[ooni-dev] mlab-ns integration testing and easy-disable-feature.

[Nathan Wilcox]

Dear Oonitarians,

We're about to start testing some mlab-ns integration features on the
M-Lab test slice.  This will be potentially disruptive because we'll
be reinitializing the slice, installing new bits and bobs, and we'll
be using our own fork of ooni-support [1] rather than upstream
ooni-support [2].

Please let us know if we should *not* do this soon.  Today I planned
to only poke mlab1.nuq0t.measurement-lab.org [3], but eventually we
want to test at least two test slivvers.

Meanwhile, what happens if we deploy some integration glue and it
doesn't work, or has unanticipated problems in the future, or M-Lab
policies change, etc?

To anticipate those kinds of issues, we want to make sure that it's
easy to toggle off the integration stuff.  One of our key design goals
has been to avoid modifying upstream ooni.  We've just realized a new
and related design goal: make sure it's easy to turn off the
integration glue without requiring slice re-initialization, packages
changes, repository changes, etc...  So we just added a ticket for
that [4].

Note that *while* we are doing this interactive testing, the two
slivvers we're using will be pretty unstable, but *after* we reach a
stable level of development, we should be able to flip the integration
switch to off and the M-Lab test slice should operate as before
(except with some extra stuff installed).

If you have any concerns / feedback / comments, etc... feel free to
email us, or respond to specific tickets.  All of the tickets related
to the mlab-ns integration in particular should live in the
`ooni-support` issue tracker with the `LeastAuthority D` label [5].

Regards,
Nathan

links:

[1] https://github.com/LeastAuthority/ooni-support

[2] https://github.com/m-lab-tools/ooni-support

[3] https://github.com/m-lab-tools/ooni-support/issues/50#issuecomment-50060748

[4] https://github.com/m-lab-tools/ooni-support/issues/54

[5] https://github.com/m-lab-tools/ooni-support/issues?direction=desc&labels=LeastAuthority+D&milestone=&page=1&sort=updated&state=open

-- 
Nathan Wilcox
Least Authoritarian

email: nathan at leastauthority.com
twitter: @least_nathan
PGP: 11169993 / AAAC 5675 E3F7 514C 67ED  E9C9 3BFE 5263 1116 9993