You should also consider if it should within the foreman or in node.rb.
Both have advantages and disadvantages. In a sense there's already a
mutator in place in node.rb[1].

[1]: 
https://github.com/theforeman/puppet-foreman/blob/d239f0b4104ffa6839a9fc966581bff098d93e1e/files/external_node_v2.rb#L356-L364

On Wed, Aug 03, 2016 at 10:47:35AM -0700, Jon McKenzie wrote:
> Thanks Marek, this is helpful. I'll work on an RFC to try and hash out some 
> of the details.
> 
> On Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at 9:58:59 AM UTC-4, Marek Hulán wrote:
> >
> > Hello 
> >
> > thanks for the write up. first of all - I find it useful. Not only for 
> > users but 
> > for plugin developers too. I encountered this scenario several times 
> > already, 
> > I'd like to extend ENC from plugin. For example in foreman_openscap we 
> > provide 
> > puppet module to configure scap client and we need to add the manifest to 
> > all 
> > hosts on which certain policy should be applied. In other words we need to 
> > add 
> > class and parameters for it into the ENC output. We would find the same 
> > thing 
> > useful in remote execution to configure ssh keys. 
> >
> > So I wonder if we should add some helpers to Foreman core that would allow 
> > register "mutators" and your plugin could use it and just add the UI that 
> > allows adding rules that would add mutators. Or other plugins might depend 
> > on 
> > your plugin to use mutators. I lean towards that we provide such mechanism 
> > in 
> > core, so PRs against core would be welcome (from me at least). 
> >
> > It might be worth of suggesting through our RFC repo - 
> > https://github.com/theforeman/rfcs see PRs for examples 
> >
> > Anyway let me know if I can help somehow with your effort. 
> >
> > -- 
> > Marek 
> >
> > On Monday 01 of August 2016 10:36:11 Jon McKenzie wrote: 
> > > Quite a while ago I posted a thread 
> > > <
> > https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/foreman-users/%22smart$20classes 
> > > %22|sort:relevance/foreman-users/8BMaCeDXsM4/dVv5XSPqR7kJ> to the 
> > Foreman 
> > > Users group asking about the concept of "smart classes", i.e. the 
> > ability 
> > > to dynamically assign Puppet classes (similar to smart class parameters) 
> > > depending on fact or other data. I didn't get any responses, and 
> > > ultimately, our team ended up doing something 
> > > straightforward and created hostgroups for each permutation of Puppet 
> > > classes that we had in our environment (rather than sink development 
> > time 
> > > into solving the problem in a different way). Predictably, this has 
> > become 
> > > somewhat annoying to maintain as our environment has grown. 
> > > 
> > > I started thinking more about this recently, and came up with what I 
> > think 
> > > might be a workable solution to this type of requirement. Let me know 
> > what 
> > > you think. 
> > > 
> > > The basic problem is that Foreman's model for categorizing hosts is a 
> > > little bit too rigid to handle certain use cases. For my environment, 
> > there 
> > > are two basic issues: assigning a class based on fact or parameter data, 
> > > and removing inherited classes based on the same. I could imagine other 
> > > scenarios as well, however, for example retrieving a class parameter 
> > value 
> > > from an external system (rather than storing it statically within 
> > Foreman). 
> > > 
> > > For users who can't accomplish their host classification with the 
> > builtin 
> > > tools, there would be a "safety valve" of sorts -- a Foreman 
> > administrator 
> > > could define little bits of code that mutate the Foreman-generated ENC 
> > data 
> > > arbitrarily (sort of like ENC middleware), based on fact or other data 
> > > about the host. This would work in the following way: 
> > > 
> > > The admin would define ENC "mutators" in a configuration directory, e.g. 
> > > /etc/foreman/mutators.d. There would be a standard API for these 
> > mutators 
> > > that might look something like this: 
> > > 
> > > Mutator.create(:some_mutator_name) do |enc, facts| 
> > >   if facts[:ipaddress] =~ /^10\./ and 
> > !enc[:classes].has_key?('some::class') 
> > > enc[:classes]['some::class'] = nil 
> > >   end 
> > >   enc 
> > > end 
> > > 
> > > (where `facts' is a hash of the requesting host's facts and `enc' is the 
> > > standard ENC data returned by Foreman's node classifier) 
> > > 
> > > When the Foreman server boots, it would load these mutators out of the 
> > > config dir. When a Puppet server requests ENC data for a host, Foreman 
> > > would retrieve the ENC data as normal, and then run the mutators against 
> > > that data in some configurable order. Each mutator would return the 
> > mutated 
> > > ENC, and this would be passed on to the next mutator in the chain. At 
> > the 
> > > end of the chain, the final ENC data would be passed back to the Puppet 
> > > server to use for catalog compilation. (Optionally, a system could be 
> > > established to allow the web UI user to pick and choose which host, 
> > > hostgroup, etc. gets which mutator and what order the mutators should 
> > run, 
> > > but this would take a little bit more effort to implement). Ideally, the 
> > > ENC data would be exposed in the web UI along each part of the chain so 
> > > that operators can inspect and validate its correctness -- at the very 
> > > least, a 'before' and 'after' image could be displayed. 
> > > 
> > > Before I start building something, I'd like to get some thoughts on this 
> > > idea. Would other people find this useful? Are there other approaches 
> > > people have tried and found successful? 
> >
> >
> 
> -- 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
> "foreman-dev" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
> email to [email protected].
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"foreman-dev" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to [email protected].
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Reply via email to