[PKG-Openstack-devel] debian openstack and puppet

[Benedikt Trefzer]

Hi list

I'm installing an openstack cluster, that is spanned over several nodes.
All config files (and also package installation) is handled with puppet.
The Debian packages do quite a lot of configuration work using
preseeding etc. But actually these configuration do not work together
well with the puppet manifests.

Setting up a new node with puppet, which installs the debian packages
without any interaction results in default values taken. In the same
run, puppet overwrites all the values in the config files.

Problems occuring when package updates arriving. Either certain
configuration parameters are asked interactivly or the default values
from installation are taken. Both results in overwriting the
configuration made by puppet. Well as soon as puppet is running again,
it corrects the config and the system is working again.

The problem is, that this gives a downtime of openstack services in
between package installation and the next puppet run.
Even worse db synchronisation (something made by the postinst script) is
not executed correctly, since the database connection string is at its
default value at the time of execution.... (also endpoint registrations
does not work (which is actually good, since it does not corrupt the
whole cluster, but waiting for the timeout and an error message is not
the gents way of doing....)).

This leads to the question how to handle this. Actually anyone using a
config system like puppet, chef, ansible etc. will face the same problem.

Any suggestions, ideas, solutions etc ?

Regards

Benedikt Trefzer