Read 2026-10-04
os-autoinst/openqa: technical due diligence, read from its repository
What Borehole read in os-autoinst/openqa's code and history at ef39a05: its licence, security advisories, releases, review practice, tests, dependencies and operations. Every finding cites the file and line it rests on. The full report also covers the team and asks the questions the code cannot answer.
| Dimension | Rating |
|---|---|
| Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance | adequate |
| Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity | strong |
| Product & Engineering Maturity | adequate |
| Security & Reliability Posture | adequate |
| Observability & Operations | adequate |
| Fit with the Acquirer | not assessable |
What the repository says
- No release for 76 months while development continues
docs/Contributing.md:107: states a policy on AI-generated contributions
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance
adequatelib/OpenQA/Schema/Result/Jobs.pm is 2,503 lines, 33× this codebase's median file
adequateThe median source file here is 74 lines. 8 files exceed 1,000 lines, the largest being 2,503. Size is not a defect on its own — some problems genuinely live in one place — but these are where merge conflicts, review fatigue and single-owner knowledge concentrate, and they are the first thing that slows an inheriting engineer down.
lib/OpenQA/Schema/Result/Jobs.pm:1 — 2,503 lines (33× median) |
assets/javascripts/test_result.js:1 — 1,477 lines (19× median) |
assets/javascripts/running.js:1 — 1,311 lines (17× median) |
lib/OpenQA/Worker/Job.pm:1 — 1,282 lines (17× median) |
lib/OpenQA/WebAPI/Controller/Test.pm:1 — 1,256 lines (16× median) |
4 base images float: no version, or `latest`
adequate4 of 7 `FROM` lines in product Dockerfiles name an image without a version, or with `latest`. Each build pulls whatever the registry serves that day, so the image that ships can change without a commit, and last month's build cannot be reproduced. Pin a version, or a digest.
container/client/Dockerfile:5 — base image without a version |
container/devel/Dockerfile:10 — base image without a version |
container/single-instance-codespaces/Dockerfile:5 — base image without a version |
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity
strongNo finding.
Product & Engineering Maturity
adequateNo release for 76 months while development continues
adequateThe last tag, rolling_release, was cut 2289 days before the survey; the typical gap between releases was 0 days, and 537 commits landed in the last 90 days. Users run the last release, not this code.
| last tag rolling_release |
Security & Reliability Posture
adequate1 credential-shaped string in the tree sit in tests, examples, documentation or local development settings
adequateStrings shaped like credentials appear only where fakes are usual: test fixtures, examples, documentation, placeholders and local stacks. They are almost always fakes. Ask someone to confirm that none of them works anywhere, because a real key in a development file is still a real key.
| private key block, where fakes are usual |
7 Dockerfiles run the application as root
adequateNo USER instruction switches away from root, so the process runs with full privileges inside the container. It is a one-line fix and an ordinary expectation, which is why its absence is worth asking about: it usually says more about whether anyone has reviewed the deployment than about this container specifically.
container/client/Dockerfile — runs as root |
container/devel/Dockerfile — runs as root |
container/openqa_data/Dockerfile — runs as root |
container/single-instance-codespaces/Dockerfile — runs as root |
2 environment files are committed
adequatecontainer/webui/.env, container/worker/.env are tracked in git. Environment files are where credentials usually live, and committing one usually means nobody decided how secrets reach the running application. Whatever is in it is in the history for good. Check 05.1 says whether it holds anything credential-shaped.
container/webui/.env — committed environment file |
container/worker/.env — committed environment file |
2 of 2 Kubernetes workloads declare no resource limits
adequate2 workload manifests set no CPU or memory limits. One pod that leaks memory or spins can starve everything else on its node, and the scheduler cannot plan capacity for what it cannot see.
container/helm/openqa/charts/worker/templates/deployment.yaml — workload with no limits |
container/helm/openqa/templates/deployment.yaml — workload with no limits |
1 workload setting give a container the host
adequate1 places in the deployment configuration run a container privileged or in the host's network, process or IPC namespace. A compromise of that container is a compromise of the machine, and most acquirers' security reviews block it. Node agents (network, storage, monitoring) are excluded.
container/helm/openqa/charts/worker/templates/deployment.yaml:56 — privileged or host namespace |
Observability & Operations
adequateNo telemetry or error reporting is wired in anywhere
adequateNone of 1,164 readable files references an instrumentation, metrics or error-reporting library. If this system is in production, nobody learns that it broke from the system itself — they learn it from a customer. That is a reliability finding before it is an observability one.
| searched 1,164 tracked text files for 16 known instrumentation libraries; manifests for metrics, tracing and error-reporting families; locked dependencies for the packages that emit; 0 matched |
One request cannot be followed through the logs
adequateNothing in the service carries a request or correlation id, and there is no tracing. When a customer reports a failure, the log lines that belong to their request cannot be picked out from everyone else's.
| no request id, correlation id or tracing found |
No error reporter is wired in
adequateNothing in the service initialises an error reporter (Sentry, Rollbar, Bugsnag, Honeybadger or an APM agent). An exception in production reaches a person only if someone is reading the logs, which usually means a customer reports it first.
| no error reporter initialised |
2 of 3 deployed images carry no version, or `latest`
adequate2 images in the deployment configuration are named without a version or as `latest`. A redeploy can change the software without a commit, a rollback has nothing to roll back to, and nobody can say from the repository what is running.
container/helm/openqa/charts/worker/templates/deployment.yaml:21 — image without a version |
container/helm/openqa/templates/deployment.yaml:21 — image without a version |
2 of 2 deployments run a single replica
adequate2 deployments set `replicas: 1`, and nothing (an autoscaler, a disruption budget) adds more. Every deploy and every node drain is downtime, and the availability the buyer inherits has a ceiling.
container/helm/openqa/charts/worker/templates/deployment.yaml — replicas: 1 |
container/helm/openqa/templates/deployment.yaml — replicas: 1 |
1289 commits in a year, and no release marked
adequateThe service took 1289 commits in the last year with no tag, no release commit and no changelog entry. What is running in production cannot be read from the repository, and a bug report cannot be mapped to a version. Ask how the team knows what is deployed.
| no tag, release commit or changelog change in 12 months |
Fit with the Acquirer
not assessableNot rated: structurally not assessable from a repository.
Read more, or read your own
The full report on os-autoinst/openqa: every dimension, the questions for the room, and the audit log.
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