letsencrypt / letsencrypt/boulder

Shrink size of CA issuance logs

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Dominant language
Go
Stars
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

Right now the CA fires off four very-similar log lines:
https://github.com/letsencrypt/boulder/blob/a0cb60ea6acd264b10fb9ddeeba517b32e503f27/ca/ca.go#L327
https://github.com/letsencrypt/boulder/blob/a0cb60ea6acd264b10fb9ddeeba517b32e503f27/ca/ca.go#L344
https://github.com/letsencrypt/boulder/blob/a0cb60ea6acd264b10fb9ddeeba517b32e503f27/ca/ca.go#L405
https://github.com/letsencrypt/boulder/blob/a0cb60ea6acd264b10fb9ddeeba517b32e503f27/ca/ca.go#L422

Each of these log lines contains a bunch of the same info: acctID, orderID, profile, and big blobs like the hex pubkey (inside the IssuanceRequest). But we could instead log all the redundant info once, and then tie the four log lines together with a single traceID-style unique identifier.

Decisions to make:

  • is it worth deduplicating small info like the orderID?
  • how do we want to deduplicate info that is in the embedded IssuanceRequest struct, which has other non-logging uses?

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reading the four cited log sites in ca/ca.go and the embedded IssuanceRequest struct. Compare which fields are repeated across the issuance logs, then define how they should be correlated and which details remain logged; the work is done when the four events retain the needed context with less redundant output.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
go
Domain
backend, observability
Issue type
Refactor
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
45/100

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