[CentOS-devel] Switching to centralized authentication for centos.org infra (aka FAS vs IPA)

On Tue Dec 02 2014 at 9:09:15 AM Fabian Arrotin <arrfab at centos.org> wrote:

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> On 19/11/14 14:29, Xavier Lamien wrote:
> > Greetings folks,
> >
> > As the principal FAS upstream, I would like to help you guys out
> > making - as much as possible - (the right?) move by having the
> > right information.
> >
> > First of all, let's start by a short FAS introduction.
> >
> > FAS has been designed to be community oriented by providing to the
> > community a way to operate by itself through teams management (i.e
> > group membership/management). As a result, our web interface has to
> > be more than just an administrative interface to manage users &
> > groups like other does. I recommend to go read more about it at
> > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/about before go further.
> >
> > While keeping the openness, we also added: 1. A plugin Interface
> > which let you add any new feature Plugin we had developed: *
> > asterisk (no longer in prod however the plugin still is maintain) *
> > yubikey (some of our group requires their members to have a key to
> > access bound hosts) * OTP 2 factor auth (in a branch)
> >
> > 2. A non-standard API (current master) which let registered people
> > and/or 3rd parties (from login mechanism) to read-only from FAS.
> >
> > Next is, my feedback after reviewed the wiki page and previous
> > msg:
> >
> >>> project URL
> >
> > The project is mainly active on github (fedorahosted.org
> > <http://fedorahosted.org> has been set as backup) v2:
> > https://github.com/fedora-infra/fas v3.0:
> > https://github.com/fedora-infra/fas/tree/FAS_3.0
> >
> >>> packages available natively in the distro
> >
> > We do provide rpm's for rhel (e.g.
> > http://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/6Server/x86_
> 64/fas-0.10.0-5.el6.noarch.rpm)
> >
> >
> FAS v3 package will be in distro as it will be no Fedora project specific.
> >
> >
> >>> multi-master replication
> >
> > Is this our we can replicate FAS from a master image? I really
> > didn't get that one. If someone could explain it to me, that would
> > be great.
> >
> >
> >>> kerberos support:
> >
> > Not supported at this time. We do think of it for a v3.xx though.
> > But it's not in my priority list unless someone is interesting to
> > work on it.
> >
> >>> LDAP support:
> >
> > FAS v2: no. FAS v3.2: yes however, the LDAP support will be for
> > group and people management. We will keep the DB as FAS is not
> > about user and group management only.
> >
> >>> It's more or less a "Users CMDB" and cron jobs/scripts are
> > creating/removing/modifying users/groups locally on each managed
> > system.
> >
> > Naa, we have a fas-client which actually does the job to
> > synchronize accounts on hosts. fas-client has been cron'd as the v2
> > is a non-daemon tools. We do have a daemon option though that
> > listen to fedmsg and update hosts on demand. However, we set up a
> > push-mode into Fedora infra.
> >
> >>> Mainly written to discuss with the fedmsg bus, and so
> >>> targetting all
> > Fedora Applications
> >
> > FAS has not been written to talk to 3rd parties (as stated in
> > introduction). fedmsg cames few years after FASv2 launch. fedmsg is
> > for FAS just another notification mechanism.
> >
> >>> Written for one project
> >
> > It has been the case for quite a while before I started work on
> > FAS. For the record, I maintain the RPM Fusion infra and are using
> > FAS there as well. even though this is related to fedora project,
> > RPM Fusion are not providing the same level of services and doesn't
> > have the same team structure (we don't use license agreement
> > feature, nor asterisk's one, nor bugzilla feature atm).
> >
> >>> but we are working on a new fas 3 version that will use flask.
> >
> > Naa.. FAS 3 is a pyramid app.
> >
> >>> I guess it would be easier for everybody too, as just for today
> >>> I've
> > read that FAS3 would be in fact based on IPA so not on the actual
> > FAS setup
> >
> > Nope, it will not rely on FreeIPA as FreeIPA doesn't comply with
> > our need as stated in introduction. However, we may look at their
> > kerberos and directory server implementation as a plugin for FAS.
> >
> > If you have any question which are not answered here, please feel
> > free to ask. Also, as Kevin said, the v3 is being writing and will
> > come up with lot of features so question here are much appreciate
> > ;)
> >
> > - Xavier
> >
>
> (trying to resurrect that thread, as no real momentum/traction at the
> moment it seems)
>
> So, the major request is for SIGs developers to get access to our
> Community Builders (http://cbs.centosr.org). We currently use a custom
> wrapper/script using an internal CA to create keys/certs and have
> those distributed to SIGs people having access to koji.
> It's not clear if FAs provides an easy way to retrieve such key/cert
>

Yes, users used to get them at https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts/
user/dogencert.
However, this key only work for the buildsys atm.


> easily : as an example, I don't see any automatically created key/cert
> in my FAS account when logged on
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts (or is that hidden and only
> available to people in certain groups ?)
>

Yeah, we disabled it from the UI and recommend our contributors to use the
tool "fedora-cert". This can be re-enabled.



> To also be clear : we'll *not* switch all centos.org nodes auth to
> that centralized authentication (there is no current need for that,
> and especially for nodes that are just mirrors/rsync targets, on which
> user accounts with rights are already managed by puppet)
>
> So, using a centralized auth is for new apps (and then why not
> considering merging existing ones to use that solution too) :
>  * koji (we need the central tool to let people auto-register
> themselves and retrieve their keys/signed x509 certs)
>  * Git authentication : gitblit (backend for git.centos.org) supports
> multiple auth mechanisms, including x509 so we'll reuse that (actually
> it's only using embedded localdb for users/groups)
>
> For the future, it would be good to see if we can centralize other
> solutions to use that central auth :
>  * Wiki (actually moin)
>  * Forums (phpbb so probably better to not use ldap, but try to use OAuth)
>
>
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