Two features I would like to have in the WebUI

1) An option to disable https mode in the web UI and (preferably) add an info in the terminal that YOU HAVE TO use https to access the web UI… I spent a good portion of an hour trying to figure out why the WebUI is not working, when all I had to do is just try to access it via https.

2) An option to disable the damn popup info about commercial support when I click on the dashboard. I know it’s a commercial project, we all do, but seriously… does it really have to pop up every time I click on the dashboard? Once is enough. If I wanted commercial support, I know where I can get it.

I know I can disable both from the terminal, and I did that, but that’s not the point… why have a web UI in the first place if you can’t edit simple things like these (a http/https switch should be in a web UI… I mean… even DD-WRT has it in it’s web UI and it’s disabled by default, plain http is used the first time you access the web UI).

Now that I vented a bit about these 2 annoying things, I have to say two very positive thins about Rockstor. AD integration was super easy, a BIG PLUS in my book :slight_smile: and having a terminal integrated by default (not through a plugin) in the WebUI, aslo a BIG PLUS :slight_smile:.

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@GigaWatt Welcome to the Rockstor community.
Thanks for the feedback.
Re:

Yes, this is a tricky one. We have heard this comment in the past but had a lot more feedback about not using https by default when we use to only support http. When I last updated the console message to read:

Welcome to Rockstor built on openSUSE.
To update your system from here do:

        zypper refresh
        zypper up --no-recommends

Or use Rockstor's Web User Interface (Web-UI): recommended method.

Type 'myip' then Enter key to get my address for your Browser.
Enjoy ...

in our new installer I ensured the myip script has the https.

If you fancy contributing an improvement to this first console message the repository is:

and the specific file is:

I suppose something like “Note https not http”.

I’m super not keen on starting out with http again as that is a step back in default settings, at least from our history.

The notification is to prompt a selection of testing or stable channel updates predominantly. And after having selected one or the other, you will not only get “rockstor” package updates, but the nag dialog to select a channel will no longer appear.

First and only shown once Welcome banner:
https://rockstor.com/docs/installation/installer-howto.html#welcome-banner

Second and subsequent nag, I mean"Update Channel reminder banner":
https://rockstor.com/docs/installation/installer-howto.html#update-channel-reminder-banner

quoting from that doc page we have:

Until an Update Channel selection has been made, a reminder banner appears whenever the dashboard is visited:

Neither banner mentions “commercial support”. That is referenced on our website under Resources → Commercial Support. And yes it is dependant on having a Stable subscription.

I’m assuming you are running our newer v4 “Built on openSUSE” variant?

Re dd-wrt, it is a spin off from openwrt that has 809 contributors:

Rockstor’s current contributor count in the core repository (the main stuff one runs) is an actually a quite impressive 35.

Although we have around 60 in the rock-ons repo:

The new kiwi-ng based installer config repo has 8, although if you fancy contributing a text improvement to that first console message re stressing https then that will rise by 12.5 % :slight_smile:.

We do already have the ability to configure our Web-UI port, but I’m pretty sure it’s got a bug in but it’s had sufficiently little use that it has yet to be reported and so has had no attention. You could consider expanding that capability to offer a regular non https port 80 setting for folks. Another work-around is the http-https Rock-on that was contributed as a work around for this situation. Thanks to @nfriedly

We have the following documentation that should help with setting up a development environment and making contributions:

Community Contributions: Community Contributions — Rockstor documentation

We are all open source and welcome well considered contributions to all our repositories, including the website (now in Hugo):

(6 contributors see authors file) and our installer as mentioned previously. The docs themselves are also open to contributions via this repo:

Which now has a contributor count of 23 by the way. Hopefully 24 if that takes your fancy re the ever prescent need for improvements/clarifications/updates etc.

Thanks. And yes AD has had a major re-vamp by the venerable @Flox who is also our intrepid forum admin, it now uses sssd again The shell integration was added singularly by @Flyer via:

https://github.com/rockstor/rockstor-core/pull/1388

who did loads of Web-UI improvements in their contribution stint. I ended up having to do a small upstream contribution to the SuSE shellinabox package on Open Build Service to make it work post our CentOS to openSUSE move but otherwise it’s been quite a success. A little confusing in some regards re the su element but I’ve been quiet pleased with it. Bit of a pain we need to ‘carry’ the package as it’s not part of openSUSE but it is a nice feature.

Hope that helps to address your comments and thanks again for the feedback, and do consider contributing where ever you can if you have the time and capability.

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I was thinking more along the lines as in including something like this in the startup info.

“WARNING! You have to use https (SSL) in your browser to access the WebUI (https://x.x.x.x/). We also use a self-signed certificate, so make sure you approve it in your browser (Advanced --> Visit site anyway).”

Most people will read the startup info, since it’ll show up at least once (when you first install it and boot Rockstor), so you really can’t miss it.

It wasn’t the missing http/https switch that kinda ticked me off. It was the fact that I spent almost an hour trying to fix something that wasn’t broken at all… and I could’ve spent that hour trying to configure or just tinkering with Rockstor :wink: . I just didn’t know that I HAVE to use https. If it’s mentioned in the startup info, it’ll be a lot clearer to people and maybe go back to the boot screen and think “hmmm… not working, OK, let’s see if I missed something in the boot/startup info” :wink:.

Ah, didn’t know that, thanks for the info :slightly_smiling_face: .

Duh…should’ve just read the docs.

Sorry for the rant… was kinda stressed out, had a lot of work that day and was trying to test Rockstor at the same time. Happens to all of us I guess :slight_smile:.

Sorry… though “Update channel” meant commercial support…

Once again, my bad, sorry for the rant :slight_smile:.

Yeah, build on openSUSE Leap 15.3.

Actually DD-WRT is kind of an odd ball… it’s open source, but the owner of the source won’t release compiling instructions, so basically… only he/she can compile from source, so… it’s a tricky borderline legal thing that he/she does (can’t remember the nick of the dev, it’s basically just him and a few other die hard DD-WRT fans that maintain the project now, most devs that didn’t like what he/she did moved on and made OpenWRT… I believe this is the real story, since I think OpenWRT came a bit later than DD-WRT, which was spun off as a project for replacing the stock firmware of the Linksys WRT54G and used the sources that Linksys had to make public, since the firmware uses a Linux kernel).

Yep, that is quite impressive TBH :slight_smile:.

Also impressive :slight_smile:.

Yeah, will definitely do that. Either that, of the other thing mentioned in the quoted feature request, which is even better (why didn’t I think of that :smile:… I mean, I maintain servers for a living :smiley:).

WOW…you guys really thought of everything :slight_smile:… very pleasantly surprised :slight_smile:.

Yeah, it is a bit confusing, but heck, at least I don’t have to SSH into the NAS :wink:. It’s not that I don’t like SSH, it’s just that… I do that all of the time for work and not having separate windows for a WebUI and SSH is a relief TBH :slight_smile:.

And thank you for a very pleasant welcome to the forum and all of the info you provided :slight_smile:. After my first post, I thought I was going to be banned, LOL :smiley:.

Once again, thanks for a very warm welcome :slight_smile:. I do contribute to some projects from time to time, sometimes with patches, but mostly feature requests. Don’t really have time to code any more (got a kid now :smiley:), dropped out of that. But, as I said, this warm welcome turned me around and I can see that this is a very open minded and mild community, not to mention very well prepared for getting involved in the project :slight_smile:. This might just change my mind and start getting more active in coding again :slight_smile: (switched to working as a sysadmin at the moment… a lot less stress TBH).

Once again… WOW, what a welcome :smiley:.

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