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

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

Jamie,

    I did it again! I messed up the network settings and lost my server!
Are there any plans to add the "revert network settings for idiots"
feature any time soon? I am running out of excuses for my screw-ups! ;-)
Thanks.

-Andrew

Jamie Cameron wrote:

> 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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