jcoffey-dev
0ee2e9183b
Cairn OBS is self-hosted, and the way to separate two environments is to run two installations rather than two tenants inside one. Tenancy is the wrong boundary for that, on three counts this repository demonstrates rather than assumes: chwriter.WriteBatch is all-or-nothing across tenants, so one tenant's failure stalls offset progress for every other; CLICKHOUSE_DEFAULT_ACCESS_MANAGEMENT puts every tenant's data behind a single superuser credential, as docker-compose.yml's own comment says; and one binary with one set of migrations moves every tenant together, which is the opposite of what separate environments are for. A whole installation idles at about 1.3 GB, so the sharing buys nothing. The project led with multi-tenant RBAC in the README banner and in PROJECT-SPEC's goal statement. Both now say what it is instead: self-hosted. "Open-core" goes with them -- it was already inaccurate, since CONTRIBUTING states there is no feature gate and no paid tier, and with enterprise/ off the roadmap there will not be one. A second identity provider comes off the list of things standing between this and production-ready. SSO belongs to enterprise/, and a self-hosted deployment is not waiting on it. Terraform's tenant/RBAC resources move from "disclosed future work" to not planned. Nothing is scrubbed from the record. Phase 4 stays shipped, its runbook stays, and its known gaps stay stated -- rewriting that history would contradict the candour the Status section is built on. enterprise/ stays in the tree, AGPLv3 and working, as the answer to a question this project is not asking. Signed-off-by: John Coffey <[email protected]>
89 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
89 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
# Project: Cairn OBS — Distributed Log Aggregation & Observability Platform
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## Mission
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Build a self-hosted, Kubernetes-native centralized logging platform that
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rivals Splunk on features but wins on cost-per-GB and a modern language
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stack. Full architecture spec is in `/docs/architecture.md` — read
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it before touching any component. Do not deviate from the storage/query split
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described there without flagging it to me first.
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Cairn OBS is positioned against **Cribl** as well, which is a different claim
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rather than the same one twice: Splunk is the destination and Cairn OBS
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replaces it; Cribl is the road, and Cairn OBS is currently a road that exposes
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none of a pipeline's controls. Reconciling the two — including the part where
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cheap storage removes the usual reason to buy Cribl at all, and the part where
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competing with it means helping data leave this platform — is
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[`/docs/positioning.md`](docs/positioning.md), along with the four phases of
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processing, routing, archive/replay and fleet work it implies. Read it before
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proposing anything pipeline-shaped.
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## Non-negotiable constraints
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- Distro-agnostic Linux agent: must run identically on RHEL/Debian/Arch/SUSE
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derivatives via a statically-linked musl binary. No glibc runtime deps.
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- Windows support via native ETW/Event Log API, not a WSL shim.
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- **AGPLv3 for the entire project, no exceptions.** The `enterprise/`
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module (SSO/multi-tenancy/compliance) was under a commercial-license
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stub from Phase 4 through Phase 5; Phase 6 relicensed it to AGPLv3,
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matching core — see `/docs/compliance/license-audit-report.md` for the
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full record and its business-model consequences. `enterprise/` stays a
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separate directory that core never imports from, but that boundary is
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now architectural only (keeps core buildable/deployable standalone,
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keeps tenant resolution server-side), not a licensing wall.
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- Schema-on-write with OTel semantic conventions as the default schema, with
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schema-on-read fallback for unstructured text.
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- Every UI action must correspond to a documented REST/gRPC call. No
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UI-only logic. CLI (`cairnobsctl`) and Terraform provider are first-class,
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not afterthoughts. **Status**: `cairnobsctl` has been built out phase by
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phase since Phase 3. The Terraform provider (`/terraform`) only exists
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as of this note -- four resources (`cairnobs_dashboard` and
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`cairnobs_dashboard_panel`, both full CRUD, panels as their own resource
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rather than a nested block since the API manages them independently
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of their parent dashboard; `cairnobs_alert_rule` and
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`cairnobs_notification_target`, both create/destroy only -- `alerting`
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has no `PUT /rules/{id}` or `PUT /targets/{id}` to update against),
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each paired with a read-only data source, built on HashiCorp's
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`terraform-plugin-framework`, reusing the exact same REST contracts
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`cairnobsctl dashboards apply`/web's dashboard export and
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`cairnobsctl alerts apply` already use. Tenant/RBAC resources are real,
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disclosed future work -- see
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`/terraform/README.md` for the full accounting of what is and isn't
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built, and the same
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"written but not run against a live stack" verification caveat as
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everything else Docker-gated in this repo.
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## Tech stack (pinned — do not substitute without discussion)
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| Component | Language/Tool |
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|-------------------|------------------------|
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| Edge agent | Rust, musl target |
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| Transport | Redpanda (Kafka API) |
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| Ingest/parse | Go |
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| Analytical store | ClickHouse |
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| Full-text index | Tantivy (Rust) |
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| Control plane/API | Go, gRPC + REST gateway |
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| Frontend | SvelteKit + TypeScript |
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| Deployment | Kubernetes Operator (Go, kubebuilder), Helm, docker-compose for local/homelab |
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## Repo conventions
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- Monorepo, one top-level dir per component (see structure below).
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- Rust: workspace-based, `cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings` must pass.
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- Go: standard `go vet` + `golangci-lint`, no globals for shared state.
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- Every component ships with: unit tests, a `README.md`, and a Dockerfile
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using distroless or scratch base images where feasible.
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- Conventional commits. Every PR-sized change should be a logically complete,
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independently revertible unit.
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- Prefer boring, well-understood dependencies over novel ones. This is
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infrastructure software; operators need to trust it.
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## Project status
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Phase-by-phase scope, what "done" meant for each, and the verification
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record — including what is *not* yet shipped and what remains unverified —
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live in [`/docs/status.md`](docs/status.md). Read it before assuming a
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capability works end-to-end; several are built but unconfirmed against a
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live stack, and the per-phase runbooks in `/docs` record exactly how each
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was checked.
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## When in doubt
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Ask before: changing the pinned stack, adding a new external dependency
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that pulls in a large transitive tree, or making an architectural decision
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that isn't already specified in `/docs/architecture.md`.
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