Bug 996725

Summary:	Packstack should not require ALL parameters be specified in an answer file
Product:	[Community] RDO	Reporter:	Perry Myers <pmyers>
Component:	openstack-packstack	Assignee:	Martin Magr <mmagr>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:	Ami Jeain <ajeain>
Severity:	low	Docs Contact:
Priority:	high
Version:	unspecified	CC:	aortega, derekh, gdubreui, lars, yeylon
Target Milestone:	Milestone3	Keywords:	Triaged
Target Release:	Havana
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
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Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
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Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2015-03-23 21:20:10 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Perry Myers 2013-08-13 19:52:51 UTC

Description of problem:
When new config options are added to Packstack, old answer files break

For example, the latest Packstack build introduced a new config variable:
CONFIG_PROVISION_TEMPEST_REPO_URI

My answer files did not have this in them, and now I get errors:
ERROR : Failed handling answer file: 'Parser cannot find option CONFIG_PROVISION_TEMPEST_REPO_URI in answer file.'

This is annoying because it breaks automation even when the option being added to Packstack is completely optional

In addition, it also means that a Packstack answer file must be completely specified vs. just containing only the minimum options needed (useful if you are writing one on your own vs. using output from packstack --gen-answer-file)

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
openstack-packstack-2013.1.1-0.24.dev660.el6.noarch

Comment 1 Perry Myers 2013-08-13 20:14:28 UTC

More data... The snippets for these new values are:

# Whether to configure tempest for testing
CONFIG_PROVISION_TEMPEST=n

# The uri of the tempest git repository to use
CONFIG_PROVISION_TEMPEST_REPO_URI=https://github.com/redhat-openstack/tempest.git

# The revision of the tempest git repository to use
CONFIG_PROVISION_TEMPEST_REPO_REVISION=stable/grizzly

(CONFIG_PROVISION_TEMPEST was already there)

You can't add blank values to CONFIG_PROVISION_TEMPEST_REPO_URI or CONFIG_PROVISION_TEMPEST_REPO_REVISION

Since there are sane defaults here, shouldn't the behavior be that if a config option is omitted or left blank that the default value is used?

Comment 2 Gilles Dubreuil 2014-03-19 03:53:40 UTC

Before digging into it, the feature sounds good but is it still relevant, Packstack targeting only AIO/POC?

If yes then a simple approach could be:
- If a parameter is not available a default value to be used.
- Unknown (older) parameter ignored.

Comment 3 Lars Kellogg-Stedman 2015-03-23 21:20:10 UTC

It looks as if this behavior has already been implemented.

Working with packstack master, if I remove values from the answer file, things appear to move forward without a problem.  In fact, it looks as if I can pass packstack a completely empty answer file consisting of:

    [general]

...and it will still operate.