[Mageia-sysadm] Packaging puppet modules

Fri Mar 25 19:47:40 CET 2011

On Fri, 25 Mar 2011, Buchan Milne wrote:
+
+> 
+> ----- "nicolas vigier" <boklm at mars-attacks.org> wrote:
+> 
+> > Hello,
+> > 
+> > We have now created a lot of puppet modules for different things used
+> > on Mageia servers. And I think many of them could be useful for other
+> > people installing servers. They are already available on our svn
+> > server,
+> > but I think we can do something better, to make them easier to use.
+> > 
+> > When trying to use puppet modules from other people that I found on
+> > the
+> > internet,
+> 
+> >From puppet forge (http://forge.puppetlabs.com/), or somewhere else?
+
+Yes, from there. Modules available there are of various quality.
+
+> 
+> > I usually have the following problems :
+> >  - modules are made for other distributions
+> >  - modules have dependencies on other modules, and it is not easy to
+> > see
+> >    which ones
+> 
+> And puppet-module (https://github.com/puppetlabs/puppet-module-tool) isn't able to resolve them?
+
+Oh, I didn't use this tool, I was only cloning modules git repositories.
+Indeed it supports dependencies between modules. However it seems modules
+developers need to list them manually.
+
+> 
+> >  - sometimes they can have dependency on an other module doing
+> > something
+> >    that you already do with a different module (for instance there is
+> > many
+> >    different apache httpd modules)
+> >  - modules come from unknow people, so you have to check them
+> > carefully
+> >    before using them
+> >  - you need to modify them to do what you want, because there often
+> > is
+> >    a lot of hardcoded values everywhere
+> > 
+> > So I think it could be interesting to provide some modules for
+> > Mageia,
+> > and distribute them as packages, doing the same as what we do for
+> > other
+> > software.
+> 
+> Well, the first question is, is servers a target use case of Mageia?
+
+I don't know if target use cases have been defined yet. But it can
+probably be a target, if enough people want to work on this.
+
+> If so, should we not rather draw up requirements for all the requirements for increasing the efficiency of managing Mageia servers? Possibly draw up reference architectures for different types of deployments?
+
+Yes, that's a good idea.
+
+> 
+> > We could do something like this :
+> >  - one package per module
+> >  - modules installed in /usr/share/puppet/modules
+> >  - use rpm find-requires and find-provides to automatically manage
+> >    dependencies between modules
+> >  - remove any hardcoded values from modules, but use parameterised
+> >    classes, so you don't have to modify modules to use them
+> >  - setup puppet so that someone who wants to overwrite a module
+> > installed
+> >    by a package can create one with the same name in
+> > /etc/puppet/modules.
+> >    Or overwrite one template file.
+> 
+> +1
+> 
+> However, we may need to review what modules we would need, improve any of the ones we have developed (e.g. my Xymon one probably needs quite a bit of work).
+
+Yes. Maybe we should also define some policies about how modules should
+be written to allow packaging / standardized parameters.
+
+> For quite some time I have been wanting to make a graphical tool for installing and configuring an LDAP server, using the online configuration (cn=config) capabilities of OpenLDAP, replacing 'openldap-mandriva-dit'. If it is possible to do this with puppet (I suspect not), I might consider a module for that (although, for the OpenLDAP project, it would probably be better to have a tool not dependent on puppet, so a Catalyst component was my original plan).
+> 
+> > Those module could also be used locally by some tools. For instance
+> > if
+> > we want to create a graphical tool like drakwizard, to setup some
+> > software
+> > on a machine. This graphical interface would ask some parameters,
+> > then
+> > install the corresponding puppet modules, generate a puppet file
+> > containing the parameters entered and run puppet on it locally.
+> 
+> What is the capability of Puppet Dashboard (http://www.puppetlabs.com/puppet/related-projects/dashboard/) ?
+
+I never used it, so I don't know. But they mention "classes and parameters
+can be applied to nodes directly or inherited from groups".
+
+> 
+> > However compared to what we do currently :
+> >  - it will be more work, to avoid hardcoding anything
+> >  - modules can become more complexe if they support more things
+> >  - we will have to be careful when changing API of released modules,
+> > or
+> >    write it in release notes so users of the packages know what they
+> > need
+> >    to change when updating to a newer release of the distribution.
+> 
+> Well, we may want to upstream modules as well, especially ones that we didn't write from scratch.
+
+Yes, we can also share them on puppet forge so people using other
+distributions can use them.
+
+> 
+> > So it is more work, but I think it can be worth it. We can maybe
+> > convince
+> > other Mageia packagers to help write puppet modules for the software
+> > they package.
+> > 
+> > A distribution providing puppet modules for many software would allow
+> > someone to install one or many servers very quickly and easily, and I
+> > think it would be very nice.
+> > 
+> > Maybe this is something that could be done for Mageia release 2 or
+> > later.
+> > So I plan to try to see if/how this could be done.
+> > 
+> > What do you think ?
+> 
+> I think we can try and package some modules we use that are well-tested, or any of ours that we believe are of sufficient quality now. 
+> 
+> But, while some of the contributors on this list may want to contribute to such a project, maybe it would be better to have a separate team/project/special interest group looking at the requirements/features for a server release. And, I think mandating puppet for this would be premature (from a design perspective), as there may be other better architectures/tools (e.g. Chef?).
+
+Yes, that should be a separate team/project. I posted this on sysadmin
+list because I think that's where most interested people are, but
+anybody using Mageia could be interested to participate.
+
+And Chef should also be considered.
+
+> 
+> Also, would there be any issue regarding support? Would we point support requests to Puppet Labs?
+
+What kind of issue regarding support ? I think it would be the same as
+other open source projects we include that are maintained by a company
+providing support.
+
+