[Pki-devel] replication of new/modified profiles

Tue Jul 1 02:42:59 UTC 2014

On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 02:28:09PM -0500, Endi Sukma Dewata wrote:
> Hi, I have some comments about the design:
> http://pki.fedoraproject.org/wiki/LDAP_Profile_Storage
> 
> I think all system/default profiles should remain file-based and all custom
> profiles should be LDAP-based. It will make a clean separation: system
> profiles are owned by us (Dogtag developers), custom profiles are owned by
> the admin.
> 
> The system profiles will be read-only. This way we will be able to update
> the system profiles without writing any upgrade scripts because the files
> will be updated automatically by RPM. Just one requirement, all server
> instances must be upgraded to the same version.
> 
> If the admin wants to change a system profile, they can clone it into a
> custom profile and make the changes there. The custom profiles cannot have
> the same names as the system profiles, so there's won't be any
> conflict/confusion, and no need to support a "restore" command. In general
> we won't need to write upgrade scripts for custom profiles except if we
> change the LDAP schema.
> 

This was my original proposal, with the exception of making
system/default profiles read-only and cloning them to make
modifications.  I think this is a good modification to that
proposal.

Ade was in favour of moving to LDAP only, but perhaps this variation
makes using a mix of LDAP and file-based profiles more palatable?
It would be good to hear from more people on this part of the design
- to see if there's a clear winner.

> About the schema itself, I suppose we want to have something that resembles
> the actual Profile data structure (see ProfileData Java class). There should
> be an LDAP attribute for each single-valued Java attribute (e.g. name,
> description, enabled, visible). This way the profile is more manageable and
> can be queried based on these attributes. For collection attributes (e.g.
> inputs, outputs, policySets) we can use child LDAP entries to represent
> them.
> 
> About the names, right now we use "profile" to refer to both cert profile in
> CA and token profile in TPS. We probably should use separate terms to
> distinguish them (e.g. CertProfile and TokenProfile). This applies to
> Java/Python class names, REST interface, CLI, LDAP schema, etc.
> 
Good point.  I've s/profile/certProfile/ in the schema.

> So the LDAP entries for a profile may look like this:
> 
> dn: cn=MyUserCert,ou=Profiles,ou=CA,{suffix}
> objectClass: certProfile
> cn: MyUserCert
> displayName: Manual User Dual-Use Certificate Enrollment
> description: This certificate profile is for enrolling user certificates.
> visible: true
> enabled: true
> enabledBy: admin
> 
> dn: ou=Inputs,cn=MyUserCert,ou=Profiles,ou=CA,{suffix}
> objectClass: organizationalUnit
> ou: Inputs
> 
> dn: cn=i1,ou=Inputs,cn=MyUserCert,ou=Profiles,ou=CA,o=pki-tomcat
> objectClass: pkiCertProfileInput
> cn: i1
> classId: keyGenInputImpl
> 

Introducing this schema (and the more fine-grained functionality it
would support) could happen later.  I see the benefits but I think
it's better to just get the profiles in LDAP as soon as possible,
then look at how we can break them down to enable richer features.

Also, if we retain file-based profiles as you suggest, whatever
queries LDAP makes easier, we would still need to be able to do
those same queries across the file-based profiles.  So while
file-based profiles remain, a finer-grained LDAP profile schema
doesn't buy us anything in terms of reducing complexity or the
amount of code to write.

> About the REST interface & CLI, since this will be the primary way to edit
> profiles, we might want to have more granular commands to modify parts of
> the profile. Right now with ca-profile-mod command you need to send the
> entire profile in a file. It would be nice to be able to specify some
> parameters to change certain attributes only, or use separate commands to
> manage the inputs/outputs.
> 
> We'll also need an interface to find existing cert records that use a
> certain profile and bulk modify them to use a different profile. This will
> be useful when you create a clone to change the system profile.
> 

Again, I agree with the benefits here, but feel that this may be out
of scope for the initial changeover to LDAP profiles, given how much
we need that for FreeIPA.

> I'm not sure if we should support 10.2 -> 10.3 cloning. When we release 10.3
> the 10.2 will still be fairly new so it might be reasonable to require all
> clones to be upgraded. It will reduce the amount of testing requirement too.
> 
I'll incorporate this comment (and all your others) in the design
proposal; you should see the updated document soon.

Cheers,

Fraser

> -- 
> Endi S. Dewata
> 
> On 6/18/2014 2:44 AM, Fraser Tweedale wrote:
> >Hi all,
> >
> >A requirement from the FreeIPA side is the ability to add and
> >customise CA profiles.  Dogtag's current profile creation behaviour
> >writes the new profile to the filesystem beside the standard
> >profiles (as well as making the appropriate update to the registry,
> >etc.)
> >
> >There does not seem to be a mechanism to distribute new/modified
> >profiles to replicas - though perhaps I have missed something.
> >
> >Because this behaviour is required, unless I have overlooked
> >something or there is a better way (in which case please shout out),
> >I think it makes sense to begin a design proposal for an LDAP-based
> >profile store.
> >
> >Finally, a brief mention of some tickets related to profile storage
> >that could be good to tackle simultaneously should the proposed
> >change go ahead:
> >
> >- https://fedorahosted.org/pki/ticket/778
> >- https://fedorahosted.org/freeipa/ticket/4002
> >
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> 