2008/015 svccfg refresh subcommand

[James Carlson]

Liane Praza writes:
> I'm filing this on behalf of Alan Maguire.  I've submitted it as
> Closed-Approved-Automatic, as I believe it's an obvious change.
> However, if there's non-trivial discussion or concern, we'd be happy
> to convert it back to a fasttrack.

I hope this is just trivial discussion (;-}), but it seems to me that
having both "svccfg refresh" and "svcadm refresh" is potentially
confusing for administrators.  I suspect that they're confused about
the cfg/adm split already (we've certainly seen confusion with the
zone* commands), and this just adds a little fuel.

If svccfg provides all the needed functionality
Is it possible to work towards

> liane
> 
> ---
>   svccfg refresh subcommand
>   Alan Maguire
>   1/9/2008
> 
>   1. Introduction
> 
>    Introduce a "refresh" subcommand to svccfg to allow updates to the
>    "running" snapshot of an instance when the service's restarter isn't
>    available.
> 
>   2. Technical Description
> 
>    SMF's restarters operate on the "running" snapshot of service
>    instances in order to ensure configuration is complete and
>    consistent over the lifetime of a service.  This "running"
>    snapshot is taken at three points:
>      - by svc.startd when the service is started and no
>        running snapshot is yet available, and
>      - by svc.startd in response to a "svcadm refresh" request, and
>      - by svc.startd in response to a "svccfg import" request.
> 
>    Currently, svccfg has an environment variable and a "repository"
>    subcommand to allow configuration manipulation on an alternate
>    repository.  All manipulation is possible using svccfg except for
>    the final commit of current configuration changes into the running
>    snapshot.
> 
>    This is an oversight, because offline manipulation of the repository
>    does not allow a manual commit.  We propose to introduce a new
>    "refresh" subcommand to svccfg(1M).  If svccfg is operating on
>    the repository for the live system, this subcommand will
>    invoke svcadm refresh to accomplish the standard refresh actions
>    (rotate the snapshot and invoke the refresh method).  If svccfg
>    is operating on an alternate repository, only the snapshot will
>    be rotated.
> 
>   3. Interface Table
> 
>    Interface                               Stability   Binding
>    ---------                               ---------   -------
>    refresh subcommand for svccfg(1M)       Committed   Patch
> 
>   4. References
> 
>    PSARC 2002/547 Greenline
> 
>   5. manpage diffs
> 
>      + Instance commands
>      +    refresh
>      +        If the chosen repository (selected by the "repository"
>      +        command) is not the active repository, this command will
>      +        update the Running snapshot for the selected instance in
>      +        the specified repository.  If no alternate repository is
>      +        specified, this command is the equivalent of "svcadm
>      +        refresh".
> _______________________________________________
> opensolaris-arc mailing list
> opensolaris-arc at opensolaris.org

-- 
James Carlson, Solaris Networking              <james.d.carlson at sun.com>
Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive        71.232W   Vox +1 781 442 2084
MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757   42.496N   Fax +1 781 442 1677