RFC Adding Interfaces to OpenBMC

[Chris Austen]

I'd like to get some feed back on draft...

It should not be any surprise that we are trying to implement a web user
interface and Redfish.  I think requiring every implementation of OpenBMC
to now support a webui and Redfish goes against the basic principals of the
project.  A better approach would be to allow the machine configuration to
determine what features/apps to support.  The OpenBMC core would provide
the infrastructure to reverse(?) proxy incoming requests to the various
applications based on the application defining which routes it can handle.
With those thoughts in mind, the current design needs to be tweaked
slightly.

FROM:
| server | app (dbus) |
TO:
| server | reverse | app (dbus)    |
|        |  proxy  | app (web)     |
|        |         | app (redfish) |
|        |         | app (...)     |
Route handler added at service startup to create the proxy environment
(figure 1: In todays design the single app defines all routes at compile
time.  Adding routes to that single app forces all OpenBMC machines to pick
up the new routes which is undesirable)

Note: due to legacy decisions the '/' and '/xyz' route are owned by the
dbus app.  (Could the dbus route be helpful here?  All browsers use
'text/html' and our rest uses 'application/json', perhaps a nudge/redirect
the user to the correct uri)


Security:
~~~~~~~~
None at the proxy level


Registering Routes:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Route registration will happen at service start up.  An application
configuration file placed in to a predetermined location will be parsed by
the proxy code


Application Requirements:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1) The cfg file will be based on a common xxx format
- likely need a decision as to proxy or reverse proxy before declaring
config format type

2) Create a bb file in the appropriate layer.  Keep in mind the openbmc/
meta-phosphor/common/recipes-phosphor/interfaces/ is for core functionality
only.
i.e.    PROVIDES = 'phosphor-webui'
         <example of how to copy the apps config file to the correct route
registration location>

3) Declare in the appropriate machine conf file the bb file which contains
your application
i.e.    OBMC_MACHINE_FEATURES += 'phosphor-webui'




Chris Austen
POWER Systems Enablement Manager
(512) 286-5184 (T/L: 363-5184)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/openbmc/attachments/20170901/d94147dc/attachment.html>