Re: [webmin-devel] Webmin feature enhancement idea to recover from mistakes

[Andrew K. <ak...@ra...>]

I had a chance to think about this. It might be too difficult to add a
network
test specifically for this. I'm thinking something more general and I
believe
more simple which could be used in any module. For instance, If I make a
change and activate it, a variable such as restore=1 is set. After a
designated
period a confirmation message would appear during a webmin session.
This might simply be a button to press to confirm the changes and thus
changing the variable restore=0. This would prevent the restoration of
previous values. A simple manual click by a user would confirm the changes
that were made. If, say a user does not confirm, values would revert back.
I can see this as being a useful feature for any module. I think this would
be a simpler way of confirming changes. Any module could have a cache
or backup directory that would be used to backtrack changes. The changes
would simply be keystrokes/web-clicks or field values that are affected
during
a change, like netmask=255.255.255.0. Then, the module could process the
field values using the same script (hopefully) with the text file that holds
the values
instead of the webmin form. What do you think?

-Andrew
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jamie Cameron" <jca...@we...>
To: <web...@li...>
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2003 8:58 PM
Subject: Re: [webmin-devel] Webmin feature enhancement idea to recover from
mistakes


> Andrew Kornak wrote:
> > I recently had the misfortune of making a mistake in my network settings
> > which in turn had the effect of disconnecting me from my server which is
> > at a remote location. Eventually someone was able to manually come in
> > and correct my mistake, but, it occurred to me that a possible soution
to
> > this kind of problem would be to have a mechanism by which changes
> > are not permanent unless they are confirmed through a transparent
> > webmin confirmation process. By this I mean, when a change is made
> > it would revert to a previous setting unless one where to confirm by
> > logging in again or by clicking a confirm setting when you login again.
> > So, say I make a drastic mistake in my network configuration. The
setting
> > is made, the network restarts, I lose the connection! Ofcourse, if I
have
> > no connection, I cannot confirm, thus my ass is saved!! Hurray!! The
> > confirmation might be an interval set by the user. It could be a 10
minute
> > default
> > or something. I know that webmin has a caching mechanism built in,
> > perhaps this would be something like that where it would be used to
> > recover from a mistake? Perhaps this would be useful in other modules
> > as well. Perhaps you might lose you web server or database or something.
> > I don't know, would this be feasible? I can't be the only one that makes
> > this
> > kind of mistake. Since this interface is so dependent on a functioning
> > network, perhaps it would be useful? It could also be an optional
feature
> > only. A feature that might save someone from losing their job! Just a
> > thought.
>
> Perhaps what is needed is a feature in the Network Configuration
> module for testing connectivity after changes are applied, and rolling
>   the changes back if the network appears to be down. The test could
> be performed by pinging some external host, defined in the module's
> configuration .. and the rollback done by saving the state of all
> interfaces and routes before applying changes, and restoring them if
> something went wrong.
>
> Implementing it could be a little tricky, but it is worth doing (since
> I've had the same problems myself!), so I will see about adding it to
> a future release.
>
>   - Jamie
>
>
>
>
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