[ovirt-devel] UI Plugin to Upload ISO Files

[Itamar Heim]

On 01/02/2015 05:16 PM, Tony James wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 2:44 AM, Itamar Heim <iheim at redhat.com> wrote:
>> On 12/29/2014 06:13 PM, Tony James wrote:
>>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 29, 2014 at 5:26 AM, Itamar Heim <iheim at redhat.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 12/29/2014 09:25 AM, Nir Soffer wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> From: "Tony James" <tony at anthonyjames.org>
>>>>>> To: devel at ovirt.org
>>>>>> Sent: Monday, December 29, 2014 3:30:49 AM
>>>>>> Subject: [ovirt-devel] UI Plugin to Upload ISO Files
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This message is in response to an earlier thread regarding a UI plugin
>>>>>> to upload ISO files.  Like the original poster, Lucas, I began work on
>>>>>> a UI plugin to allow uploading ISO files through a UI plugin.  After
>>>>>> reading the previous thread I'm re-thinking the architecture.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It was suggested that the recommended approach to upload files to a
>>>>>> storage domain is through the VDSM API [1].  I'm pretty familiar with
>>>>>> the oVirt REST API but have been unable to find documentation
>>>>>> regarding accessing the VDSM API.  Should the VDSM API be accessible
>>>>>> by a UI plugin? If so, is there documentation available to do so?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> [1] http://lists.ovirt.org/pipermail/devel/2014-December/009497.html
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Basically you have to:
>>>>> 1. Use the vdsm xmlrpc/jsonrpc to create an image
>>>>> 2. Use the vdsm http api to upload the data to the image. This will
>>>>> create
>>>>>       a task and return a task id.
>>>>> 3. Use the vdsm xmlrpc/jsonrpc api to check the task status, and clear
>>>>>       the task when done
>>>>>
>>>>> The xmlrpc/jsonrpc api is documented here:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> http://gerrit.ovirt.org/gitweb?p=vdsm.git;a=blob;f=vdsm/rpc/vdsmapi-schema.json;h=1edcda86c8468b68c620eff4844b57ca30e44ea7;hb=HEAD
>>>>>
>>>>> You can check the code for upload here:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> http://gerrit.ovirt.org/gitweb?p=vdsm.git;a=blob;f=vdsm/rpc/BindingXMLRPC.py;h=759ed7845e63658a13c139684095bd56c03a29ac;hb=HEAD#l158
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I assume the upload will be done via a servlet on the engine, not
>>>> directly
>>>> by the ui plugin accessing vdsm.
>>>> worth discussing your plans here, to make sure architecture/security are
>>>> correct.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I was planning on using a python CGI script which would accept the
>>> upload via POST from the UI plugin.  The file would be stored in /tmp
>>> on the engine host.
>>>
>>> After the file was successfully uploaded, the CGI script would send a
>>> POST to a python HTTP server (BaseHTTPServer, also running on engine
>>> host) with the filename and storage domain information.  This python
>>> script would then take care of mounting the storage domain and copying
>>> the file to the appropriate location.
>>>
>>> This was my initial approach, I plan on checking out the VDSM API as well.
>>>
>>
>> my preference would be to stream via a servlet to the vdsm api, rather than
>> "store and forward" to avoid potentially exhausting space on engine or
>> having to deal with two phased task tracking.
>>
>> the tricky part which requires a review is validating authentication and
>> authorization by the servlet - to make sure one has the permission to write
>> to a certain disk (for data domains) / iso domain.
>> this should be similar to the websocket novnc approach of validating user
>> has access to relevant VM (but Alon may correct me if its different)
>>
>> notice there is one caveat for iso domains to having vdsm do the upload vs.
>> the iso-uploader utility - it would require vdsm to have write permissions
>> to the iso nfs path. but it allows uploading disks/vm's as well to data
>> stores, which i think is worth having the same pattern for both.
>
> Would it be sufficient to verify that the user has been given the
> StorageAdmin role before allowing an upload?
>

1. lets see if we can design this as a full blown feature wrt "how it 
should look like". I still believe it should have a servlet for the 
actual communication streaming to vdsm. of course, if you want to do 
something until this is provided "properly", you can do that.

2. allon - thoughts wrt permissions? would be relevant to the general 
use case. question is if this should be limited to admins, then probably 
storage domain level permission is enough, or we'd like to check disk 
level permissions (for data disks) to allow users to upload vm's as 
well. my personal take is we can probably start with "admins first" 
which means storage domain level permission check should be enough to 
start with.