[Freeipa-devel] [PATCHES] 0012-13 Don't allow deleting required config options

[Rob Crittenden]

Petr Viktorin wrote:
> On 02/20/2012 08:51 PM, Rob Crittenden wrote:
>> Petr Viktorin wrote:
>>> https://fedorahosted.org/freeipa/ticket/2159 says various config options
>>> are not marked Required, so entering an empty value for it will pass
>>> validation (and IPA will blow up later when it expects a string,not
>>> None). Forexample the following:
>>> $ ipa config-mod --groupsearch=
>>> fails with AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'split'
>>>
>>> There is a more general problem behind this, though: even if the
>>> attributes *are* marked as Required, an empty string will pass
>>> validation. This is because `None` is used in `Param.validate` to mean
>>> both "No value supplied" and "Empty value supplied". The method
>>> currently assumes the former, and skips validation entirely for `None`
>>> values to optional parameters.
>>>
>>> For example, the following will delete "membergroup", even though it's a
>>> required attribute :
>>>
>>> $ ipa delegation-add --attrs=street --group=editors \
>>> --membergroup=admins td1
>>> $ ipa delegation-mod --membergroup= td1
>>>
>>> Note that some LDAPObjects handle this with a _check_empty_attrs
>>> function, so they aren't affected. That function is specific to LADP
>>> objects, though. So I needed to tackle this on a lower level.
>>>
>>> This patch solves the problem by
>>> * adding a 'nonempty' flag when a required parameter of a CRUD Update
>>> object is auto-converted to a non-required parameter
>>> * making the`validate` method aware of whether the parameter was
>>> supplied; and if it was, honor the "nonempty" flag.
>>>
>>>
>>> The second patch fixes https://fedorahosted.org/freeipa/ticket/2159 by
>>> marking required config options as required.
>>
>> This looks good but I think there are other things to protect in config
>> as well such as the default e-mail domain. It is probably safe to say
>> that everything in there is required.
>>
>> rob
>
> Let me just double-check this with you.
>
> According to code in the user plugin (around line 330), if the default
> e-mail domain is not set, users don't get an address auto-assigned. Do
> we really want to require user e-mails?
>
> ipaconfigstring (the password plugin flags) are a set (multivalue, not
> required).
>
> The rest of the values I left as not required are for optional features
> or limits: search results & time limit, max. username length, password
> expiry notification. Currently if these are missing, the feature/limit
> is disabled (well, except for the time limit).
> But, there are also special values (0 or -1) that have the same effect
> as a missing value. Sometimes they're documented.
> So we want to enforce that users use these special values instead of
> removing the config entry?

I think we want to enforce that these are defined. It will be confusing 
for users if these are not there at all. I don't think we need to show 
the special options, just declare that the attribute is required.

rob