Test suite settings should take priority over settings passed by POST

[garretraziel]

Fedora for ARM is distributed not by installation ISO, but by already preinstalled disk image. When I want to schedule our ARM tests, I'm doing so while setting HDD_1_URL, but not ISO. I have one test that boots from this disk, creates user/sets password with our "initial-setup" utility and then saves disk by setting STORE_HDD_1. Then I have another ARM test where I want to use that saved disk, but I cannot, because HDD_1 set on test gets overwritten by parameter passed during test scheduling.

I tried to overcome this by setting HDD_ARM=http://url/to/hdd during POST, HDD_1_URL=%HDD_ARM% on first test and correctly setting HDD_1 on second test, but _URL gets resolved only for parameters set by POST (so HDD_1 wasn't created and disk wasn't downloaded). I also tried to set ASSET_1_URL=http://url/to/hdd during POST, HDD_1=%ASSET_1% on first test and correctly setting HDD_1 on second test and that almost worked (ASSET_1 was created and disk was downloaded), but then disk was placed in other/ directory, not in hdd/ directory (so it couldn't find it).

I cannot come up with mean how to solve this problem (resolving _URL for all parameters would be enough), but I think that parameters set on specific test should take precedence before "generic" parameters passed during POST for all tests.

Rationale is that when I'm passing parameters that are the same for all tests planned by one POST, I should be able to override parameters for specific tests.

[aaannz]

I am against this. I think POST requests should have priority. Not everyone has write access to test suites so if someone is developing a test and want to experiment with different settings she must use API call.

Now you have a point, that when there is a dependent test it doesn't make sense to override its variables. So one solution would be to add this logic to iso controller.

[aaannz]

The number of disks os-autoinst prepares depends on NUMDISKS variable. So theoretically you can use HDD_2_URL in POST and set HDD_1=%HDD_2% in test suite settings for the parent job and keep the child job as is.
When NUMDISKS is not set or set to 1 it should ignore HDD_2, but scheduler will download it as HDD asset anyway. If it works and you decides to use this, document it somewhere or in half a year it will have a WTF sticker.

[garretraziel]

That's true. Other solution would be to create some variable like "NOT_OVERWRITE=HDD_1". I will try your solution on Monday.

[coolo]

+1 for leaving the priority as it is.

[sysrich]

+1 for leaving the prio as it is

[garretraziel]

So using HDD_2 but leaving NUMDISK=1 works, but it's rather hack-y. I still think that not overwriting specifically HDD for consecutive tests is better idea.

[aaannz]

It is hacky, true.
There are already some ideas flying around about template inheritance/inclusion which will require some work on how scheduler interprets test variables so I think we can add something like variable names prefixes i.e. +HDD_1 to signalize this variable should not be overwritten. This way it will work for any variable and will not require introducing any new special variable.