[katello-devel] Dangerous katello-configure, planes in kitchen etc.

[Lukas Zapletal]

Hello,

so after investigation of logs, I have found out dangerous issue about
katello-configure. Suppose you install with the following command:

# katello-configure --org-name="MyOrg" --other-options ...

Then you fill some data, work with your instance and then you re-execute
katello-configure, which is considered safe:

# katello-configure

(Note the format of the commend - I will refer to this command later on)

Then you work with the system again, everything seems to be working,
until one process - the upgrade:

# katello-upgrade

In this case, upgrade process will break, because for some reason it
tries to re-seed database with ACME_Corporation (default org name)
creating another Red Hat provider etc. Other question, not important for
us, is why it does try to re-seed, but anyway there are other things
that can break like candlepin migration which would fail without proper
candlepin db password setting.

The issue: I said (on the list, on demos and maybe several other places
including kitchen) that it is SAFE to run katello-configure multiple
times. I have been working on improving our puppet codebase. But there
is one big phat BUT:

You MUST provide the --answer-file option!

# katello-configure --answer-file=/etc/katello/katello-configure.conf

Not providing it DELETES all your previous settings which does not break
things immediately, but during things like upgrades etc. This is even
more dangerous. A pilot forgets to turn deicing switch on during landing
checklist and plane does not crash immediately - but ice starts to
cumulate on wings and ...

THEREFORE

I *highly* recommend to change the behavior of katello-configure:

1) Automatically load answer file
2) New option --purge-answers that deletes the answer file so one can
start over with clean table (good for tests etc but not for production
setups). Fully documented with big warning.

Opinions?

The BZ that helped me found this issue is:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=885261

-- 
Later,

 Lukas "lzap" Zapletal
 #katello #systemengine