[katello-devel] RFC: Strategy for Importing Data from Spacewalk

[James Labocki]

Comments inline

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Bryan Kearney" <bkearney at redhat.com>
> To: katello-devel at redhat.com, "James Labocki" <jlabocki at redhat.com>, ejacobs at redhat.com
> Sent: Friday, September 28, 2012 12:42:06 PM
> Subject: RFC: Strategy for Importing Data from Spacewalk
> 
> All:
> 
> I am looking for comments on an approach for migrating data from
> spacewalk into katello. The model I was looking at is one set of
> scripts
> [1] which can export data from a spacewalk server and create a set of
> flat files. These flat files could then be loaded into katello using
> new
> import commands [2] in the cli. My thinking was that the import
> commands
> could be re-used for any other initial set up work which may not be
> from
> an existing spacewalk server.

Are there any examples of other systems management tools that create flat files for backing up or migrating configuration and data? If there are and we could align enough with them to be able to support them then this approach could provide value beyond just migrating Satellite to Katello (Opsware to Katello, OEM to Katello, etc). I doubt there is a standard way that exists, but might be worth thinking about it. 

> 
> What is working today is the following;
> 
> Export Scripts:
> -------------------
> - Export orgs, users, activation keys, system groups.
> - There are default credentials, or you can pass them in on the
> command line
> - The export can pass data to std out, or put it into a file.

Is there anyway to go directly to Katello instead of creating the file? Are we doing this because we don't yet trust the export/import?

> - Statistics and errors are recorded to files on a per object type
> basis.
> 
> Import
> ---------
> - Import in orgs and system groups.
> - Org data may need to be manipulated since there is currently a 2
> character limit for org names and ids.
> - Statistics and errors are recorded to files on a per object type
> basis.

What happens to the systems that are registered? 

Is there some way the export tool could provide a list of registered systems in Satellite and the a script (via trusted host or similar) that could execute the rhn-to-subscription-manager (or similar) commands on the clients to register them to katello?

What about configuration channels? Can we begin to dump them out in some user or machine readable format in the file as well? It might be useful for those crazy enough to migrate to puppet before it's in the channel?



> 
> Anyways, please take a look. The code is pretty much happy path only,
> but it is good enough for the approach to be criticized.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -- bk
> 
> [1] https://github.com/bkearney/export
> [2] https://github.com/bkearney/katello/tree/import
> 
>