Add an endpoint to restart Grist with a new config #1016
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jordigh
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app/server/lib/FlexServer.ts
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| process.send({ newEnv }); | ||
| } | ||
| }); | ||
| return resp.status(200).send(); |
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Is it worth sending an error status code if we've got no process.send available (i.e - process isn't running under the runner script)
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On a multiserver setup, I'd expect the implementation to be to publish an event on a channel in redis that all servers (including ourselves) are subscribed to, and then each server restarting as described here. Seems like a natural later step to add, so doesn't need doing here.
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Suggest sending something like { action: "restart", newEnv } just so the nature of the message would be clear in debugging.
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Is there a risk we send sensitive environment variables over Redis in that situation? And if so, is that okay? I'm not sure what kind of security guarantees redis provides.
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Having talked to Jordi a bit, I'm not very convinced by the idea of implementing Grist configuration changes from the UI directly via changing environment variables. Specifically, there's no concrete proposal yet for how those changes will be persisted (@jordigh mentioned @SleepyLeslie's config PR for Grist Desktop as interesting). If there were, that might help answer the question of how configuration is kept consistent across servers/workers.
Pub/sub in redis seems an obvious choice for triggering a global restart. It may or may not be a reasonable way to propagate configuration, I haven't thought about that. Redis is already used for security sensitive purposes related to authentication and authorization.
Until there is a persistence story: what state do we actually need to persist? If I'm reading the code right, if a user provides an activation key, there's a path to activations.key getting set in the db:
https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-ee/blob/e86b290a4c2c3cc3aea201ae4787ecb8dab4e3c0/ext/app/server/lib/ActivationReader.ts#L87-L90
What I'm poking at here is if we need env var persistence this month.
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I've changed the JSON to add here. It should be straightforward to one day use Redis for more generalised IPC.
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Okay, did these changes.
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I've stubbed out config changes, which I think we should incorporate with this PR once it lands.
docker-runner.mjs
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| let grist; | ||
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| function startGrist(newEnv) { | ||
| const env = newEnv ? {...process.env, ...newEnv} : process.env; |
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Could you save yourself a ternary here by setting newEnv = {} in the parameters, and just having env = { ...process.env, ...newEnv}?
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Oh, makes sense, of course, thanks.
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Oh, right, thanks, that's cleaner.
docker-runner.mjs
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| const env = newEnv ? {...process.env, ...newEnv} : process.env; | ||
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| // H/T https://stackoverflow.com/a/36995148/11352427 | ||
| grist = spawn('./sandbox/run.sh', { |
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Does this get killed correctly when parent is killed? I'd think so, but just want to double check 🙂
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Yes, it gets a sigint, which works fine, as it's exec'ed itself into the main server.js process that knows how to handle sigals. The event handlers then do the work correctly.
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Yep! It works! That's because the run.sh process execs into node, so this spawn effectively ends up directly controlling a node process.
app/server/lib/FlexServer.ts
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| process.send({ newEnv }); | ||
| } | ||
| }); | ||
| return resp.status(200).send(); |
app/server/lib/FlexServer.ts
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| process.send({ newEnv }); | ||
| } | ||
| }); | ||
| return resp.status(200).send(); |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
On a multiserver setup, I'd expect the implementation to be to publish an event on a channel in redis that all servers (including ourselves) are subscribed to, and then each server restarting as described here. Seems like a natural later step to add, so doesn't need doing here.
app/server/lib/FlexServer.ts
Outdated
| process.send({ newEnv }); | ||
| } | ||
| }); | ||
| return resp.status(200).send(); |
There was a problem hiding this comment.
Suggest sending something like { action: "restart", newEnv } just so the nature of the message would be clear in debugging.
This is a new entrypoint, mostly intended for Docker, so we have one simple process controlling the main Grist process. The purpose of this is to be able to make Grist easily restartable with a new environment.
This adds an endpoint for the admin user to be able to signal to a controlling process to restart the server. This is intended for `docker-runner.mjs`.
jordigh
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jordigh
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This adds a very simple wrapper process for Docker that will control the main Grist process. Its purpose is to restart the main process upon demand so that the configuration can be changed. This is intended to be used for the UI as a way to give users a way to update their configuration without having to mess with Docker in the backend.