On Apr 5, 2010, at 11:08 AM, Scott Henson wrote:

> Excerpts from Thomas S Hatch's message of Fri Apr 02 17:27:36 -0400  
> 2010:
>> I just updated a test system running fedora 11 from cobbler 1.6.6  
>> to cobbler
>> 2.0.3.1 and came across something rather unsettling, I hope it can
>> be repaired by updating my understanding of cobbler.
>>
>> One of my distro configurations points to a kernel image which is now
>> unavailable, I can replace the kernel image, but what unsettles me  
>> is that
>> cobbler won't start, and if I wanted to alter the configuration I  
>> would need
>> to communicate with a running cobbler server.
>
> This isn't new with cobbler 2.0.  The new part of cobbler 2.0 though
> is that the cli now goes through cobblerd, which probably makes this
> harder to fix than it once was.
>
>> I while I am going to agree that a mis-configured server should not  
>> start,
>> my problem is that cobbler is configured through access to the  
>> running
>> server.  Now I need to repair the paths manually or remove all of  
>> the json
>> files which referenced my distro while crossing my fingers that I  
>> don't
>> disturb the cobbler internals somehow.
>>
>> I am going to recommend that the behavior be such that
>> a mis-configured element would raise a warning or log message  
>> rather than
>> preventing the service from being reconfigured.  From  a design  
>> perspective,
>> since the decision has been made to ensure a working configuration  
>> through
>> the api, then the api should not prevent repairing a  
>> configuration.  This
>> is especially true because of the disparate external circumstances  
>> in which
>> the configuration can be compromised.
>
> We have wanted to do this for quite some time, but we haven't been
> able to agree on the proper action to take.  Should the bad object be
> marked as bad and then all downstream objects simply not show up until
> it is fixed?  Or should we throw an error and refuse to do any
> kickstarting till everything is fixed.  One could make the argument
> that cobbler should just let things go along even if it knows that an
> error will be generated later on in the process.  I'm not sure what
> the right behavior is here.  Does anyone else have ideas on what the
> right behavior is?  I'm a fan of marking the object bad and not
> showing any downstream stuff.
> -- 
> Scott Henson
> Red Hat CIS Operator
> WVU Alum BSAE/BSME
> _______________________________________________
> cobbler mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/cobbler

My opinion is that if there is any problem parsing the configs, then  
we should not assume that the operator knows what he/she is doing.  
Fail to start with a descriptive error: Could not find resource X  
referenced in Y.
I recently screwed up our configs and left a stray file laying around.  
Cobbler didn't know what to do with this. The 'check' command failed  
ungracefully since it couldn't parse the configs.

-jesse

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