feat: ability to preserve configuration with install-deadline-worker

[komapa]

Describe the bug

This is the new feature implemented in 0.28.x and we wanted to start using it to move the sessions storage to the NMVe drive on the EC2 instance. What we do is, drop a preconfigured worker.toml with all the defaults and then we issue the install-deadline-worker to configure the queue/fleet and the windows users to use. The problem is that if we do not specify --session-root-dir you inadvertently overwrite that config in the worker.toml with the default. If I specify --session-root-dir then it gets configured as specified.

So the bug is that the default is not really implicit but explicit right now and we are forced to always specify it in --session-root-dir parameter and not in the worker.toml file.

Expected Behaviour

Not specifying --session-root-dir will keep the value set in worker.toml and not overwrite it with the "default".

Current Behaviour

If we do not specify --session-root-dir, the value in worker.toml is always reset to the default.

Reproduction Steps

install-deadline-worker `
  --region $env:DEADLINE_REGION `
  --farm-id $env:DEADLINE_WORKER_FARM_ID `
  --fleet-id $env:DEADLINE_WORKER_FLEET_ID `
  --user $deadlineUser `
  --windows-job-user $deadlineUserJobs `
  --session-root-dir V:\deadline\sessions `
  --yes;

Environment

Windows Server 2022
deadline cloud worker agent version 0.28.1

[jusiskin]

Hi @komapa,

Thanks for reporting this issue.

I can confirm that this is the behavior of the worker agent currently. Most of the arguments to install-deadline-worker have the same behavior. For better or for worse, you must specify the the desired configuration arguments each time you run install-deadline-worker. Because this is the behavior by design, I will re-classify this as a feature request to help meet your use-case.

Some of the arguments to install-deadilne-worker have no opposite counterpart. For example, there is a --no-allow-shutdown flag, but no --allow-shutdown. Currently, the absence of a --no-allow-shutdown argument is treated as the user wanting to allow shutdown.

To help improve the situation, one idea is to add explicit arguments for specifying the opposite configuration (e.g. --allow-shutdown above) and change the behavior to not modify the configuration when neither argument is provided. This requires some effort and would be a breaking change.

We are tracking this feature request in our backlog and will post updates here when we prioritize this effort.

[komapa]

Thank you this makes sense as described.

In the same feature request, I would also say that adding parameters for the other directories would be pretty good as well. Right now we move these 3 directories to a different location, but only sessions has a parameter in install-deadilne-worker

    "V:\deadline\sessions",
    "V:\deadline\persistence",
    "V:\deadline\logs"

Almost feels like sessions should NOT have gotten a parameter to install-deadilne-worker at all :)

Anyway, I am not in any way blocked but wanted to report this inconsistency as I saw it.