Return of the logout button

[jgreco]

I fscking hated what they did with Nexenta.

 

[jkh]

Wow, some serious drug abuse in this thread, I see! If you guys are going to start popping the stuff with the 37 letter IUPAC names, you could at least send a bottle of it to iXsystems out of courtesy. :)

The availability of a CLI is actually likely to have more the opposite effect of what cybergreco is worried about.

Currently, if you pop up a shell window or ssh into the box, you're sitting at a Unix shell prompt as root. No seat belts. No restricting the less-than-Unix-savvy user to only those commands necessary to admin the box vs destroy it or cause unintended side-effects. No logging of the commands actually performed for forensic analysis ("You said you did something at the command line? What??" "Nothing. Honest!")

The CLI is not a shell prompt. The CLI is a very restricted environment that merely feeds the Middleware the same sorts of commands that can be generated via the GUI, validates its arguments as the user types them and rejects anything that doesn't make sense, and has the Middleware itself as a last line of defense - if the user attempts to do something in the wrong sequence, or does it without backing up certain key resources first, the middleware can either reject the operation or do helpful things behind the scenes to enable potentially bad decisions to be rolled back. Needless to say, everything done at the CLI is also logged and subject to the same interlocks and privilege checking that things done via the GUI are since, again, they both go through the same Middleware agent.

So, in short, the user can administer a box via the GUI, the CLI or the (ReST) API and it all goes through the same funnel point and is subject to the same validation, authentication, logging and documentation assistance. That is WAY better than what you have now - a /bin/sh prompt and the ability for the user to hang themselves in bizarre ways even we haven't discovered yet.

 

[Rilo Ravestein]

For a system admin, any restriction would be a no-go. But i guess for those folks, the shell will still be available? Also, an extra layer also means an extra layer of possible bugs too. But i think for the average user this concept is indeed an improvement. Will save the forum admins some work too ;)

 

[jgreco]

The availability of a CLI is actually likely to have more the opposite effect of what cybergreco is worried about.

What is it I'm supposedly worried about? 'Cuz I don't think I made any comments indicating I was worried about any particular thing except to note that as a sysadmin, I hated Nexenta's attempt at a CLI environment.

 

[peterh]

In defense of the argument that "the button is gone and isn't coming back", FreeNAS 10's WebGUI is *totally* different. Aside from having the FreeNAS logo and the FreeNAS name, it looks nothing even remotely close to the "FreeNAS we all love". So please keep this in mind as things are changing in a major way. So if you are arguing because you are against change in any form, you've lost the battle long ago. But if the button had utilitarian value, then you are definitely welcome to argue your point. ;)

Why change a reasonably working GUI to some new , hopefully working GUI at all ? This is the way MS and other
have done to confuse and make us believe that major internal changes has been done. I would very much more like
the continuum of a stable user interface where new features are introduced faithfully.

One example that comes to my mind is cisco command-line interface, known for us as basically unchanged
since 1990-ties and still state of art. It's even in a form that the displayed configuration is valid input
to a brand new device, i.e. the perfect backup.

Well, i use tcsh as my stable GUI ( yes it's graphical, it prints letters and number on a graphical device) and it has
all the abilities i need.

 

[fracai]

I'd just like to state that the images I've seen of the new GUI look great. I'm also very much looking forward to the usage of React to speed up the interface.

The current interface is functional, but it's dated. It'll get the job done, but it's not going to attract new interest. A refreshed interface is going to entice new users; a restricted CLI is going to further help new users not destroy their data. This will undoubtedly be a headache for the forum support, but forum support is already a headache. More users is ultimately good for FreeNAS and I look forward to that.

I do sincerely hope there's still a way to get the full shell interface, but everything else I've seen about 10 is exciting. I have so many ideas for bhyve alone

 

[cyberjock]

I'm with fracai. The current interface works, but is dated. There are new features coming out (multi-user WebGUI accounts) and other things that are going to be fsckin' amazing! I firmly believe that the new WebGUI is going to be AMAZING. The guy working on it (I won't call him out on it) is a damn genius with Web design, and he's doing a freakin' badass job at this. The changes really are necessary as companies want (err.. demand) these changes so that FreeNAS and TrueNAS can stay competitive with the competitors out there. So these *have* to come. Even if they weren't required, they are going to be extremely useful and you *will* like it after you get used to it being different from what you already know.

I firmly believe that if you give the new WebGUI a chance, and you are okay with change, that you will love what 10.x has to offer.

Edit: Hey Jordan, I'll take that payment now for promoting your new crappy WebGUI.

Just kidding folks.

 

[jgreco]

Really, it's totally understandable. During the early days of 8.0, it was clear that things were moving very quickly but some early design decisions had been baked in that clearly kept biting back.

I haven't seen the new UI, but I'm hoping they've learned from both the successes and the failures of the current design.

 

[gdreade]

As a software and systems architect, I understand that sometimes a redesign is necessary. However I would like to encourage those embarking on major changes to ensure that those changes are actually warranted based on increased usability, functionality, or other worthwhile metric. Far too many times (especially in the last decade) I have seen wholesale changes in systems that smack of "let's do it because it's cool" or "we have to change something to make us look new and improved".

In this industry there has been far too little regard paid to the fact that many users, especially in enterprise settings, want consistency and stability; they've got better things to spend their time on (like core business concerns) rather than having to constantly relearn UIs for the hell of it.

In fact, there are a few companies out there (no names, no pack drill) that I suspect are continually changing UIs and other mechanisms not because it's needed, but because it benefits their training and certification programs.

Giving the FreeNAS team the benefit of the doubt, I shall assume that there are *good* reasons for the changes being implemented. However, please keep my comments in mind (not only here, but those other software projects on which people are working).

 

[cyberjock]

I've seen some of the redesign and talked to people about how it should/will work in the end. I can tell you that the reasons are *very* good. In fact, some of the features are things that I wouldn't have given much value to 6 months ago, but I think they add a lot of value to FreeNAS.

Some of the changes are geared more towards larger systems, so some are going to be less valuable to us home users. But one thing you can be sure of is that the things that are being worked on provide tangible benefits and are things that many different people/companies have asked for over the last 2 years or so.

If I had to describe the stuff being added/changed in one sentence I would classify it as "adding features and value that companies have actually come forward and asked iXsystems to add". So I think that in the end, after we get over the shell shock of how different the WebGUI is, we'll all be happier that the changes were made.

 

[anodos]

I've seen some of the redesign and talked to people about how it should/will work in the end. I can tell you that the reasons are *very* good. In fact, some of the features are things that I wouldn't have given much value to 6 months ago, but I think they add a lot of value to FreeNAS.

Some of the changes are geared more towards larger systems, so some are going to be less valuable to us home users. But one thing you can be sure of is that the things that are being worked on provide tangible benefits and are things that many different people/companies have asked for over the last 2 years or so.

If I had to describe the stuff being added/changed in one sentence I would classify it as "adding features and value that companies have actually come forward and asked iXsystems to add". So I think that in the end, after we get over the shell shock of how different the WebGUI is, we'll all be happier that the changes were made.

Do you have any inside scoop on how UEFI support in bhyve is coming? (I read somewhere that UEFI support is needed to implement Windows guests in bhyve). I feel like I will have lost something if I can't run windows on my freenas anymore in FreeNAS 10. :D

 

[fracai]

Is VirtualBox going away in 10?

I think we need a FreeNAS 10 rumors, speculation, and facts thread/sub-forum.

 

[anodos]

Is VirtualBox going away in 10?

I think we need a FreeNAS 10 rumors, speculation, and facts thread/sub-forum.

Someone made a comment once in IRC that jails and bhyve were mutually exclusive. It appears that you can't trust everything you read in IRC. https://2013.asiabsdcon.org/papers/abc2013-P4A-paper.pdf

 

[fracai]

The Developer Docs RoadMap seems to state that they'll both be available.

We will provide full lifecycle management for Jails and also possibly Bhyve VMs, if BHyve can be made to work adequately in FreeNAS 10.

 

[anodos]

The Developer Docs RoadMap seems to state that they'll both be available.

Thanks for posting that link. Now I can stop making stuff up. :D

 

[cyberjock]

Someone made a comment once in IRC that jails and bhyve were mutually exclusive. It appears that you can't trust everything you read in IRC. https://2013.asiabsdcon.org/papers/abc2013-P4A-paper.pdf

If I'm thinking of what you are thinking, that someone was me. But that wasn't what I said. What I said was that the virtualbox jail and bhyve are mutually exclusive. According to Michael Dexter (I met him last November, and the guy that wrote that paper) talked to me about bhyve a little bit and said that the virtualbox kernel driver and bhyve's virtualization are incompatible with each other because they try to take exclusive access of some CPU resources and only the first one to load will get it. The other will cause a system panic.

He didn't know if any kind of fix was in the works or not, but that combined with some comments made by iXsystems employees made me realize there's a good chance that virtualbox support will be killed in 10. The short and dirty is that bhyve is a better type-2 hypervisor than virtual box and the only advantage that virtualbox has at present is support for more guest OSes.

There is one or two people that I've talked to at iX (I won't call out names) that seem to love bhyve and hate virtualbox and jails. Jails (and plugins) have been nothing short of a nightmare to support from iX's standpoint. Too many people don't know what they are doing, they break things and expect iX to fix it, the have expectations for how integrated the jails are, etc. It's a royal PITA for everyone involved with supporting it (including us on the forums.. I'm sick and tired of those fscking plugin and jail questions we get every hour of every day). So it seems like a logical extension of that to assume virtualbox at the minimum is dead, and jails may also go bye-bye. But AFAIK that decision hasn't actually been made, assuming jails were even "on the chopping block".

Edit: I can confirm that bhyve is expected to be matured enough to be in FreeNAS 10. But what guests and more details is outside of what I know.