Call for Gardening Tasks

[Joseph Reynolds]

On 4/9/20 5:19 PM, Vijay Khemka wrote:
>
> I can see following small tasks which need refactoring
>
> IPMID:
>
> Some of standard commands are incomplete here like “restore power 
> policies”, some of sensors  sdrs etc.
>
> Dbus interface:
>
> Define more dbus interfaces being used in common code. I see multiple 
> repos has these interfaces hard coded. And I agree for client side 
> code would really be helpful.
>
> Phosphor package clean up:
>
> There are many phosphor packages in image which are added by default 
> and lots of systemd unit are running irrespective of platform 
> requirements.
>
> Documentation:
>
> Many repos doesn’t have proper documentations and it will be really 
> good to add and a root level documents giving an idea about different 
> features and mapped to multiple available repos.
>

Can we flesh out the list of features?
https://github.com/openbmc/docs/blob/master/features.md


The openbmc/docs repo has good stuff for developers.  Can we take it the 
next level by adding:
- Guide for system integrators - source and build config, signing keys, etc.
- Guide for initial BMC setup - genesis boot, discovery, configure IP, 
certs, users, etc.
- Guide for system admins - ongoing tasks like auditing logs, firmware 
updates, etc.
- Security technical implementation guide (STIG).

We've discussed these in the OpenBMC security working group, and I've 
collected some details here:
https://github.com/ibm-openbmc/dev/issues/1531

I would be happy to contribute to these ... just looking for someone to 
collaborate with.  :-)

> I will add more once I remember back.
>
> Regards
>
> -Vijay
>
> *From: *openbmc <openbmc-bounces+vijaykhemka=fb.com at lists.ozlabs.org> 
> on behalf of Richard Hanley <rhanley at google.com>
> *Date: *Thursday, April 9, 2020 at 2:57 PM
> *To: *OpenBMC Maillist <openbmc at lists.ozlabs.org>
> *Subject: *Re: Call for Gardening Tasks
>
> Here are some ideas I have as a wishlist for gardening/improvements.
>
> *Client Models for DBus*
>
> Right now sdbusplus does a pretty good job of making server 
> development easy.  However, I wish we had some more tooling on the 
> client side. I see a decent amount of repeated code around ObjectMapper.
>
> One way to separate concerns and cut down on boilerplate is to have a 
> model library. A call to a model would spin off an async method call 
> to manage the data marshalling, which would then call a lambda with a 
> fully reified object.  This is similar in concept to the way models 
> work in web development.
>
> *Unit Testing in bmcweb*
>
> This is pretty easy to say, and harder to do. I've been thinking a bit 
> about how to add in unit tests without them being too fragile. (This 
> was also something that geissonator mentioned).
>
> *DBus Virtualization and Playback*
>
> One thing that I think makes unit testing in some modules hard is that 
> there is a high barrier around mocking DBus.  I'm not sure the best 
> way to build this sustainably, but it would help improve our CI testing.
>
> *OpenAPI for Redfish*
>
> So far the general impression I've seen with this is that the Swagger 
> output for OpenAPI isn't really good for C++.  Either the ergonomics 
> aren't really good, or there is a lot of code bloat.  I'd love to have 
> some OpenAPI bindings that work well in OpenBMC.
>
> *RUST!?!?*
>
> I'm betting a lot of people have thought about Rust. I'd love to hear 
> what people have tried and what are the sticking points.  Any thoughts 
> on what module/functionality could be a decent candidate for breaking 
> ground here?
>

We discussed the rust language in the OpenBMC security working group 
meetings 2019-10-02
OpenBMC security working group minutes:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b7x9BaxsfcukQDqbvZsU2ehMq4xoJRQvLxxsDUWmAOI

> -Richard
>
> On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 2:54 PM Richard Hanley <rhanley at google.com 
> <mailto:rhanley at google.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi everyone,
>
>     Last week I started a thread on Open BMC Gardening
>     <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__lists.ozlabs.org_pipermail_openbmc_2020-2DApril_021100.html&d=DwMFaQ&c=5VD0RTtNlTh3ycd41b3MUw&r=v9MU0Ki9pWnTXCWwjHPVgpnCR80vXkkcrIaqU7USl5g&m=fAZZtmWl4g8Vngk56_Rs09hgS96TYQMeyRsyZKGHzAo&s=HXdHl56jq4p5eXbhyUHUkkmoF_hGh5tJWMUaVKQ68VM&e=>,
>     and I wanted to kick off the process.
>
>     The basic idea here is to get a survey of various
>     improvement tasks throughout OpenBMC.  Some things might be small
>     refactoring or changes that can be done incrementally (i.e.
>     weeding the garden). Other tasks might be more research or
>     structural (i.e. excavating the garden).
>
>     Just getting these in writing can be helpful for others to gauge
>     what they should focus on. It also helps leave breadcrumbs for any
>     new developer interested in the subject.
>

Richard,

Thanks for your efforts to move this forward.

Security wish list here: 
https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc/wiki/Security-working-group#security-feature-wish-list

- Joseph

>     So here's how I see this working. Anyone who has some ideas can
>     reply to this thread with a short to medium description.  Try to
>     avoid new features, and instead look at ways we could improve the
>     status quo. Think about changes and tools that would make your day
>     to day life better.
>
>     From there we can do a write up about what we know about the
>     issue.  This can function as an early stage design doc that gives
>     a broad overview on where the dev's head is at right now.
>
>     Finally, we can do a quarterly review to keep the garden
>     refreshed. Obviously, things can change between that time, but
>     having a semi-regular cadence will hopefully give us a better
>     chance of keeping this up to date.
>
>     - Richard
>