server-foreman-smartproxy
>>>> freeipa-server-smartproxy-hosts
>>>>
>>>> 2) ipa-rest stuff
>>>>
>>>> We have ipa-rest script, ipa-rest.conf, ipa-rest.service, ipa-rest man.
>>>> However, I have the same concerns as above. This is too general and it
>>>> may
>>>> conflict with future core server needs (like when we implement core
>>>> IPA REST
>>>> interface - #4168). Let us name it consistently with package name:
>>>>
>>>> ipa-smartproxy.service
>>>> ipa-smartproxy-hosts.service
>>>> ipa-foreman-smartproxy.service
>>>>
>>>> The same for binary, man, ...
>>>>
>>>> 3) Man pages
>>>>
>>>> The same point, you brand it as "IPA REST server". This is too general.
>>>>
>>>> To sum it up - let us chose one name/brand of this feature and let's
>>>> use it
>>>> consistently in FreeIPA infrastructure - subpackage name, subdirectory
>>>> in git,
>>>> subdirectory in ipatests, man, conf, script, names in man pages.
>>>>
>>>> Martin
>>> +1
>>>
>>> I think it should be "host"
>>>
>>> ipa-host-smartproxy
>>>
>>> then we will be able to add other smart proxies and then combine them
>>> into one ipa-smartproxy package later if needed.
>>>
>>
>> This would imply we actually run separate servers for the various
>> commands. Given that right now we're focused on just the Foreman use
>> cases I think ipa-smartproxy is sufficient.
>>
>> For our purposes the smartproxy is just a thin wrapper around the IPA
>> API. It is extensible for our needs, we just don't need to yet. But if
>> we did, we'd do so within the cherrypy server and everything would be
>> self-contained.
>>
>> rob
>
> Are you saying that we will just extend this smart proxy for other use
> cases like users and others?
>

It all depends on the use case. If we're talking Foreman then yes. If 
something else, then we'll discuss it at the time, but it still may be 
able to be included.

The IPA Foreman smart proxy is distinguished by a couple of things:

- listens on port 8090, only on localhost
- is unauthenticated
- uses the /realm URI namespace

I'm exposing hosts and hostgroups as well, but per the spec that Dominic 
came up with only /realm/:domain is required and affects only hosts.

We can stick this behind Apache to get authentication, even on a 
specific URI if we want/need to, but the basic REST stuff can still be 
handled by cherrypy.

We'll need to balance complexity of mixing things vs the complexity of 
code duplication in multiple servers, unless we come up with some sort 
of REST server class where we just instantiate whatever we need. But 
that is for the future.

rob