perfSONAR User Q&A and Other Discussion

[Adam Griffith <>]

Hi All,

With idempotent configuration management in mind and the helpful RPM repo information gathered below, I forked the perfSONAR ansible-role-perfsonar-installer GitHub repository and have begun creating a Jinja2 template for the repo file capable of installing a specific semantic version of the various packages.

One thing I bumped into is a GPG check failure when using `gpgkey = http://software.internet2.edu/rpms/RPM-GPG-KEY-perfSONAR`. For example, on a Rocky Linux 9.2 box:

```shell

[root@vm-1 yum.repos.d]# dnf update iperf3

Last metadata expiration check: 0:42:47 ago on Tue 11 Jul 2023 06:22:27 PM MDT.

Dependencies resolved.

=============================================================================================================================

 Package                    Architecture               Version                           Repository                     Size

=============================================================================================================================

Upgrading:

 iperf3                     x86_64                     3.13-1.el9                        perfSONAR                     105 k

Transaction Summary

=============================================================================================================================

Upgrade  1 Package

Total size: 105 k

Is this ok [y/N]: y

Downloading Packages:

[SKIPPED] iperf3-3.13-1.el9.x86_64.rpm: Already downloaded                                                                  

retrieving repo key for perfSONAR unencrypted from http://software.internet2.edu/rpms/RPM-GPG-KEY-perfSONAR

perfSONAR RPM Repository - software.internet2.edu - main                                     7.4 kB/s | 1.7 kB     00:00    

GPG key at http://software.internet2.edu/rpms/RPM-GPG-KEY-perfSONAR (0x9D7B9686) is already installed

The GPG keys listed for the "perfSONAR RPM Repository - software.internet2.edu - main" repository are already installed but they are not correct for this package.

Check that the correct key URLs are configured for this repository.. Failing package is: iperf3-3.13-1.el9.x86_64

 GPG Keys are configured as: http://software.internet2.edu/rpms/RPM-GPG-KEY-perfSONAR

The downloaded packages were saved in cache until the next successful transaction.

You can remove cached packages by executing 'dnf clean packages'.

Error: GPG check FAILED

```

I noted that the online doc instructions point to:

​```shell

dnf install http://software.internet2.edu/rpms/el9/x86_64/latest/packages/perfsonar-repo-0.11-1.noarch.rpm
```

where the resulting repo file contains `gpgkey = file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-perfSONAR`.

After cat'ing that and comparing to the URL above I realized the key expressions are different. Is this local key file also available from http://software.internet2.edu/rpms site?

Cheers,

-Adam

---

From: Mark Feit <>
Sent: Monday, July 10, 2023 9:29 AM
To: Fleming, Andy <>; <>; Adam Griffith <>; Andrew Lake <>
Subject: Re: [perfsonar-user] Enterprise Linux bundle question

 

Fleming, Andy writes:

 

If you find you need to roll back, you can do things like dnf downgrade ...

 

NB:  perfSONAR is not guaranteed to work across a downgrade because the database that underpins pScheduler can only be re-versioned forward.  The only way we could make downgrades work reliably would be to maintain code to make them happen (a lot of work for relatively-little benefit) or detect them and destroy/rebuild the database (astonishing behavior).  Generally, our policy is to make production releases stable-enough that downgrades aren’t necessary and get bug fixes get out quickly-enough that the right path is an upgrade.

 

   I'm not saying there is anything wrong with the strategy of a new folder for each release and changing the pointer, but its not what a lot of EL admins would expect based on how minor versions of packages are released for a lot of other EL repos.

 

There’s nothing stopping us from producing a set of repo data with everything and still maintaining the existing directory structure.  That would also enable “dnf reinstall” on systems running older versions.  That said, we really, really recommend installing the current version.

 

I’ve opened an issue on considering that:  https://github.com/perfsonar/project/issues/1356.

 

--Mark