Re: [Pki-devel] replication of new/modified profiles

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(a)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? >