[katello-devel] Deleting a manifest and pulp

[Tom McKay]

Note: I'll cut&paste replies to the wiki as the thread continues...

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Lukas Zapletal" <lzap at redhat.com>
> To: katello-devel at redhat.com
> Sent: Wednesday, October 3, 2012 3:27:21 AM
> Subject: Re: [katello-devel] Deleting a manifest and pulp
> 
> On Tue, Oct 02, 2012 at 01:32:08PM -0400, Tom McKay wrote:
>  
> > First, from a headpin point-of-view manifest deletion is trivial:
> > Call candlepin and delete it, then remove references to the Red
> > Hat provider subscriptions from activation keys.
> >
> 
> What happens to registered/subscribed consumers then?
> 

The "what happens" is entirely in candlepin's hands. When a manifest is deleted, the entitlements are immediately revoked (and deleted) in candlepin. If the system tries to consume content, it will be denied.

> > For katello it is much more complicated. In addition to cleaning
> > out katello references such as activation keys, what happens to
> > the pulp content?
> 
> I would like to ask first what is the desired behavior for consumers.
> If
> they should be immediately removed from subscriptions, that is in the
> next refresh call after 4 hours, then we could delete the repos from
> Pulp. Best solution could be to defer this deletion 5 hours or
> something
> (maybe to schedule this if this is possible?) but then reimport could
> cause issues (repoid would be occupied for some time).
> 
> If there is a way of immediate unregistration then I think we could
> delete the repos immediately.

I am entirely fine with deleting the repos that correspond with the deleted subscriptions. However there are several aspects that concern me.

>From a user experience point of view what if they then import a new manifest with products that correspond to the deleted ones? Here's an example:

The development org needs RHEL w/ high performance mojo to reproduce and fix a bug. Since this is not a subscription they typically use they go to the customer portal and take the one subscription from the production org's distributor. The production org, being good corporate citizens, also download an updated manifest that no longer contains the "mojo" product. In effect, they have deleted this product. At the end of the fixing, development removes the mojo from their distributor and production adds it back. In effect, development has deleted the product and production has added it back.

Should the production org have to re-enable, re-sync, re-promote, re-activation-key, re-system-template, re-everything for the product that returned? 

Or should the production org have to explicitly delete software that they no longer have access to? More burdensome for deletion but done explicitly through changesets, etc.

Remember there are three cases where products are "deleted": 1) Delete entire manifest, 2) Remove a product from the manifest, 3) Product expires by date. I think the chance of a customer wishing to add back a deleted product could be high.

So, while deleting all the pulp data on disk and all the katello references to it, is this the best answer or just the easiest?

> 
> > What is the desired state of a Katello system after you delete a
> > manifest?
> >
> I assume deleting all the referenced data from Katello databases and
> backend engines.
> 
> > Should we delete all the repos associated with the manifest after
> > you
> > delete it?
> > Should we leave the content there but hide it?
> > Should we leave the content there but note that it is unentitled?
> >
> I think so, and I think we should do it immediately (asking consumers
> to
> unregister ASAP). If we must wait 4 hours for technical reasons
> (refresh), we must inform the user he can reimport after 5 hours and
> defer deletions.
> 
> > What happens when we re-import a manifest .. should it just stitch
> > everything back up together?
> >
> Stitching in software development does not sound good at all :-) I'd
> rather delete everything re-creating it. But this really depends on
> what
> are PM requirements are on this. Maybe they will really want
> consumers
> to stay subscribed until manifest is re-imported.
> 
> My obligatory question follows:
> 
> How does Satellite do it today?
> 
> --
> Later,
> 
>  Lukas "lzap" Zapletal
>  #katello #systemengine
> 
> _______________________________________________
> katello-devel mailing list
> katello-devel at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/katello-devel
>