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Split config into project-config and system-config

Story: https://storyboard.openstack.org/#!/story/167

This describes a further refactor of the openstack-infra/config repo to split system administration from project configuration.

Problem Description

The config repo, particularly the openstack_project module, contains both information on how our particular systems are operated (what we might call system administration information) as well as the configuration of those systems specific to their use hosting the OpenStack project.

Much of the latter might be considered more like configuration data. There are a number of people within the OpenStack project competent to review changes to project and CI system configuration, but they are overwhelmed by the system administration related changes in the same repo.

Likewise, those who would like to help refactor the system administration in the config repo to be more useful to other projects and downstream users are not particularly interested in reviewing new project changes. Further, colocating the two kinds of information makes it potentially harder for downstream users of the config repo. Future refactoring of the system administration portions of the openstack_project module are anticipated by this specification, but are not described here.

Proposed Change

The following parts of the config repo will be extracted (preserving history where possible) into a new git repo called openstack-infra/project-config:

modules/openstack_project/files/jenkins_job_builder/config/*
modules/openstack_project/files/zuul/openstack_functions.py
modules/openstack_project/files/zuul/layout.yaml
modules/openstack_project/files/zuul/layout-dev.yaml
modules/openstack_project/files/accessbot/channels.yaml
modules/openstack_project/files/gerrit/acls/*
modules/openstack_project/files/gerrit/notify_impact.yaml
modules/openstack_project/files/nodepool/*
modules/openstack_project/files/review-dev.projects.yaml
modules/openstack_project/files/review.projects.yaml
modules/openstack_project/files/slave_scripts/*
modules/openstack_project/files/specs/index.html
modules/gerritbot/files/gerritbot_channel_config.yaml

Other files may move into the repo in the future as well as it becomes clear how to separate them from system administration concerns (ongoing work with multiple hiera data files may prove useful here).

Puppet configuration will then be updated to maintain a vcsrepo checkout of the project-config repo (whose URL will be configurable to support downstream use) and either reference or install files as needed from it. Puppet templates (.erb files) will not be supported. Some puppet actions are triggered by changes to these files, and that will still need to be accomodated.

The files which have been added to project-config will be removed from the config repo, and the config repo itself will be renamed to system-config.

Alternatives

N/A.

Implementation

Assignee(s)

Primary assignee:

corvus (If you want to work on this, contact me!)

Work Items

  • Git filter-branch the listed files into a project-config repo

  • Propose a change to adjust puppet config to install and reference the project-config repo on related hosts, and remove related files.

  • Freeze changes to related files.

  • Update project-config with latest data from config.

  • Land the above change.

  • Unfreeze.

  • Rename config to system-config, and update the puppet master to use the new repo name.

Repositories

Create openstack-infra/project-config from a git filter-branch of config. Rename openstack-infra/config to openstack-infra/system-config

Servers

N/A.

DNS Entries

N/A.

Documentation

The infra/config docs will need to be updated to reference the new repo and locations of files. A new sphinx macro will need to be made to support linking to the new repo within docs. An announcement should be made to both the infra and dev lists.

Security

None of the listed files have passwords in them and no template parsing is immediately anticipated. If templates (to support, eg, passwords in included files) are to be added to the project-config repo and puppet is instructed to parse them, it could be instructed by a template in the project-config repo to insert a password into a wrong location and thereby either accidentally or intentially exposing it. If templating is used, then reviewers of the project-config repo should be selected with security-related trust in mind and reminded of the potential for exposure.

Testing

Private environment testing after the creation of the initial project-config repo is likely to be the best way to test the change.

Dependencies

Related to this specification to split out puppet modules, but does not depend on it: https://review.openstack.org/#/c/99990/