[tor-bugs] #30020 [Internal Services/Tor Sysadmin Team]: switch from our custom YAML implementation to Hiera

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#30020: switch from our custom YAML implementation to Hiera
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 Reporter:  anarcat                              |          Owner:  anarcat
     Type:  project                              |         Status:
                                                 |  assigned
 Priority:  Medium                               |      Milestone:
Component:  Internal Services/Tor Sysadmin Team  |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal                               |     Resolution:
 Keywords:                                       |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:  #29387                               |         Points:
 Reviewer:                                       |        Sponsor:
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Comment (by anarcat):

 Another possible solution is to move from LDAP to Hiera for host metadata.
 That is where, after all, Puppet is getting some of those IP addresses
 from and it would be possible to simply do lookups in Hiera for those, if
 it was properly loaded and ordered.

 Another case I found is `roles::weblog_sink` which constructs SSH keys
 from the YAML data. This could be generated from exported resources as
 well, for example with the
 [https://puppet.com/docs/puppet/4.8/type.html#sshauthorizedkey
 ssh_authorized_keys builtin type].

 So in other words, I think this project is doable, but it will require
 refactoring and lots of work.

 In the end, though, we would have one YAML file per host in
 `hiera/nodes/$FQDN.yaml`. This could be made fairly human-readable if we
 make a good template, and be the single source of truth for all
 information about a host including hosting provider, cost and so on,
 solving our inventory problem, (partly) described in #29816.

 I think this is worth it and will make it easier to get people involved in
 Puppet work.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/30020#comment:3>
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