non string user metadata causes 500 error in nova-api

[Michael Chapman]

Using grizzly on U12.04.

When using python-novaclient to make a nova boot call, if metadata is entered that is not of a string type, nova-api will have an error when it attempts to store it in the db.

For example:

novaclient.servers.create(... ..., meta={'test': ['a', 'list', 'of', 'things']}, ... ...)

[Matt Riedemann (mriedem)]

What version of novaclient?

[Matt Riedemann (mriedem)]

Do you have a stack trace in the compute log?

[Matt Riedemann (mriedem)]

Looking at the latest novaclient code, I don't see it validating the meta value, it just lists this in the docstring for the _boot method:

        :param meta: A dict of arbitrary key/value metadata to store for this
                     server. A maximum of five entries is allowed, and both
                     keys and values must be 255 characters or less.

It doesn't valid the type, size or length of the dict in the client. Looks like the nova compute API validates the metadata in the request:

https://github.com/openstack/nova/blob/master/nova/compute/api.py#L402

Looking at the latest code, it's checking that the metadata value is a dict with a number of entries per the quota limits, and checks the entries length to make sure they are less than 255 (characters), but they don't check that the key/value pairs are strings.

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Fix proposed to branch: master
Review: https://review.openstack.org/56793

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Reviewed: https://review.openstack.org/56793
Committed: https://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/nova/commit/?id=18a6f7ced0f5d2c6293ca06470a7fab45a11e833
Submitter: Jenkins
Branch: master

commit 18a6f7ced0f5d2c6293ca06470a7fab45a11e833
Author: Matt Riedemann <email address hidden>
Date: Sat Nov 16 14:04:32 2013 -0800

    Enforce metadata string type on key/value pairs

    The compute API is currently enforcing quota limits for user metadata
    and length restrictions on the dict entries, but is not enforcing that
    they are string types. This patch adds the checks for string type on the
    keys and values in the metadata dict.

    Closes-Bug: #1240319

    Change-Id: Ic4aacc342cf37d929871287e6e4917f4f48b63e8