Re: [Freeipa-devel] Design discussion: autofs integration

2011-12-10 Thread Ian Kent
On Fri, 2011-12-09 at 09:48 +0100, Jakub Hrozek wrote:
  
  One thing I dislike about the discussion, and while I let it pass in
  bugs and mailing list discussions, I think it is wrong to put it in
  public design documents. The statement autofs abuses the nsswitch.conf
  configuration file I find a little offensive. autofs uses that
  configuration file and parses only the automount entry using the same
  semantic behavior as nss, so the word abuse is wrong and a little rude
  IMHO.
 
 I'm sorry -- I didn't mean to offend you and perhaps abuse was a strong
 word. I've changed the design docs.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm happy for people to say what they think
within mailing list discussions and, to a lesser extent, within bug
discussions, but in a web presented design document a little more care
really should be taken IMHO.

Ian


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Re: [Freeipa-devel] Design discussion: autofs integration

2011-12-10 Thread Ian Kent
On Fri, 2011-12-09 at 09:48 +0100, Jakub Hrozek wrote:
 On Fri, Dec 09, 2011 at 08:01:44AM +0800, Ian Kent wrote:
  On Thu, 2011-12-08 at 17:52 +0100, Jakub Hrozek wrote:
   Hi,
   
   I have created a wiki page summarizing my design proposal on integrating
   SSSD with automounter:
   https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/wiki/DesignDocs/AutofsIntegration
   
   Feedback is much appreciated - a reply to this email would probably work
   best. The target of this work is 1.8
  
  Thanks for writing this summary, it's excellent.
  There's not much I have to say about it because it is already quite
  thorough.
  
  One thing I dislike about the discussion, and while I let it pass in
  bugs and mailing list discussions, I think it is wrong to put it in
  public design documents. The statement autofs abuses the nsswitch.conf
  configuration file I find a little offensive. autofs uses that
  configuration file and parses only the automount entry using the same
  semantic behavior as nss, so the word abuse is wrong and a little rude
  IMHO.
 
 I'm sorry -- I didn't mean to offend you and perhaps abuse was a strong
 word. I've changed the design docs.

None taken, the word is simply to strong for the message that is being
conveyed.

 
 That said, I'm still not convinced that it is a good idea to use another
 application's config file.
 
 My main concern is that users often mistakenly think that there is a
 standard glibc interface defined. Also, when the shared config file
 changes (not that it's likely that nsswitch would change drastically),
 you're in trouble -- for instance, sudo suffered recently when Fedora
 changed from using ldap.conf to nslcd.conf

It's hard to argue this point since that is my own opinion as well. But,
in this case, it was so much more sensible to take the risk (the
longevity of this configuration file counted in the decision) and use
this particular configuration.

During the initial autofs version 5 development I spent a sufficient
amount of time (quite a bit actually) trying to use the glibc nss
interface for the autofs ldap lookup module (including writing the glibc
backend since there were no nss automount modules at all) to work out
that using it was going to be very painful for me, not to mention that I
would have had to write all needed source modules myself, including
their backend component and hope they would be accepted into glibc
within a time frame that met my tight schedule.

So, the decision was made to break my own rule and re-use large portions
of existing autofs code, and yes, I would have rather used a published
interface, but for better or for worse, that is the way it was done
which happens some times, unfortunately.

Ian


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Re: [Freeipa-devel] Design discussion: autofs integration

2011-12-09 Thread Jakub Hrozek
On Fri, Dec 09, 2011 at 08:01:44AM +0800, Ian Kent wrote:
 On Thu, 2011-12-08 at 17:52 +0100, Jakub Hrozek wrote:
  Hi,
  
  I have created a wiki page summarizing my design proposal on integrating
  SSSD with automounter:
  https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/wiki/DesignDocs/AutofsIntegration
  
  Feedback is much appreciated - a reply to this email would probably work
  best. The target of this work is 1.8
 
 Thanks for writing this summary, it's excellent.
 There's not much I have to say about it because it is already quite
 thorough.
 
 One thing I dislike about the discussion, and while I let it pass in
 bugs and mailing list discussions, I think it is wrong to put it in
 public design documents. The statement autofs abuses the nsswitch.conf
 configuration file I find a little offensive. autofs uses that
 configuration file and parses only the automount entry using the same
 semantic behavior as nss, so the word abuse is wrong and a little rude
 IMHO.

I'm sorry -- I didn't mean to offend you and perhaps abuse was a strong
word. I've changed the design docs.

That said, I'm still not convinced that it is a good idea to use another
application's config file.

My main concern is that users often mistakenly think that there is a
standard glibc interface defined. Also, when the shared config file
changes (not that it's likely that nsswitch would change drastically),
you're in trouble -- for instance, sudo suffered recently when Fedora
changed from using ldap.conf to nslcd.conf

 
 In the section The LDAP schema used by autofs which talks about schema
 it is probably worth mentioning the difficulty with the cn attribute
 being case insensitive. That introduces problems because key names
 (essentially directory names) are case sensitive and I believe that is
 the main reason RFC2307bis (as it relates to autofs) was adopted.
 

Good point, I've included that in the design page.

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Re: [Freeipa-devel] Design discussion: autofs integration

2011-12-09 Thread Ian Kent
On Thu, 2011-12-08 at 17:52 +0100, Jakub Hrozek wrote:
 Hi,
 
 I have created a wiki page summarizing my design proposal on integrating
 SSSD with automounter:
 https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/wiki/DesignDocs/AutofsIntegration
 
 Feedback is much appreciated - a reply to this email would probably work
 best. The target of this work is 1.8

Thanks for writing this summary, it's excellent.
There's not much I have to say about it because it is already quite
thorough.

One thing I dislike about the discussion, and while I let it pass in
bugs and mailing list discussions, I think it is wrong to put it in
public design documents. The statement autofs abuses the nsswitch.conf
configuration file I find a little offensive. autofs uses that
configuration file and parses only the automount entry using the same
semantic behavior as nss, so the word abuse is wrong and a little rude
IMHO.

In the section The LDAP schema used by autofs which talks about schema
it is probably worth mentioning the difficulty with the cn attribute
being case insensitive. That introduces problems because key names
(essentially directory names) are case sensitive and I believe that is
the main reason RFC2307bis (as it relates to autofs) was adopted.

Ian


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[Freeipa-devel] Design discussion: autofs integration

2011-12-08 Thread Jakub Hrozek
Hi,

I have created a wiki page summarizing my design proposal on integrating
SSSD with automounter:
https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/wiki/DesignDocs/AutofsIntegration

Feedback is much appreciated - a reply to this email would probably work
best. The target of this work is 1.8

Thank you!

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