Opentracing Documentation (#5703)

* Opentracing survival guide

* Update decorator names in doc

* Doc cleanup

These are all alterations as a result of comments in #5703, it
includes mostly typos and clarifications. The most interesting
changes are:

- Split developer and user docs into two sections
- Add a high level description of OpenTracing

* newsfile

* Move contributer specific info to docstring.

* Sample config.

* Trailing whitespace.

* Update 5703.misc

* Apply suggestions from code review

Mostly just rewording parts of the docs for clarity.

Co-Authored-By: Richard van der Hoff <1389908+richvdh@users.noreply.github.com>

5 files changed, 230 insertions, 24 deletions

diff --git a/changelog.d/5703.misc b/changelog.d/5703.misc
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..6e9b2d734e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelog.d/5703.misc
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Documentation for opentracing.
diff --git a/docs/opentracing.rst b/docs/opentracing.rst
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..b91a2208a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/opentracing.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,100 @@
+===========
+OpenTracing
+===========
+
+Background
+----------
+
+OpenTracing is a semi-standard being adopted by a number of distributed tracing
+platforms. It is a common api for facilitating vendor-agnostic tracing
+instrumentation. That is, we can use the OpenTracing api and select one of a
+number of tracer implementations to do the heavy lifting in the background.
+Our current selected implementation is Jaeger.
+
+OpenTracing is a tool which gives an insight into the causal relationship of
+work done in and between servers. The servers each track events and report them
+to a centralised server - in Synapse's case: Jaeger. The basic unit used to
+represent events is the span. The span roughly represents a single piece of work
+that was done and the time at which it occurred. A span can have child spans,
+meaning that the work of the child had to be completed for the parent span to
+complete, or it can have follow-on spans which represent work that is undertaken
+as a result of the parent but is not depended on by the parent to in order to
+finish.
+
+Since this is undertaken in a distributed environment a request to another
+server, such as an RPC or a simple GET, can be considered a span (a unit or
+work) for the local server. This causal link is what OpenTracing aims to
+capture and visualise. In order to do this metadata about the local server's
+span, i.e the 'span context', needs to be included with the request to the
+remote.
+
+It is up to the remote server to decide what it does with the spans
+it creates. This is called the sampling policy and it can be configured
+through Jaeger's settings.
+
+For OpenTracing concepts see 
+https://opentracing.io/docs/overview/what-is-tracing/.
+
+For more information about Jaeger's implementation see
+https://www.jaegertracing.io/docs/
+
+=====================
+Seting up OpenTracing
+=====================
+
+To receive OpenTracing spans, start up a Jaeger server. This can be done
+using docker like so:
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+   docker run -d --name jaeger
+     -p 6831:6831/udp \
+     -p 6832:6832/udp \
+     -p 5778:5778 \
+     -p 16686:16686 \
+     -p 14268:14268 \
+     jaegertracing/all-in-one:1.13
+
+Latest documentation is probably at
+https://www.jaegertracing.io/docs/1.13/getting-started/
+
+
+Enable OpenTracing in Synapse
+-----------------------------
+
+OpenTracing is not enabled by default. It must be enabled in the homeserver
+config by uncommenting the config options under ``opentracing`` as shown in
+the `sample config <./sample_config.yaml>`_. For example:
+
+.. code-block:: yaml
+
+  opentracing:
+    tracer_enabled: true
+    homeserver_whitelist:
+      - "mytrustedhomeserver.org"
+      - "*.myotherhomeservers.com"
+
+Homeserver whitelisting
+-----------------------
+
+The homeserver whitelist is configured using regular expressions. A list of regular
+expressions can be given and their union will be compared when propagating any
+spans contexts to another homeserver. 
+
+Though it's mostly safe to send and receive span contexts to and from
+untrusted users since span contexts are usually opaque ids it can lead to
+two problems, namely:
+
+- If the span context is marked as sampled by the sending homeserver the receiver will
+  sample it. Therefore two homeservers with wildly different sampling policies
+  could incur higher sampling counts than intended.
+- Sending servers can attach arbitrary data to spans, known as 'baggage'. For safety this has been disabled in Synapse
+  but that doesn't prevent another server sending you baggage which will be logged
+  to OpenTracing's logs.
+
+==================
+Configuring Jaeger
+==================
+
+Sampling strategies can be set as in this document:
+https://www.jaegertracing.io/docs/1.13/sampling/
diff --git a/docs/sample_config.yaml b/docs/sample_config.yaml
index 5b804d16a4..0a96197ca6 100644
--- a/docs/sample_config.yaml
+++ b/docs/sample_config.yaml
@@ -1422,18 +1422,8 @@ opentracing:
     #enabled: true
 
     # The list of homeservers we wish to send and receive span contexts and span baggage.
-    #
-    # Though it's mostly safe to send and receive span contexts to and from
-    # untrusted users since span contexts are usually opaque ids it can lead to
-    # two problems, namely:
-    # - If the span context is marked as sampled by the sending homeserver the receiver will
-    # sample it. Therefore two homeservers with wildly disparaging sampling policies
-    # could incur higher sampling counts than intended.
-    # - Span baggage can be arbitrary data. For safety this has been disabled in synapse
-    # but that doesn't prevent another server sending you baggage which will be logged
-    # to opentracing logs.
-    #
-    # This a list of regexes which are matched against the server_name of the
+    # See docs/opentracing.rst
+    # This is a list of regexes which are matched against the server_name of the
     # homeserver.
     #
     # By defult, it is empty, so no servers are matched.
diff --git a/synapse/config/tracer.py b/synapse/config/tracer.py
index a2ce9ab3f6..4479454415 100644
--- a/synapse/config/tracer.py
+++ b/synapse/config/tracer.py
@@ -48,18 +48,8 @@ class TracerConfig(Config):
             #enabled: true
 
             # The list of homeservers we wish to send and receive span contexts and span baggage.
-            #
-            # Though it's mostly safe to send and receive span contexts to and from
-            # untrusted users since span contexts are usually opaque ids it can lead to
-            # two problems, namely:
-            # - If the span context is marked as sampled by the sending homeserver the receiver will
-            # sample it. Therefore two homeservers with wildly disparaging sampling policies
-            # could incur higher sampling counts than intended.
-            # - Span baggage can be arbitrary data. For safety this has been disabled in synapse
-            # but that doesn't prevent another server sending you baggage which will be logged
-            # to opentracing logs.
-            #
-            # This a list of regexes which are matched against the server_name of the
+            # See docs/opentracing.rst
+            # This is a list of regexes which are matched against the server_name of the
             # homeserver.
             #
             # By defult, it is empty, so no servers are matched.
diff --git a/synapse/logging/opentracing.py b/synapse/logging/opentracing.py
index 415040f5ee..3da33d7826 100644
--- a/synapse/logging/opentracing.py
+++ b/synapse/logging/opentracing.py
@@ -24,6 +24,131 @@
 # this move the methods have work very similarly to opentracing's and it should only
 # be a matter of few regexes to move over to opentracing's access patterns proper.
 
+"""
+============================
+Using OpenTracing in Synapse
+============================
+
+Python-specific tracing concepts are at https://opentracing.io/guides/python/.
+Note that Synapse wraps OpenTracing in a small module (this one) in order to make the
+OpenTracing dependency optional. That means that the access patterns are
+different to those demonstrated in the OpenTracing guides. However, it is
+still useful to know, especially if OpenTracing is included as a full dependency
+in the future or if you are modifying this module.
+
+
+OpenTracing is encapsulated so that
+no span objects from OpenTracing are exposed in Synapse's code. This allows
+OpenTracing to be easily disabled in Synapse and thereby have OpenTracing as
+an optional dependency. This does however limit the number of modifiable spans
+at any point in the code to one. From here out references to `opentracing`
+in the code snippets refer to the Synapses module.
+
+Tracing
+-------
+
+In Synapse it is not possible to start a non-active span. Spans can be started
+using the ``start_active_span`` method. This returns a scope (see
+OpenTracing docs) which is a context manager that needs to be entered and
+exited. This is usually done by using ``with``.
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+   from synapse.logging.opentracing import start_active_span
+
+   with start_active_span("operation name"):
+       # Do something we want to tracer
+
+Forgetting to enter or exit a scope will result in some mysterious and grievous log
+context errors.
+
+At anytime where there is an active span ``opentracing.set_tag`` can be used to
+set a tag on the current active span.
+
+Tracing functions
+-----------------
+
+Functions can be easily traced using decorators. There is a decorator for
+'normal' function and for functions which are actually deferreds. The name of
+the function becomes the operation name for the span.
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+   from synapse.logging.opentracing import trace, trace_deferred
+
+   # Start a span using 'normal_function' as the operation name
+   @trace
+   def normal_function(*args, **kwargs):
+       # Does all kinds of cool and expected things
+       return something_usual_and_useful
+
+   # Start a span using 'deferred_function' as the operation name
+   @trace_deferred
+   @defer.inlineCallbacks
+   def deferred_function(*args, **kwargs):
+       # We start
+       yield we_wait
+       # we finish
+       defer.returnValue(something_usual_and_useful)
+
+Operation names can be explicitly set for functions by using
+``trace_using_operation_name`` and
+``trace_deferred_using_operation_name``
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+   from synapse.logging.opentracing import (
+       trace_using_operation_name,
+       trace_deferred_using_operation_name
+   )
+
+   @trace_using_operation_name("A *much* better operation name")
+   def normal_function(*args, **kwargs):
+       # Does all kinds of cool and expected things
+       return something_usual_and_useful
+
+   @trace_deferred_using_operation_name("Another exciting operation name!")
+   @defer.inlineCallbacks
+   def deferred_function(*args, **kwargs):
+       # We start
+       yield we_wait
+       # we finish
+       defer.returnValue(something_usual_and_useful)
+
+Contexts and carriers
+---------------------
+
+There are a selection of wrappers for injecting and extracting contexts from
+carriers provided. Unfortunately OpenTracing's three context injection
+techniques are not adequate for our inject of OpenTracing span-contexts into
+Twisted's http headers, EDU contents and our database tables. Also note that
+the binary encoding format mandated by OpenTracing is not actually implemented
+by jaeger_client v4.0.0 - it will silently noop.
+Please refer to the end of ``logging/opentracing.py`` for the available
+injection and extraction methods.
+
+Homeserver whitelisting
+-----------------------
+
+Most of the whitelist checks are encapsulated in the modules's injection
+and extraction method but be aware that using custom carriers or crossing
+unchartered waters will require the enforcement of the whitelist.
+``logging/opentracing.py`` has a ``whitelisted_homeserver`` method which takes
+in a destination and compares it to the whitelist.
+
+=======
+Gotchas
+=======
+
+- Checking whitelists on span propagation
+- Inserting pii
+- Forgetting to enter or exit a scope
+- Span source: make sure that the span you expect to be active across a
+  function call really will be that one. Does the current function have more
+  than one caller? Will all of those calling functions have be in a context
+  with an active span?
+"""
+
 import contextlib
 import logging
 import re