StackStorm v3.5.0 Release Notes
Release Date: 2021-06-23 // almost 3 years ago-
โ Added
* โ Added web header settings for additional security hardening to nginx.conf: X-Frame-Options, Strict-Transport-Security, X-XSS-Protection and server-tokens. #5183 Contributed by @shital. * โ Added support for ``limit`` and ``offset`` argument to the ``list_values`` data store service method (#5097 and #5171). Contributed by @anirudhbagri. * ๐ Various additional metrics have been added to the action runner service to provide for better operational visibility. (improvement) #4846 Contributed by @Kami. * โ Added sensor model to list of JSON schemas auto-generated by `make schemasgen` that can be used by development tools to validate pack contents. (improvement) * โ Added the command line utility `st2-validate-pack` that can be used by pack developers to validate pack contents. (improvement) * ๐ Fix a bug in the API and CLI code which would prevent users from being able to retrieve resources which contain non-ascii (utf-8) characters in the names / references. (bug fix) #5189 Contributed by @Kami. * ๐ Fix a bug in the API router code and make sure we return correct and user-friendly error to the user in case we fail to parse the request URL / path because it contains invalid or incorrectly URL encoded data. Previously such errors weren't handled correctly which meant original exception with a stack trace got propagated to the user. (bug fix) #5189 Contributed by @Kami. * 0๏ธโฃ Make redis the default coordinator backend. * ๐ Fix a bug in the pack config loader so that objects covered by an additionalProperties schema can use encrypted datastore keys and have their default values applied correctly. #5225 Contributed by @cognifloyd. * Add new ``database.compressors`` and ``database.zlib_compression_level`` config option which specifies compression algorithms client supports for network / transport level compression when talking to MongoDB. Actual compression algorithm used will be then decided by the server and depends on the algorithms which are supported by the server + client. Possible / valid values include: zstd, zlib. Keep in mind that zstandard (zstd) is only supported by MongoDB >= 4.2. Our official Debian and RPM packages bundle ``zstandard`` dependency by default which means setting this value to ``zstd`` should work out of the box as long as the server runs MongoDB >= 4.2. #5177 Contributed by @Kami. * โ Add support for compressing the payloads which are sent over the message bus. Compression is disabled by default and user can enable it by setting ``messaging.compression`` config option to one of the following values: ``zstd``, ``lzma``, ``bz2``, ``gzip``. In most cases we recommend using ``zstd`` (zstandard) since it offers best trade off between compression ratio and number of CPU cycles spent for compression and compression. How this will affect the deployment and throughput is very much user specific (workflow and resources available). It may make sense to enable it when generic action trigger is enabled and when working with executions with large textual results. #5241 Contributed by @Kami. * Mask secrets in output of an action execution in the API if the action has an output schema defined and one or more output parameters are marked as secret. #5250 Contributed by @mahesh-orch. ๐ Changed
- ๐ All the code has been refactored using black and black style is automatically enforced and required for all the new code. (#5156)
Contributed by @Kami.
- ๐ณ Default nginx config (
conf/nginx/st2.conf
) which is used by the installer and Docker images has been updated to only support TLS v1.2 and TLS v1.3 (support for TLS v1.0 and v1.1 has been removed).
Keep in mind that TLS v1.3 will only be used when nginx is running on more recent distros where nginx is compiled against OpenSSL v1.1.1 which supports TLS 1.3. #5183 #5216
Contributed by @Kami and @shital.
โ Add new
-x
argument to thest2 execution get
command which allowsresult
field to be excluded from the output. (improvement) #4846โก๏ธ Update
st2 execution get <id>
command to also display executionlog
attribute which includes execution state transition information.
By default
end_timestamp
attribute andduration
attribute displayed in the command output only include the time it took action runner to finish running actual action, but it doesn't include the time it it takes action runner container to fully finish running the execution - this includes persisting execution result in the database.For actions which return large results, there could be a substantial discrepancy - e.g. action itself could finish in 0.5 seconds, but writing data to the database could take additional 5 seconds after the action code itself was executed.
For all purposes until the execution result is persisted to the database, execution is not considered as finished.
While writing result to the database action runner is also consuming CPU cycles since serialization of large results is a CPU intensive task.
This means that "elapsed" attribute and start_timestamp + end_timestamp will make it look like actual action completed in 0.5 seconds, but in reality it took 5.5 seconds (0.5 + 5 seconds).
Log attribute can be used to determine actual duration of the execution (from start to finish). (improvement) #4846
Contributed by @Kami.
- ๐ Various internal improvements (reducing number of DB queries, speeding up YAML parsing, using DB object cache, etc.) which should speed up pack action registration between 15-30%. This is especially pronounced with packs which have a lot of actions (e.g. aws one). (improvement) #4846
Contributed by @Kami.
- Underlying database field type and storage format for the
Execution
,LiveAction
,WorkflowExecutionDB
,TaskExecutionDB
andTriggerInstanceDB
database models has changed.
This new format is much faster and efficient than the previous one. Users with larger executions (executions with larger results) should see the biggest improvements, but the change also scales down so there should also be improvements when reading and writing executions with small and medium sized results.
Our micro and end to benchmarks have shown improvements up to 15-20x for write path (storing model in the database) and up to 10x for the read path.
To put things into perspective - with previous version, running a Python runner action which returns 8 MB result would take around ~18 seconds total, but with this new storage format, it takes around 2 seconds (in this context, duration means the from the time the execution was scheduled to the time the execution model and result was written and available in the database).
The difference is even larger when working with Orquesta workflows.
Overall performance improvement doesn't just mean large decrease in those operation timings, but also large overall reduction of CPU usage - previously serializing large results was a CPU intensive time since it included tons of conversions and transformations back and forth.
The new format is also around 10-20% more storage efficient which means that it should allows for larger model values (MongoDB document size limit is 16 MB).
The actual change should be fully opaque and transparent to the end users - it's purely a field storage implementation detail and the code takes care of automatically handling both formats when working with those object.
Same field data storage optimizations have also been applied to workflow related database models which should result in the same performance improvements for Orquesta workflows which pass larger data sets / execution results around.
Trigger instance payload field has also been updated to use this new field type which should result in lower CPU utilization and better throughput of rules engine service when working with triggers with larger payloads.
This should address a long standing issue where StackStorm was reported to be slow and CPU inefficient with handling large executions.
If you want to migrate existing database objects to utilize the new type, you can use
st2common/bin/migrations/v3.5/st2-migrate-db-dict-field-values
migration script. (improvement) #4846Contributed by @Kami.
- โ Add new
result_size
field to theActionExecutionDB
model. This field will only be populated for executions which utilize new field storage format.
It holds the size of serialzed execution result field in bytes. This field will allow us to implement more efficient execution result retrieval and provide better UX since we will be able to avoid loading execution results in the WebUI for executions with very large results (which cause browser to freeze). (improvement) #4846
Contributed by @Kami.
- โ Add new
/v1/executions/<id>/result[?download=1&compress=1&pretty_format=1]
API endpoint which can be used used to retrieve or download raw execution result as (compressed) JSON file.
This endpoint will primarily be used by st2web when executions produce very large results so we can avoid loading, parsing and formatting those very large results as JSON in the browser which freezes the browser window / tab. (improvement) #4846
Contributed by @Kami.
โก๏ธ Update
jinja2
dependency to the latest stable version (2.11.3). #5195โก๏ธ Update
pyyaml
dependency to the latest stable version (5.4). #5207โก๏ธ Update various dependencies to latest stable versions (
bcrypt
,appscheduler
,pytz
,python-dateutil
,psutil
,passlib
,gunicorn
,flex
,cryptography
.eventlet
,greenlet
,webob
,mongoengine
,pymongo
,requests
,pyyaml
,kombu
,amqp
,python-ldap
).
#5215, https://github.com/StackStorm/st2-auth-ldap/pull/94
Contributed by @Kami.
- โก๏ธ Update code and dependencies so it supports Python 3.8 and Mongo DB 4.4 #5177
Contributed by @nzloshm @winem @Kami.
- โก๏ธ StackStorm Web UI (
st2web
) has been updated to not render and display execution results larger than 200 KB directly in the history panel in the right side bar by default anymore. Instead a link to view or download the raw result is displayed.
Execution result widget was never optimized to display very large results (especially for executions which return large nested dictionaries) so it would freeze and hang the whole browser tab / window when trying to render / display large results.
If for some reason you want to revert to the old behavior (this is almost never a good idea since it will cause browser to freeze when trying to display large results), you can do that by setting
max_execution_result_size_for_render
option in the config to a very large value (e.g.max_execution_result_size_for_render: 16 * 1024 * 1024
).https://github.com/StackStorm/st2web/pull/868
Contributed by @Kami.
- ๐จ Some of the config option registration code has been refactored to ignore "option already registered" errors. That was done as a work around for an occasional race in the tests and also to make all of the config option registration code expose the same consistent API. #5234
Contributed by @Kami.
- โก๏ธ Update
pyywinrm
dependency to the latest stable version (0.4.1). #5212
Contributed by @chadpatt .
- Monkey patch on st2stream earlier in flow #5240
Contributed by Amanda McGuinness (@amanda11 Ammeon Solutions)
- ๐ Support % in CLI arguments by reading the ConfigParser() arguments with raw=True.
This removes support for '%' interpolations on the configuration arguments.
See https://docs.python.org/3.8/library/configparser.html#configparser.ConfigParser.get for further details. #5253
Contributed by @winem.
โ Remove duplicate host header in the nginx config for the auth endpoint.
โก๏ธ Update orquesta to v1.4.0.
๐ Improvements
* โก๏ธ CLI has been updated to use or ``orjson`` when parsing API response and C version of the YAML safe dumper when formatting execution result for display. This should result in speed up when displaying execution result (``st2 execution get``, etc.) for executions with large results. When testing it locally, the difference for execution with 8 MB result was 18 seconds vs ~6 seconds. (improvement) #4846 Contributed by @Kami. * โก๏ธ Update various Jinja functiona to utilize C version of YAML ``safe_{load,dump}`` functions and orjson for better performance. (improvement) #4846 Contributed by @Kami. * ๐ For performance reasons, use ``udatetime`` library for parsing ISO8601 / RFC3339 date strings where possible. (improvement) #4846 Contributed by @Kami. * Speed up service start up time by speeding up runners registration on service start up by re-using existing stevedore ``ExtensionManager`` instance instead of instantiating new ``DriverManager`` instance per extension which is not necessary and it's slow since it requires disk / pkg resources scan for each extension. (improvement) #5198 Contributed by @Kami. * Add new ``?max_result_size`` query parameter filter to the ``GET /v1/executiond/<id>`` API endpoint. This query parameter allows clients to implement conditional execution result retrieval and only retrieve the result field if it's smaller than the provided value. This comes handy in the various client scenarios (such as st2web) where we don't display and render very large results directly since it allows to speed things up and decrease amount of data retrieved and parsed. (improvement) #5197 Contributed by @Kami. * โก๏ธ Update default nginx config which is used for proxying API requests and serving static content to only allow HTTP methods which are actually used by the services (get, post, put, delete, options, head). If a not-allowed method is used, nginx will abort the request early and return 405 status code. #5193 Contributed by @ashwini-orchestral * โก๏ธ Update default nginx config which is used for proxying API requests and serving static content to not allow range requests. #5193 Contributed by @ashwini-orchestral * โฌ๏ธ Drop unused python dependencies: prometheus_client, python-gnupg, more-itertools, zipp. #5228 Contributed by @cognifloyd. * โก๏ธ Update majority of the "resource get" CLI commands (e.g. ``st2 execution get``, ``st2 action get``, ``st2 rule get``, ``st2 pack get``, ``st2 apikey get``, ``st2 trace get``, ``st2 key get``, ``st2 webhook get``, ``st2 timer get``, etc.) so they allow for retrieval and printing of information for multiple resources using the following notation: ``st2 <resource> get <id 1> <id 2> <id n>``, e.g. ``st2 action.get pack.show packs.get packs.delete`` This change is fully backward compatible when retrieving only a single resource (aka single id is passed to the command). When retrieving a single source the command will throw and exit with non-zero if a resource is not found, but when retrieving multiple resources, command will just print an error and continue with printing the details of any other found resources. (new feature) #4912 Contributed by @Kami. ๐ Fixed ~~~~~ * ๐จ Refactor spec_loader util to use yaml.load with SafeLoader. (security) Contributed by @ashwini-orchestral * Import ABC from collections.abc for Python 3.10 compatibility. (#5007) Contributed by @tirkarthi * โก๏ธ Updated to use virtualenv 20.4.0/PIP20.3.3 and fixate-requirements to work with PIP 20.3.3 #512 Contributed by Amanda McGuinness (@amanda11 Ammeon Solutions) * ๐ Fix ``st2 execution get --with-schema`` flag. (bug fix) #4846 Contributed by @Kami. * ๐ Fix SensorTypeAPI schema to use class_name instead of name since documentation for pack development uses class_name and registrar used to load sensor to database assign class_name to name in the database model. (bug fix) * โก๏ธ Updated paramiko version to 2.7.2, to go with updated cryptography to prevent problems with ssh keys on remote actions. #5201 Contributed by Amanda McGuinness (@amanda11 Ammeon Solutions) * ๐ Update rpm package metadata and fix ``Provides`` section for RHEL / CentOS 8 packages. In the previous versions, RPM metadata would incorrectly signal that the ``st2`` package provides various Python libraries which it doesn't (those Python libraries are only used internally for the package local virtual environment). https://github.com/StackStorm/st2-packages/pull/697 Contributed by @Kami. * ๐ Make sure ``st2common.util.green.shell.run_command()`` doesn't leave stray / zombie processes laying around in some command timeout scenarios. #5220 Contributed by @r0m4n-z. * ๐ Fix support for skipping notifications for workflow actions. Previously if action metadata specified an empty list for ``notify`` parameter value, that would be ignored / not handled correctly for workflow (orquesta, action chain) actions. #5221 #5227 Contributed by @khushboobhatia01. * ๐ Clean up to remove unused methods in the action execution concurrency policies. #5268