Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of Meetings/Workshops/20121029

Timestamp:

Oct 30, 2012, 11:47:54 PM (12 years ago)

Author:

/C=FR/O=CNRS/OU=UMR8607/CN=Michel Jouvin/emailAddress=jouvin@…

Comment:

--

Meetings/Workshops/20121029

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+= Quattor Workshop - Univ. of Gent - 29-31/10/2012 =
+[[TracNav]]
+
+[[TOC(inline)]]
+
+[https://indico.cern.ch/conferenceTimeTable.py?confId=196712#all.detailed Agenda]
+
+== Site Reports ==
+
+=== IHEP ===
+
+2 annoying problems
+ * lock error at installation due to ccm-fetch installing before ccm-initialize
+ * AII --configurelist fails to configure nodes with different HW configs (mix up the disk names)
+ 
+=== Aquilon at RAL ===
+
+Achetype: highest grouping of hosts in Aquilon
+ * Similar to SCDB sites
+ 
+Personality: similar to QWG machine type
+ * Built by assembling ''features'' (e.g. apache-httpd, nfs-server)
+ * No possibility to cross-reference personalities (include a personality into another one)
+ 
+Service: a feature with servers and clients
+ * Allow to manage the binding between clients and servers
+ 
+HW description based on:
+ * Model: the generic HW description
+ * Machine: a ''model'' instance
+ 
+Host: a ''machine'' with an OS and a network config
+
+Sandboxes: allow development of templates without impacting the production
+ * Includes the possibility to deploy a machine from the sandbox for testing
+ 
+Some work needed to integrate QWG into layout expected by Aquilon: mostly done by "hooks"
+ * Would be great to have a wiki page summarizing what needs to be done that could be used as input for future QWG developments and restructuring
+ 
+Quattor profile schema slightly modified to support "metadata" information describing where the profile is coming from
+ * Should be pushed to the core repository
+ 
+Currently, no history available for modifications done by `aq` command
+ * Plans to add to Git the plenary templates (templates generated by the broker)
+ 
+Internal authentication requires Kerberos
+ * Can use Windows Krb
+ 
+To foster adoption need both to package it and document the basic configuration
+ * Documentation may be started on a wiki but the Pan book may be used as the model for the real documentation
+ 
+== Core Tools ==
+
+=== QWG ===
+
+See slides.
+
+Main technical issue: integration with Aquilon
+ * Need to better understand the changes that may be needed
+ 
+Open questions
+ * A new relase manager taking over from Michel: Guillaume? Jerome?
+ * How to better organize QWG templates into well defined subsets?
+   * Easier for users to start without pulling a lot of unneeded things
+   * Easier sharing of release manager role between several people
+ * Move the QWG repository to Git to ease integration of contributions?
+   * Easier and more flexible merge
+   * May need to forget about SVN history: previous attempt to migrate it failed: not necessarily a problem if we want to reorganize QWG templates into different subsets
+
+=== ncm-metaconfig ===
+
+A filecopy replacement, able to do handle content templating and to validate the configuration provided against a schema.
+ * Template system is implemented in ncm-ncd
+ * Same features as filecopy regarding ability to restart a service: would try to avoid arbitrary commands
+ 
+See if it is possible to ensure that metaconfig is a superset for filecopy and download and obsolete them
+
+=== panc ===
+
+Current version is 9.2
+
+9.3: development version
+ * Significant parts now in clojure
+ * Ready to generate multiple output formats
+   * Bug fix: timestamp check on all output files
+   * xmldb removal?
+ * Bug fix: Java 1.7 support
+ * Bug fix: catch invalid replace string exception
+ * Allow negative values in range expressions
+ * annotation/compilation split into 2 commands
+ * Change of options for panc command to streamline use: still need to update Ant and Maven
+   * panc.old still here and support the old options to ease the transition: should disappear at the next release
+   * Ant and Maven will support both option sets
+ * Release planned soon after the workshop
+ 
+Future: 
+ * more clojure...
+ * Plan to remove escaping as soon as xmlbdb support has been dropped off
+   * First optional: through a switch
+   * Requires an updated version of CCM (tbd by Luis)
+   
+=== SPMA + YUM ===
+
+Good reasons for SPMA design but:
+ * Controlling the version of each package is turning into a nightmare
+ * Dependency resolution is a must
+ 
+New ncm-spma developped uisng a YUM backend rather than spma
+ * Use the same configuration information
+   * But for most packages, it's enough to have an empty nlist for the package: huge time saving if not executing pkcg_xxx()
+ * No more need for repository resolution: huge improvement in compilation time
+ * Small reduction in profile size (~10%)
+ * Repository templates are reduced to the declaration of the YUM repository, not its contents
+ * Updating a repository will trigger a node update: may need to use repository snapshots for deployment to avoid permanent upgrades
+   * Clearly the area needing some efforts and experience feedback but they are standard tools available for that
+ * Support for rollbacks with YUM history plugins
+ 
+Additional benefits
+ * No more use of spma and rpmt-py
+ 
+Missing bit
+ * AII update: do not run spma anymore
+   * Use Kickstart 'repository' directive instead
+ * GPG key support
+ * Package blacklisting
+ 
+  
+== Development Process ==
+
+=== Scrum process - Releases ===
+
+How useful are the weekly meeting?
+ * Very small attendance
+ * These meetings turn out to be too much a status report of what people are doing
+ 
+Backlog is too long for the manpower available to work on non site specific issues
+
+Cal's proposal
+ * Every monday: a check by email of what was done by everyone and decide from this if the meeting is worth
+ * Cancel the meeting if there is nothing to discuss
+ 
+Connected to the release discussion...
+ * What do we call a release? When do we do a new one?
+   * Feature based: significant new features? bunch of bug fixes?
+   * Time based? May be more suitable for a best-effort project. In this case use YYYYMM as the base number
+ * A separate release of each subset rather than 1 big fat release: same numbering for all components
+ 
+Building a release means be confident that the different pieces work together
+ * Need an infrastructure to do automatic testing
+ 
+Specific problem of components: require an upgrade of the templates to provide the appropriate schema, explicit version if used...
+   
+How to start with releases
+ * Cal will create/initialize a Git repository dedicated to the release management, based on StratusLab experience
+ * Target date: end of month
+ * Use wathever we have today: goal of first release is to test the release process
+ 
+Still in SVN
+ * ncm-cdispd/ncm-listend
+ * gLite configuration component
+ * SCDB
+ * QWG templates
+ 
+=== GitHub vs. SF ===
+
+GitHub service looks much better and more performant
+ * Agreement to move to GitHub
+ * If MS has a legal problem, we'll look for a workaround
+ 
+
+=== Automatic testing of client code ===
+
+A test framework developed for Quattor configuration modules (Perl)
+ * Requires PERL5LIB env variable to be defined and contain CCM, NCM, CAF, LC
+ * Add one line to disable actual execution of commands:
+{{{
+use Test::Quattor;
+}}}
+
+Tests
+ * Must not access the network
+ * Any function in the module called by the tested function must be mocked
+{{{
+ue Test::MockModule;
+}}}
+ * Must be unit tests: test only one specific feature/function
+ * To test the Configure method, use a real profile passed as argument to  Test::Quattor
+ * Avoid constants in functions as they make testing difficult without impacting the production. Prefer passing these values as arguments, allowing to use different values in tests:
+{{{
+my ($self,$const) = @_;
+}}}
+
+Result validation can be done on return value, file contents and properties, executed commands
+
+After execution of the tests, it is possible to generate coverage information
+ * For statementd, functions, loops, conditionals
+
+Unit tests are easy to schedule with Jenkins
+ * Jenkins at UGent does it for configuration modules, CCM and AII
+ 
+Acceptance tests require deployment of test machines
+ * Could be coordinated by Jenkins (in fact done by StratusLab)
+ * May a StratusLab cloud help with this? Probably yes, except for AII
+ 
+ 
+== Quattor Data Warehouse - J. Adams ==
+
+Background
+ * CDB2SQL broken and requires Oracle
+ * A quick and dirty dashboard created, based on grep: inefficient
+ 
+New project started based on JSON output from panc
+ * Input data is a git repository updated when a deploy is done
+   * Track profile changes and reindex them
+   * Allow very fast arbitrary searches with ElasticSearch
+   * No access to Git history yet
+ * Naive prototype written in Python for proof of concept
+ 
+Need to package it and do the initial documentation.
+
+
+== Short-term Workplan ==
+
+Quattor release: target mid-december
+ * Probably not a public release: more to test the process
+ * Without QWG for this first one
+ * Repository initialization this afternoon...
+ * Initial contents: base daemons, panc, core configuration components, AII
+ * Testing: mostly manual this time
+   * Install some test nodes with a minimal configuration for main components (Luis) 
+
+RPM naming
+ * Currently we have only snapshots with the date in the name
+ * Maven release plugin should be enough to tag releases, based on pom file
+
+QWG
+ * Move repo to Git: 1 for core templates, 1 for OS, 1 for grid, 1 for StratusLab
+ * Write a tool to produce a package (tar file?) from the different repositories
+ * Remove the templates coming from somewhere else (core components) from the QWG repositories
+   * Use Nexus to pull the appropriate version: the dependency plugin allows to untar all the things in one place
+   
+   
+   
+