Project Description

The idea for project starts on LEO workshop. The main goal is to provide UI for local configuration that allows easy transition to 1:N management. So here is vision:

• frontend: web-UI, GUI, TUI, CLI, whatever, for now lets start with CLI
• backend: salt/puppet/chef/ansible/cfengine. In general write config for CM and not config files itself.
• features: discovery/edit/create/apply on top of backend. Each step separated, so user can e.g. apply itself by using CM directly.
• default value is keep value as it is, so anything not specific is not modified, but when something is specified then it can "eat" modifications as do salt and others
• supported distros - openSUSE, SLE, ubuntu, debian, fedora at least
• communication between frontend and backend is a CLI and YAML file with defined structure, but not aiming to be any kind of new standard, just textual configuration to transfer data in human readable form.

Advantages:

• easily extensible as it use plugins like e.g. git
• can run as service similar way like e.g. salt server can run it via ssh
• easy move from 1:1 to 1:N
• does not repeat what CM can already do and gets many features for free.
• distro agnostic, so user can use same tool in heterogenous environment
• can work remotely

Disadvantages:

• Overwrite manual changes
• less features then specialized tools like YaST

Use Cases:

• I have one server that I am taking care. And as my project start growing I need more of them and want to have it consistently configured. So easily move from 1:1 to 1:N.
• Company already use salt and I get a task to manage also FTP server configuration over it. I want to experiment with it at first on single server with some UI that allows me to quickly create initial config and then tune it with more advanced settings.
• Company bought another one and they use salt and we are using ansible. Goal is to unify it. I want tool that helps me with conversion.
• I want to start with ansible and prefer GUI for easy start.

Goal for this Hackweek

• POC with users management
• discovery works
• CLI frontend
• salt and ansible backend
• works on opensuse TW and Ubuntu 20.04
• If time permit try quick GUI
• as API (see below) is YAML and CLI, then parts can be written in any language ( but please no shell )

API Proposal:

• as said above communication is done via CLI and yaml file
• discovery using some CM tool to discover and convert to YAML
• backend is just CLI that do YAML->target file(-s) for given CM
• frontend works on top of YAML + can call that CLI
• apply is just different CLI for given backend, additional features like dry run can be also supported by this CLI. machine output is must have

Resources

• Repo with project https://github.com/jreidinger/ucmt
• https://docs.saltproject.io/en/3000/ref/states/all/salt.states.user.html
• https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/ansible/builtin/user_module.html
• https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks_checkmode.html