Provenance Checks

The provenance check is done against Pipenv and Pipenv.lock that are expected as an input. The output is a structured report (with metadata) that states issues found in the application stack. There are currently reported the following issues:

  1. ERROR/ARTIFACT-DIFFERENT-SOURCE - reported if a package/artifact is installed from a different package source index in comparision to the configured one

  2. INFO/ARTIFACT-POSSIBLE-DIFFERENT-SOURCE - reported if a package/artifact can be installed from a different package source index in comparision to the configured one

  3. WARNING/DIFFERENT-ARTIFACTS-ON-SOURCES - there are present different artifacts on the package source indexes and configuration does not state explicitly which package source index should be used for installing package - this warning recommends explictly stating package source index to guarantee the expected artifacts are used

  4. ERROR/MISSING-PACKAGE - the given package was not found on package source index (the configured one or any of other package source indexes available)

  5. ERROR/INVALID-ARTIFACT-HASH - the artifact hash that is used for the downloaded package was not found on the package source index - possibly the artifact has changed over time (dangerous) or was removed from the package source index

  6. ERROR/INVALID-LOCK-HASH - the lockfile hash does not correspond to the hash computed, this generally means that requirements were adjusted and the lockfile no longer corresponds to the requirements file used

The provenance check is done against computed hashes present in the Pipfile.lock respecting package source index configuration.

There are also performed checks on configured package source indexes which can report the following issues:

  1. ERROR/SOURCE-NOT-WHITELISTED - a package source index configured was not whitelisted (see bellow)

  2. WARNING/INSECURE-SOURCE - a package source index configured does not use SSL/TLS verification casuing insecure connections

The implementation respects PEP-0503 specification.

If you have your own Warehouse instance deployed for managing Python packages, you can configure THOTH_ADVISER_WAREHOUSES environment variable to point on it (a comma separated list). This is to optimize traffic - instead of directly scanning the simple index, there will be used JSON API exposed by the Warehouse.

See Pipenv documentation for more info on how to specify package indexes.

Provenance issues reported by example

1. ERROR/ARTIFACT-DIFFERENT-SOURCE

I have configured TensorFlow to be installed from AICoE index with optimized TensorFlow builds for my specific hardware with specific configuration (e.g. Kafka support). The Python’s resolution did not respect this configuration and fallbacked to the public PyPI.

Note: Python packaging does not treat different package sources as different sources of packages, but rather treats them as mirrors. If installing a package from one package source index fails, there is perfomed a fallback to another one. Pipenv has configuration option to specify source package index to be used per package, but it is just a “hint” which should be tried first - the actual artifact a user ends up with might come from a different package index (based on sources listing in Pipenv) without any warning reported to user.

2. INFO/ARTIFACT-POSSIBLE-DIFFERENT-SOURCE

I have configured at least two source package indexes - let’s say the public PyPI and Red Hat’s AICoE index. I have explicitly specified package TensorFlow to be installed from the AICoE index. If this warning is reported, it means that the PyPI index has exactly the same artifact (based on artifact hash) that is available on the AICoE index. That means that these artifact can be installed from AICoE index as well as from PyPI. As artifact hashes match, this report is not treated as an error, but is rather informative to the user.

3. WARNING/DIFFERENT-ARTIFACTS-ON-SOURCES

I install TensorFlow without specifying explicitly which package source index should be used. As I configured two package source indexes - AICoE index and the public PyPI index, both have TensorFlow available, however these packages (the built artifacts) differ. The provenance check is suggesting to explicitly specify which package source index should be used when installing TensorFlow so that which TensorFlow build is used is not dependent on hardware and time when the actual TensorFlow resolution is done.

4. ERROR/MISSING-PACKAGE

The package stated in the Pipfile or Pipfile.lock was not found on index - eigher on the configured one for package or on any other source package index stated in the sources listing.

5. ERROR/INVALID-ARTIFACT-HASH

The hash of artifact was not found - this can happen if the hash was changed by hand in the Pipfile.lock, the artifact is not present on package index anymore or the artifact has changed so it is no longer the expected package based on artifact hash. Running pipenv install --deploy will fail in production (e.g. when OpenShift’s s2i is run).