[Freeipa-devel] User life cycle: question regarding the design

[Martin Kosek]

On 05/29/2014 05:31 AM, Dmitri Pal wrote:
> On 05/26/2014 01:49 AM, Martin Kosek wrote:
>> On 05/23/2014 04:55 PM, Simo Sorce wrote:
>>> On Fri, 2014-05-23 at 10:13 -0400, Rob Crittenden wrote:
>>>> This, I believe, has already been covered, but I'm concerned with the
>>>> (over)use of active/inactive in this discussion.
>>>>
>>>> I think use of "inactive" and "active" to describe users might be
>>>> confusing since there is already an account enable/disable command.
>>>> This
>>>> on top of unlock, are there now 3 possible boolean states a user can
>>>> be
>>>> in? locked/unlocked, enabled/disabled, active/inactive, plus
>>>> deleted/active and staged/active?
>>>>
>>> Agree, we should only have "ipa user-unstage <username>" and not call
>>> this operations with words like active/inactive.
>>>
>>> User's in the staging area are not inactive, they are *not* users yet in
>>> the first place.
>>>
>>> Simo.
>>>
>>
>> Ok. Let us consolidate the decisions, I think we are now running in circles.
>> Let me start from Petr3's API proposal which was a functionally complete
>> proposal and start from there:
>>
>> On 05/22/2014 10:47 AM, Petr Viktorin wrote:
>> > ...
>> > My proposal would be that the move commands use the verb for the target and an
>> > option for the source, and add/mod use an option for the container:
>> >
>> > 1) adding a new user
>> > (to active)   ipa user-add tuser ...
>> > (to stage)    ipa user-add tuser --staged ...
>>
>> Ok.
>>
>> > (to deleted)  ipa user-add tuser --deleted ...  (*)
>>
>> Not needed.
>>
>> > 2) moving to main
>> > (from stage)  ipa user-activate tuser  (**)
>> > (from del)    ipa user-activate tuser --deleted
>>
>> We need both, alternative is Simo's proposal:
>>
>> ipa user-unstage
>> ipa user-undelete
>>
>> I personally like unstage and undelete commands, I would go with those.
> 
> Sorry for coming late to the party.
> I strongly do not like "unstage"
> This suggests that the user will be removed from staged but does not indicate
> that the full user will be created.
> As I suggested elsewhere provision-user or user-provision (or may be even
> user-add --from-stage) would be better.

As Petr3 already noted on 05/19/2014 03:19 PM, integrating unstaging operation
could get messy and would not create the right API. Using a separate call would
be cleaner. As we see, choosing the right action term has proven very difficult
- everyone has strong opinion on the command name :-)

I already saw user-activate and user-unstage to be trashed so I am thinking
what we are left with. I am still fan of user-unstage, user-provision is not
telling me much more than user-unstage.

>> > 3) moving to deleted
>> > (from active) ipa user-del tuser
>>
>> Ok.
>>
>> > (from stage)  ipa user-del tuser --staged
>>
>> IMO staged deleted users should not be moved to deleted container, but simply
>> permanently deleted. As Simo noted, staged user are not real users, just
>> incomplete users.
>>
>> > 4) moving to stage
>> > (from active) ipa user-stage tuser
> 
> 
> This was suggested for completeness.
> I think we are cutting corners but I would not insist here.
> 
>> > (from del)    ipa user-stage tuser --deleted
>>
>> None of the commands are needed for the basic workflow.
> 
> But this is a valid use case. I created a user, deleted it and want to rebuild
> it becuase something got corrupted in the original entry. I agree it is not a
> primary use case but then we should have a ticket to track this RFE for future.

This was not about cutting corners, this was about what operation makes sense
and what we should support. Stage was defined as a tree with incomplete user,
thus this proposal - Simo was not very OK with this workflow.

>>
>> > 5) modifying
>> > (in active)   ipa user-mod tuser ...
>>
>> Ok.
>>
>> > (in stage)    ipa user-mod tuser --staged ...
>>
>> Simo did not like this command, I would personally add it. As long as we have
>> "ipa user-add --staged", we should also have an option to delete and modify
>> user in staged area.
>>
>> > (in del)      ipa user-mod tuser --deleted ...
>>
>> Not needed.
>>
>> Is this acceptable for everyone? If yes, the next step would be for Thierry
>> to update the design page with new proposals.
>>
>> Martin

Let me try to consolidate again the proposals and changes for the workflow&API
we have so far:

1) Manipulating staged users
- staged users must have UID RDN
- UID uniqueness plugin should not be enforcing in staging area
- we do not want it in user plugin as it requires different parameters and
objectclasses
- API:
ipa stage-user-add
ipa stage-user-mod
ipa stage-user-find
ipa stage-user-del

2) Activating staged user
- activation will not do MODRDN, it will create a new user in active container
and then delete the old one (to create right structural objectclass set)
- for now, we need to allow operator delete any user in staged and add any user
in active tree
- API
ipa stage-user-activate
- other options mentioned in the past were user-unstage and user-activate

3) Manipulating deleted users
- deletion and undeletion will do MODRDN and will use the ACI that Thierry
implemented
- API
ipa user-del
ipa user-undel OR ipa user-undelete
- Dmitri mentioned that he would like to see the move from deleted to staged. I
would do it via flag:
ipa user-undel --to-stage


Does that look better now? Thanks,
Martin