Should plugins collect files from files automatically?

[pmoravec]

files stands for a plugin's enabledness trigger. Which means each such file is very typically present (only) on a system with given component/product/technology the plugin is relevant to.

Should the plugin automatically collect those files? Similarly like we do for services collecting its status and journal logs (or for kmods collecting modinfo)? See add_default_collections.

This derived from discussion in #3645 where we worked on that assumption. My original attitude was "we should collect it by default". But now I lean towards current approach, not collect by default. The main reason is the file is a symptom of installation of some component/tech/.., which surely does not mean it contains interesting debugging info. E.g. some triggers are /dev or /sys/block or /var/spool/abrt or /var/www we should avoid automatic collection.

We can have add_forbidden_path in such cases but I see it risky - we should not automatically collect some raw data the user has not specified.

Let me know if you have a different opinion and would like to automatically collect copyspecs from plugins' files.

[jcastill]

I'm with you here, automatic collection could be a problem because we'll end up having to check if the entry is a directory, a binary, a cert, etc... rather than a log or a config file.

[arif-ali]

God points @pmoravec, if we have triggers as /dev/ we don't want to be collecting all of that, and doing exclusions would be cumbersome and very problematic.

There are 2 ways we can accommodate this imo,

1. if the files dict doesn't have anything cumbersome such as the example in [telegraf] Add new telegraf plugin #3581, where I discussed this internally, and we could just call super().setup() which can then collect the stuff from files.
2. Or, like we do today, add the files needed in add_copy_spec, which then avoids the extra collections when not needed.

Always good to think it out :)

[dnegreira]

I agree with you @pmoravec, we should not be collecting those files by default as they are used only to verify that they are there for the plugin to run.

[TurboTurtle]

I agree with you @pmoravec, we should not be collecting those files by default as they are used only to verify that they are there for the plugin to run.

My thoughts as well. I don't think we gain enough by doing this to offset the potential for new problems.

[pmoravec]

As we reach a consensus here, I am closing the discussion.