[Pki-devel] replication of new/modified profiles

[Christina Fu]

Done.
https://fedorahosted.org/pki/ticket/1067

thanks,
Christina

On 07/07/2014 04:44 AM, Ade Lee wrote:
> On Thu, 2014-07-03 at 12:59 -0500, Endi Sukma Dewata wrote:
>> On 7/3/2014 11:18 AM, Christina Fu wrote:
>>> Actually, I did not know that this discussion was restricted to a
>>> replicated ("clone") environment.  My view was more for a general
>>> organizational environment where there are multiple sub-ca's for
>>> different departments (which are not necessarily clones, but some could
>>> be) and there are two types of profiles:
>>> 1. centralized profiles (shared by all)
>>> 2. local profiles (customized by each department)
>>>
>>> I think this view (let's adopt your term and call it proposal #4) is
>>> more flexible in serving both non-clones and clones and yet retains the
>>> simplicity.
>> Thanks for clarifying. Yes, the main purpose of this enhancement is to
>> simplify replicating the profiles within a cluster (e.g. IPA). Proposal
>> #4 is probably meant to be an inter-cluster profile management. Within a
>> cluster itself, the replicas should be indistinguishable.
>>
>> For example:
>> * dept1 (cluster1: server1, server2): profile1, profile2
>> * dept2 (cluster2: server3, server4): profile1, profile3
>> * shared: profile1, profile4
>>
>> I think proposal #4 can be done as a separate enhancement after we
>> address the intra-cluster management (proposal #1-3).
>>
> Agreed.  One of the things we would have to address, for instance, would
> be where the shared profiles would reside.  Certainly it has to be a
> location that is available to all subCA's.  Several possibilities come
> to mind:
> 1) under a baseDN
> 2) user-defined
> 3) in the security domain - particularly useful perhaps for storing
> customized system profiles to used during installation.
>
> Christina, can you open a ticket for this feature?
>
>>> You are right, Endi, about how "local profiles" don't necessarily have
>>> to be on the disk.  It's just a personal preference that I feel most
>>> comfortable editing files directly than using ui's.  I have never used
>>> the java console to edit profiles.  I don't know if there are others who
>>> feel the same way.  Maybe a market research on administrators is needed
>>> here.
>> Here's the CLI that Fraser proposed:
>> http://pki.fedoraproject.org/wiki/LDAP_Profile_Storage#Edit_profile
>>
>> So instead of executing the following commands on each replica (and
>> risking inconsistent changes):
>>
>>     $ vi /var/lib/pki/pki-tomcat/ca/profiles/ca/caUserCert.cfg
>>     $ systemctl restart pki-tomcatd at pki-tomcat.service
>>
>> you can call this just once (it will use the same vi editor) from any
>> machine:
>>
>>     $ pki <connection/auth params> profile-edit caUserCert
>>
>> and it should automatically propagate the changes to all replica. Same
>> thing with the UI, you'll only need to do the changes once.
>>
> Right, the idea is for the pki utility to spawn an editor -- we would
> likely default to "vi", but I suppose we could allow the user to specify
> others too.  Ideally, what you would see is exactly the same as if you
> were editing a file today.
>
> The console would also continue to work, because it interacts with the
> ProfileSubsystem - which will know how to talk to LDAP.
>
>>>> The problem with local profiles in files is that they are not
>>>> replicated, so in case the machine is hosed, all local settings is
>>>> gone, including the profiles. Unless the admin created a backup for
>>>> each machine, it will be difficult to restore the machine quickly. The
>>>> replicated LDAP profiles will take care of this problem automatically.
>>>> In other proposals the system profiles in files are read-only and not
>>>> customizable, so there's no local profiles that need to be backed up.
>>>>
>>> If they don't do backups, losing profiles would not be their only issue
>>> there.
>> I think, ideally, if we lose a replica, other replicas should be able to
>> replace it immediately. We still need a backup for the shared
>> data/configuration, but we shouldn't need to backup individual replica.
>> A replica should be something that you can add/remove relatively
>> quickly. So, as a long term goal we should gradually migrate local
>> configuration files into LDAP, starting with the profiles.
>>
>>> But anyway, like I said above, I think putting "local" profiles
>>> in the lda is fine.  It's just the user experience of administration
>>> that has to change.  I have no opinion on this other than stating my
>>> personal preference of editing files directly ;-)
>> Is the above CLI a good substitute?
>>
>