[Freeipa-devel] [PATCH] 0062 Don't crash when server returns extra output

[Rob Crittenden]

Petr Viktorin wrote:
> On 06/12/2012 02:38 PM, Simo Sorce wrote:
>> On Tue, 2012-06-12 at 13:12 +0200, Petr Viktorin wrote:
>>> This will make older clients usable if new output items get added to
>>> commands.
>>>
>>> Since there might be important information in the extra output, it's not
>>> ignored as the ticket asks. Instead it's printed, but not formatted
>>> nicely as the client doesn't have enough info for that.
>>>
>>> https://fedorahosted.org/freeipa/ticket/1721
>>
>> Patch is missing.
>>
>> Simo.
>>
>
> My apologies

I'd replace the print_line with print_indented so the output looks a 
little nicer.

This sure does make an impression. It looks something like this (with 
print_indented):

$ ipa user-show admin
   User login: admin
   Last name: Administrator
   Home directory: /home/admin
   Login shell: /bin/bash
   UID: 1872200000
   GID: 1872200000
   Account disabled: False
   Password: True
   Member of groups: admins, trust admins
   Kerberos keys available: True
------------------------------
Unexpected output from server:
------------------------------
   new: new

It's hard to argue with this as being descriptive it just seems a bit 
overbearing.

I have a couple of ideas on this.

1. We could detect and supress unexpected output by default and include 
a note at the end, something like:

Unexpected output suppressed, use --all to show.

2. Replace the print_dashed with print_line and embed a \n in the value 
so it would look like:

$ ipa user-show admin
   User login: admin
   Last name: Administrator
   Home directory: /home/admin
   Login shell: /bin/bash
   UID: 1872200000
   GID: 1872200000
   Account disabled: False
   Password: True
   Member of groups: admins, trust admins
   Kerberos keys available: True

Unexpected output from server:
   new: new

I think we'll need to document this somewhere in any case, explaining 
how this situation can happen. I think it could be very confusing.

Functionally it works pretty well.

rob