Web UI statement

Chef Infra (archive)
1

I was curious about the statement that the Web UI being deprecated. Did I
misread that?

JOHN HASTY
Software as a Service - DevOps
Software Group

Phone: 1-512-804-9968 IBM
E-mail: jahasty@us.ibm.com
2407 S Congress Ave Ste E-350
Austin, TX 78704
United States

2

Link to that statement? I haven't heard that.

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 1:08 PM, JOHN HASTY jahasty@us.ibm.com wrote:

I was curious about the statement that the Web UI being deprecated. Did I
misread that?

JOHN HASTY
Software as a Service - DevOps
Software Group

Phone: 1-512-804-9968

2407 S Congress Ave Ste E-350
Austin, TX 78704
United States

3

From an earlier email. Re-reading that, it is ambiguous as to what is
deprecated.

"I’m guessing you mean for user authentication? Enterprise Chef supports
LDAP for user authentication in the Web UI, but FOSS Chef does not. More to
the point, user authentication only matters in the Web UI and that is
deprecated in FOSS Chef anyway and should be disabled.

–Noah"

JOHN HASTY
Software as a Service - DevOps
Software Group

Phone: 1-512-804-9968 IBM
E-mail: jahasty@us.ibm.com
2407 S Congress Ave Ste E-350
Austin, TX 78704
United States

From: Brian Hatfield bmhatfield@gmail.com
To: chef@lists.opscode.com
Date: 06/25/2014 12:40 PM
Subject: [chef] Re: Web UI statement

Link to that statement? I haven’t heard that.

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 1:08 PM, JOHN HASTY jahasty@us.ibm.com wrote:
I was curious about the statement that the Web UI being deprecated. Did I
misread that?

JOHN HASTY
Software as a Service - DevOps
Software Group

Phone: 1-512-804-9968 IBM
E-mail: jahasty@us.ibm.com
2407 S Congress Ave Ste E-350
Austin, TX 78704
United States

4

Any comment from Opscode guys?

Reading Noah's sentence I had the same impression and would be courious too
:slight_smile:

Or maybe that he was just talking about user authentication functionality
to be deprecated in FOSS version

No stress for that, just courious...

Marco

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 7:51 PM, JOHN HASTY jahasty@us.ibm.com wrote:

From an earlier email. Re-reading that, it is ambiguous as to what is
deprecated.

"I'm guessing you mean for user authentication? Enterprise Chef supports
LDAP for user authentication in the Web UI, but FOSS Chef does not. More to
the point, user authentication only matters in the Web UI and that is
deprecated in FOSS Chef anyway and should be disabled.

--Noah"

JOHN HASTY
Software as a Service - DevOps
Software Group

Phone: 1-512-804-9968

2407 S Congress Ave Ste E-350
Austin, TX 78704
United States

[image: Inactive hide details for Brian Hatfield ---06/25/2014 12:40:13
PM---Link to that statement? I haven't heard that. On Wed, Jun]Brian
Hatfield ---06/25/2014 12:40:13 PM---Link to that statement? I haven't
heard that. On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 1:08 PM, JOHN HASTY <jahasty@u

From: Brian Hatfield bmhatfield@gmail.com
To: chef@lists.opscode.com
Date: 06/25/2014 12:40 PM
Subject: [chef] Re: Web UI statement

Link to that statement? I haven't heard that.

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 1:08 PM, JOHN HASTY <jahasty@us.ibm.com
jahasty@us.ibm.com> wrote:

I was curious about the statement that the Web UI being deprecated.
Did I misread that?

  • JOHN HASTY*
    Software as a Service - DevOps
    Software Group

Phone: 1-512-804-9968 <1-512-804-9968>

2407 S Congress Ave Ste E-350
Austin, TX 78704
United States

--
Ing. Marco Betti
RHCE RHEL4 id 804006512121056

5

Disclaimer: I do not work for Opscode/ChefInc so my information may be out of date.

As of the last plans announced, the Web UI in FOSS Chef is deprecated and is only marginally maintained. No new feature development has been done on it in quite some time, only minimal security maintenance is done and even that can have some unfortunate lag given the number of Rails 0days lately. The UI was briefly removed in early 11 builds I think, but as this was unannounced there was enough outcry to put it back in. Unfortunately thats kind of been the end of it.

As I said, there has been no significant development on it in over a year as the internal teams moved over to "webui2", which is an Enterprise Chef-only feature. No specific removal plan has been announced that I know of, but presumably it will be removed fully in Chef 12 as that is the next release that can be backwards-incompatible.

At this point I highly recommend disabling the WebUI in FOSS Chef given the potential security risks and general deprecation. There are a few community projects that provide a web interface for a Chef server, but all are much smaller in scope, generally offering only read operations and tailored to a particular workflow. This is unfortunate, when we started work on webui2 is was understood this was the likely outcome but as they say Cash Rules Everything Around Me. Hope that clears up some of the questions, and if I've said any untruths I hope Opscode will set the record straight.

--Noah

On Jun 26, 2014, at 10:21 PM, Marco Betti m.betti@gmail.com wrote:

Any comment from Opscode guys?

Reading Noah's sentence I had the same impression and would be courious too :slight_smile:

Or maybe that he was just talking about user authentication functionality to be deprecated in FOSS version

No stress for that, just courious...

Marco

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 7:51 PM, JOHN HASTY jahasty@us.ibm.com wrote:
From an earlier email. Re-reading that, it is ambiguous as to what is deprecated.

"I'm guessing you mean for user authentication? Enterprise Chef supports LDAP for user authentication in the Web UI, but FOSS Chef does not. More to the point, user authentication only matters in the Web UI and that is deprecated in FOSS Chef anyway and should be disabled.

--Noah"

JOHN HASTY
Software as a Service - DevOps
Software Group
Phone: 1-512-804-9968
E-mail: jahasty@us.ibm.com
<23191904.gif>

2407 S Congress Ave Ste E-350
Austin, TX 78704
United States

<graycol.gif>Brian Hatfield ---06/25/2014 12:40:13 PM---Link to that statement? I haven't heard that. On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 1:08 PM, JOHN HASTY <jahasty@u

From: Brian Hatfield bmhatfield@gmail.com
To: chef@lists.opscode.com
Date: 06/25/2014 12:40 PM
Subject: [chef] Re: Web UI statement

Link to that statement? I haven't heard that.

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 1:08 PM, JOHN HASTY jahasty@us.ibm.com wrote:
I was curious about the statement that the Web UI being deprecated. Did I misread that?

JOHN HASTY
Software as a Service - DevOps
Software Group

Phone: 1-512-804-9968
E-mail: jahasty@us.ibm.com
<23191904.gif>

2407 S Congress Ave Ste E-350
Austin, TX 78704
United States

--
Ing. Marco Betti
RHCE RHEL4 id 804006512121056

6

Thank you very much Noah for spending time in such a complete answer.
Chef community is really awsome :slight_smile:
Il 27/giu/2014 07:52 "Noah Kantrowitz" noah@coderanger.net ha scritto:

Disclaimer: I do not work for Opscode/ChefInc so my information may be out
of date.

As of the last plans announced, the Web UI in FOSS Chef is deprecated and
is only marginally maintained. No new feature development has been done on
it in quite some time, only minimal security maintenance is done and even
that can have some unfortunate lag given the number of Rails 0days lately.
The UI was briefly removed in early 11 builds I think, but as this was
unannounced there was enough outcry to put it back in. Unfortunately thats
kind of been the end of it.

As I said, there has been no significant development on it in over a year
as the internal teams moved over to "webui2", which is an Enterprise
Chef-only feature. No specific removal plan has been announced that I know
of, but presumably it will be removed fully in Chef 12 as that is the next
release that can be backwards-incompatible.

At this point I highly recommend disabling the WebUI in FOSS Chef given
the potential security risks and general deprecation. There are a few
community projects that provide a web interface for a Chef server, but all
are much smaller in scope, generally offering only read operations and
tailored to a particular workflow. This is unfortunate, when we started
work on webui2 is was understood this was the likely outcome but as they
say Cash Rules Everything Around Me. Hope that clears up some of the
questions, and if I've said any untruths I hope Opscode will set the record
straight.

--Noah

On Jun 26, 2014, at 10:21 PM, Marco Betti m.betti@gmail.com wrote:

Any comment from Opscode guys?

Reading Noah's sentence I had the same impression and would be courious
too :slight_smile:

Or maybe that he was just talking about user authentication
functionality to be deprecated in FOSS version

No stress for that, just courious...

Marco

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 7:51 PM, JOHN HASTY jahasty@us.ibm.com wrote:
From an earlier email. Re-reading that, it is ambiguous as to what is
deprecated.

"I'm guessing you mean for user authentication? Enterprise Chef supports
LDAP for user authentication in the Web UI, but FOSS Chef does not. More to
the point, user authentication only matters in the Web UI and that is
deprecated in FOSS Chef anyway and should be disabled.

--Noah"

JOHN HASTY
Software as a Service - DevOps
Software Group
Phone: 1-512-804-9968
E-mail: jahasty@us.ibm.com
<23191904.gif>

2407 S Congress Ave Ste E-350
Austin, TX 78704
United States

<graycol.gif>Brian Hatfield ---06/25/2014 12:40:13 PM---Link to that
statement? I haven't heard that. On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 1:08 PM, JOHN
HASTY <jahasty@u

From: Brian Hatfield bmhatfield@gmail.com
To: chef@lists.opscode.com
Date: 06/25/2014 12:40 PM
Subject: [chef] Re: Web UI statement

Link to that statement? I haven't heard that.

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 1:08 PM, JOHN HASTY jahasty@us.ibm.com wrote:
I was curious about the statement that the Web UI being deprecated. Did
I misread that?

JOHN HASTY
Software as a Service - DevOps
Software Group

Phone: 1-512-804-9968
E-mail: jahasty@us.ibm.com
<23191904.gif>

2407 S Congress Ave Ste E-350
Austin, TX 78704
United States

--
Ing. Marco Betti
RHCE RHEL4 id 804006512121056

7

Hi!

When we open sourced the Erlang implementation of the Chef 11 Server, we
deprecated the Open Source Web UI (you can see the discussion from back
then in the mailing list archives) and we've spoken publicly about it on a
couple of different occasions. We've been supporting it through the
lifecycle of 11 with security fixes, but it will be removed from the
chef-server distribution going forward, and will no longer be maintained by
anyone at Chef Software.

When the deprecation takes place, the current plan is that the Web UI that
is included in Enterprise Chef will be made available for free to anyone
using 30 nodes or less.

One of the things we need to be better at (as a company, and as a
community) is having more regular conversations about the roadmap and our
direction. What would people think about having a monthly community meeting
in IRC?

Best,
Adam

On Thu, Jun 26, 2014 at 11:17 PM, Marco Betti m.betti@gmail.com wrote:

Thank you very much Noah for spending time in such a complete answer.
Chef community is really awsome :slight_smile:
Il 27/giu/2014 07:52 "Noah Kantrowitz" noah@coderanger.net ha scritto:

Disclaimer: I do not work for Opscode/ChefInc so my information may be out

of date.

As of the last plans announced, the Web UI in FOSS Chef is deprecated and
is only marginally maintained. No new feature development has been done on
it in quite some time, only minimal security maintenance is done and even
that can have some unfortunate lag given the number of Rails 0days lately.
The UI was briefly removed in early 11 builds I think, but as this was
unannounced there was enough outcry to put it back in. Unfortunately thats
kind of been the end of it.

As I said, there has been no significant development on it in over a year
as the internal teams moved over to "webui2", which is an Enterprise
Chef-only feature. No specific removal plan has been announced that I know
of, but presumably it will be removed fully in Chef 12 as that is the next
release that can be backwards-incompatible.

At this point I highly recommend disabling the WebUI in FOSS Chef given
the potential security risks and general deprecation. There are a few
community projects that provide a web interface for a Chef server, but all
are much smaller in scope, generally offering only read operations and
tailored to a particular workflow. This is unfortunate, when we started
work on webui2 is was understood this was the likely outcome but as they
say Cash Rules Everything Around Me. Hope that clears up some of the
questions, and if I've said any untruths I hope Opscode will set the record
straight.

--Noah

On Jun 26, 2014, at 10:21 PM, Marco Betti m.betti@gmail.com wrote:

Any comment from Opscode guys?

Reading Noah's sentence I had the same impression and would be courious
too :slight_smile:

Or maybe that he was just talking about user authentication
functionality to be deprecated in FOSS version

No stress for that, just courious...

Marco

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 7:51 PM, JOHN HASTY jahasty@us.ibm.com wrote:
From an earlier email. Re-reading that, it is ambiguous as to what is
deprecated.

"I'm guessing you mean for user authentication? Enterprise Chef
supports LDAP for user authentication in the Web UI, but FOSS Chef does
not. More to the point, user authentication only matters in the Web UI and
that is deprecated in FOSS Chef anyway and should be disabled.

--Noah"

JOHN HASTY
Software as a Service - DevOps
Software Group
Phone: 1-512-804-9968
E-mail: jahasty@us.ibm.com
<23191904.gif>

2407 S Congress Ave Ste E-350
Austin, TX 78704
United States

<graycol.gif>Brian Hatfield ---06/25/2014 12:40:13 PM---Link to that
statement? I haven't heard that. On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 1:08 PM, JOHN
HASTY <jahasty@u

From: Brian Hatfield bmhatfield@gmail.com
To: chef@lists.opscode.com
Date: 06/25/2014 12:40 PM
Subject: [chef] Re: Web UI statement

Link to that statement? I haven't heard that.

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 1:08 PM, JOHN HASTY jahasty@us.ibm.com wrote:
I was curious about the statement that the Web UI being deprecated. Did
I misread that?

JOHN HASTY
Software as a Service - DevOps
Software Group

Phone: 1-512-804-9968
E-mail: jahasty@us.ibm.com
<23191904.gif>

2407 S Congress Ave Ste E-350
Austin, TX 78704
United States

--
Ing. Marco Betti
RHCE RHEL4 id 804006512121056

--
Opscode, Inc.
Adam Jacob, Chief Dev Officer
T: (206) 619-7151 E: adam@opscode.com