Framework for Server Role Deployment

Summary

A new D-Bus service, and associated command-line tools, to deploy and manage Server Roles.

Owner

Name: Fedora Server Working Group
Email: server AT lists DOT fedoraproject DOT org
Release notes owner:
Product: Server
Responsible WG: Server

Current status

Targeted release: Fedora 21
Last updated: April 1, 2014
Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

A new D-Bus service will be made available, exposing available server roles, making it possible to deploy, configure and manage them.

Benefit to Fedora

A common framework will allow multiple tools to deploy and configure roles at various times, without conflict. We expect this framework will be used by the installer and also by end-user tools including a command-line tool and probably higher-level tools like Cockpit.

Scope

Proposal owners: Write, document, package and test the D-Bus API.

Other developers: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Release engineering: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Policies and guidelines: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Upgrade/compatibility impact

This is new functionality, so we envisage no impact on upgrades from previous releases.

The newly introduced user-facing API is intended to be long-term, available also in future releases of Fedora without breaking applications that use it as documented. (Note that the same promise is not given for the API used to implement the server roles.)

How To Test

The API should be relatively easily testable in a VM without special hardware or configuration. Test procedure would be more or less to do a basic/minimal install, install the relevant package, and then test that roles can be deployed and configured via direct D-Bus message injection (using dbus-send, dbus-monitor etc).

Indirect testing of the API will also likely become part of Server validation testing, as role deployment and configuration are likely to figure prominently in that testing, and will run through the API.

User Experience

This Change will not be directly visible in typical server admin tasks.

Dependencies

N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Contingency Plan

Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) N/A (not a System Wide Change)
Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change), Yes/No
Blocks product? product

Documentation