xref: /openbmc/docs/designs/ci-authorization.md (revision e25a54b6)
1# Continuous integration and authorization for OpenBMC
2
3Author:
4  Brad Bishop !radsquirrel
5
6Primary assignee:
7  Brad Bishop !radsquirrel
8
9Other contributors:
10  None
11
12Created:
13  2019-01-30
14
15## Problem Description
16The OpenBMC project maintains a number of Jenkins CI jobs to ensure incoming
17contributions to the project source code meet a level of quality.  Incoming
18contributions can be made by the general public - anyone with a GitHub account.
19However unlikely, it is possible for a bad actor to make code submissions that
20attempt to compromise project resources, e.g. build systems, and as such some
21amount of authorization of contributors must occur to provide some level of
22protection from potential bad actors.
23
24
25The project already has contributor authorization for CI.  This proposal serves
26to describe the drawbacks of the current solution and propose an alternative
27that addresses those drawbacks.
28
29## Background and References
30The current authorization solution checks the user for membership in the
31openbmc/general-developers GitHub team.  If the contributor is a member of the
32team (or a general-developers sub-team), the automated CI processes are
33triggered without any human intervention.  If the contributor is not a member of
34the general-developers team, manual intervention (ok-to-test) is required by a
35project maintainer to trigger the automated CI processes.
36
37
38Additonal reading:
39https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration
40https://jenkins.io/
41https://help.github.com/articles/about-organizations/
42
43## Requirements
44The existing method for authorization has a singular problem - the GitHub
45organization owner role.  In order for contributors to be added to the
46openbmc/general-developers GitHub team, the contributor must first be a member
47of the openbmc GitHub organization.  Only organization owners can invite GitHub
48users to become members of an organization.  Organization owners have
49unrestricted access to all aspects of the project - it would be unwise to bestow
50organization ownership for the sole purpose of enabling
51openbmc/general-developers group membership administrative capability.
52
53
54An alternative authorization method for CI should:
55 - Not require the GitHub organization owner role to administer the list of
56   users authorized for CI.
57 - Enable a hierarchical trust model for user authorization (groups nested
58   within groups).
59
60## Proposed Design
61The proposal is to simply migrate the current openbmc/general-developers GitHub
62team, and all subordinate teams, to Gerrit groups:
63
64group: `openbmc/ci-authorized`
65
66group: `xyzcorp/ci-authorized`
67
68group: `abccorp/ci-authorized`
69
70The openbmc/ci-authorized group can contain users that are not associated with
71any specific organization, as well as organizational groups:
72
73group: `openbmc/ci-authorized` contains ->
74
75  group `xyzcorp/ci-authorized`
76
77  group `abccorp/ci-authorized`
78
79  user `nancy`
80
81  user `joe`
82
83This proposal also specifies a convention for administration of organizational
84groups:
85
86group: `xyzcorp/ci-authorized-owners` administers -> `xyzcorp/ci-authorized`
87
88group: `abccorp/ci-authorized-owners` administers -> `abccorp/ci-authorized`
89
90group: `openbmc/ci-authorized` administers -> `openbmc/ci-authorized`
91
92Finally, any Jenkins CI jobs must be updated to test for membership of the
93Gerrit group instead of the GitHub team.
94
95New organizational groups (and associated owner groups) will be created when a
96CCLA is signed and accepted by the project.
97
98## Alternatives Considered
99Assigning GitHub organization owner roles to organizational group administrators
100was considered but is a major violation of the least-privilege-required
101principle.
102
103## Impacts
104GitHub has vastly superior load balancing and backup capability so there is a
105potential for decreased service availability and data loss.
106
107## Testing
108Deploy on a live production server ��
109