[Planetlab-devel] Replacing planet.cnf and updating downloadconf.php

[Stephen Soltesz]

Hello, Thierry,

This looks very nice.  It felt a little weird to me, reproducing code in the 
GUI that used to be in the API.  And in regard to the node_key's function, 
it also seems inappropriate for it to be generated anywhere other than 
within PLC API.

I like the idea of GetBootMedium() very much.  I have felt unsatisfied with 
the current boot/floppy/usb/configfile confusion, which is what prompted my 
looking into eliminating the name "planet.cnf", at least for new conf files. 
  After that I had hoped to make some one-step way of downloading the 
bootmedia-plus-plnode.txt.  It looks like you have already done this! :-)

Do the three files you reference depend on any other modifications you've 
made to other files?

Reid, Tony, how difficult would it be to adopt these changes?

Thank you,
Stephen.

Thierry Parmentelat wrote:
> Hi everyone
> 
> I'd have a few comments on this topic
> 
> * it seems to me that generating a node conf file, or more generally 
> building the boot material for a node, is special enough an operation 
> that is deserves a method of its own, for the following reasons
> ** using a combination of the 3 mentioned methods is doable, but rather 
> tricky. If for instance, the Web UI was to perform boot material 
> generation this way, it would basically mean extracting the key 
> generation code from the API to the Web UI, which I believe is wrong.
> ** CLI node config generation would become almost undoable
> ** This would also require an automated testbed to duplicate this code.
> ** for convenience it is helpful to have this operation logged as such 
> and not as any other UpdateNode action
> 
> * In addition, I've seen some people confused simply for locating the 
> 'generic' ISO or USB image (e.g. using the serial flavour without 
> necessity). This should at the very least be supported by an API method, 
> rather than pointing peole to some external http URL
> 
> * For all these reasons, I've designed a single multi-purpose API 
> operation named GetBootMedium that allows to
> ** either generate the (floppy) node config like AdmGenerateConfFile does
> ** or download the generic ISO or USB image
> ** or download a node-specific ISO or USB image (in which case 
> plnode.txt gets embedded at the right place)
> ** or for convenience just preview the configuration file (key not 
> included) for checking (this is displayed in the web UI before actual 
> generation - useful in our context for multiple interfaces and various 
> additional settings)
> http://svn.one-lab.org/filedetails.php?repname=OneLab&path=%2Fnew_plc_api%2Ftrunk%2FPLC%2FMethods%2FGetBootMedium.py 
> 
> 
> * This in turn relies on a script that ships with the bootcd module, 
> names bootcustom.sh - in fact hacked from the former cdcustom.sh - that 
> knows how to embed plnode.txt into a boot image, either usb or iso
> http://svn.one-lab.org/filedetails.php?repname=OneLab&path=%2Fbootcd%2Ftrunk%2Fbootcustom.sh 
> 
> 
> Please note that this implementation does not support the 'flavours' 
> like serial iso images at the moment. Also there is a known flaw with 
> file permissions, when GetBootMedium gets called from plcsh and then 
> from the web UI, this is something I'll have to fix at some point.
> 
> * apart from that, your summary about the key sounds correct.
> * finally, afaik plnode.txt is also used in the bootcd somewhere, so you 
> might wish to get rid of it in there too
> * please note however that from various posts, I would suspect some 
> users still burned a floppy named planet.cnf even with recent BootCDs, 
> so pushing this change in production might be disruptive.
> 
> Sorry if this answer goes way beyond your question. I was thinking you 
> might consider using this approach as well.
> 
> ps.
> I do not have a downloadconf.php anymore in my plcwww module but you can 
> see where our web ui calls GetBootMedium here
> http://svn.one-lab.org/filedetails.php?repname=OneLab&path=%2Fnew_plc_www%2Ftrunk%2Fplanetlab%2Fnodes%2Fnode_actions.php 
> 
> 
> Stephen Soltesz wrote:
>> All,
>>
>> I'd like to be sure that I'm proceeding in the right way.  It doesn't 
>> look like there is a direct replacement for the old API function 
>> AdmGenerateNodeConfFile().  The comments in the implementation of this 
>> call indicate that it should be possible to implement it with:
>>
>> GetNodes()
>> GetNodeNetworks()
>> UpdateNode()
>>
>> And, I think I see how.  The only point of clarification I'm looking 
>> for is whether the value of the node['key'] is at all special.  It 
>> looks like it is just some random characters shared between PLC and 
>> the node to seed the hmac authentication for BootManager.  Do I need 
>> to take any additional care making it up?
>>
>> Thank you,
>> Stephen.
>>
>> Marc E. Fiuczynski wrote:
>>>  > Only bootmanager usese planet.cnf/plnode.txt.  Its a one line change
>>>  > to get rid of it.
>>>
>>> Well, the bootcd 3.x scripts look for plnode.txt and planet.cnf.  The 
>>> bootcd 2.x scripts only look for planet.cnf.  Since we've declared 
>>> 2.x bootcd as dead, we should just get rid of the support to look for 
>>> planet.cnf in the 3.x bootcd, as well as in the bootmanager.
>>>
>>> We also need to change the php script that is used to generate config 
>>> file to return plnode.txt rather than planet.cnf.  That's a one line 
>>> change except that the same php script also uses the older Adm* API, 
>>> which should be updated, too.
>>>
>>> Marc
>>
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