xref: /openbmc/docs/designs/ci-authorization.md (revision 37055f7d)
1# Continuous integration and authorization for OpenBMC
2
3Author:
4  Brad Bishop !radsquirrel
5
6Other contributors:
7  None
8
9Created:
10  2019-01-30
11
12## Problem Description
13The OpenBMC project maintains a number of Jenkins CI jobs to ensure incoming
14contributions to the project source code meet a level of quality.  Incoming
15contributions can be made by the general public - anyone with a GitHub account.
16However unlikely, it is possible for a bad actor to make code submissions that
17attempt to compromise project resources, e.g. build systems, and as such some
18amount of authorization of contributors must occur to provide some level of
19protection from potential bad actors.
20
21
22The project already has contributor authorization for CI.  This proposal serves
23to describe the drawbacks of the current solution and propose an alternative
24that addresses those drawbacks.
25
26## Background and References
27The current authorization solution checks the user for membership in the
28openbmc/general-developers GitHub team.  If the contributor is a member of the
29team (or a general-developers sub-team), the automated CI processes are
30triggered without any human intervention.  If the contributor is not a member of
31the general-developers team, manual intervention (ok-to-test) is required by a
32project maintainer to trigger the automated CI processes.
33
34
35Additional reading:
36https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration
37https://jenkins.io/
38https://help.github.com/articles/about-organizations/
39
40## Requirements
41The existing method for authorization has a singular problem - the GitHub
42organization owner role.  In order for contributors to be added to the
43openbmc/general-developers GitHub team, the contributor must first be a member
44of the openbmc GitHub organization.  Only organization owners can invite GitHub
45users to become members of an organization.  Organization owners have
46unrestricted access to all aspects of the project - it would be unwise to bestow
47organization ownership for the sole purpose of enabling
48openbmc/general-developers group membership administrative capability.
49
50
51An alternative authorization method for CI should:
52 - Not require the GitHub organization owner role to administer the list of
53   users authorized for CI.
54 - Enable a hierarchical trust model for user authorization (groups nested
55   within groups).
56
57## Proposed Design
58The proposal is to simply migrate the current openbmc/general-developers GitHub
59team, and all subordinate teams, to Gerrit groups:
60
61group: `openbmc/ci-authorized`
62
63group: `xyzcorp/ci-authorized`
64
65group: `abccorp/ci-authorized`
66
67The openbmc/ci-authorized group can contain users that are not associated with
68any specific organization, as well as organizational groups:
69
70group: `openbmc/ci-authorized` contains ->
71
72  group `xyzcorp/ci-authorized`
73
74  group `abccorp/ci-authorized`
75
76  user `nancy`
77
78  user `joe`
79
80This proposal also specifies a convention for administration of organizational
81groups:
82
83group: `xyzcorp/ci-authorized-owners` administers -> `xyzcorp/ci-authorized`
84
85group: `abccorp/ci-authorized-owners` administers -> `abccorp/ci-authorized`
86
87group: `openbmc/ci-authorized` administers -> `openbmc/ci-authorized`
88
89Finally, any Jenkins CI jobs must be updated to test for membership of the
90Gerrit group instead of the GitHub team.
91
92New organizational groups (and associated owner groups) will be created when a
93CCLA is signed and accepted by the project.
94
95## Alternatives Considered
96Assigning GitHub organization owner roles to organizational group administrators
97was considered but is a major violation of the least-privilege-required
98principle.
99
100## Impacts
101GitHub has vastly superior load balancing and backup capability so there is a
102potential for decreased service availability and data loss.
103
104## Testing
105Deploy on a live production server ��
106