MunkiWebAdmin2 in early testing

[Gregory Neagle]

https://github.com/munki/mwa2

MWA2 is a major rethink of web-based administration of Munki.

All reporting has been removed from MWA2 — consider using Sal or MunkiReport-PHP for reporting. Both are excellent.

MWA2 focuses on web-based editing of manifests and pkginfo files.

If you decide to play around with this: please do not point it at a production Munki repo.

-Greg

[Gregory Neagle]

We’ve already had some contributions and some bug fixes: https://github.com/munki/mwa2/commits/master

Issue list is here: https://github.com/munki/mwa2/issues

Looking for any and all feedback at this point, but here are some specifics that would be helpful:

1) How hard/easy is it to setup the demo? (Answering this one might help others decide whether or not they have time to test MWA2)

2) Usability issues: could you see yourself (or your team) using this to edit manifest and pkginfo files?

3) Performance: acceptable? Too slow? If too slow: how many manifests do you have? How many pkginfo files do you have? What is the connection between your demo/testing machine and the Munki repo?

4) UI issues: is there anything that is confusing or counterintuitive? Are there operations that don’t work as expected?

5) Data loss/munging: are there any operations or workflows that lead to manifest files or pkginfo files being deleted/destroyed/corrupted?

Thanks for any feedback!

-Greg

[Gregory Neagle]

Another note unless it’s not clear: when using the demo setup you can update to the latest MWA2 code by cd’ing into the mwa2 directory and doing a `git pull`.

-Greg

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[Clayton Burlison]

1) The demo script has made testing this extremely easy. Thank you.

2) This has been a almost perfect drop in replacement for Joe Wollard's Mandrill and seeing as how I might be the only person running Mandrill in production yes I will be using switching to MWA2 eventually.

3) Performance has been fantastic. ~500 manifests, ~700 pkinfo files. And MWA2 was running on a test server locally and most scans took less than one second. When I mounted over SMB and tested the performance was also quite snappy however when deployed to production it will be running locally on the server hosting my munki repo.  

4) Everything is pretty straight forward. All the operations I have tested work properly. The only UI related note I have is when items with long names or strings appear the line wrapping is less than idea. My manifest is a flat directory structure so no issue there however I have some pkginfo files with long names and long versions which creates horizontal scrolling. 

Mandrill got around this "issue" by having the editor UI in a separate window from the listings. I'm not sure how much effort a change like this might be however it might be beneficial. Another idea would be to make the two window elements, listing and editors, collapsable (not sure the repercussions of that either). If you want to see screen shots of Mandrill without spinning it up for a test: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/apgzwes0rl17u0m/AAB3f7huUKD7OOjoMshJ0UpNa?dl=0 

5) Data loss/munging: Haven't found any yet. Tried most of the daily operations a few times with out issue. I'm kind of curious what would happen with more than on Munki Admin modifying the same file at the same time. However, in my environment that will never be an issue. IE - jane and jim both have the same manifest open for editing. jim clicks save. what happens to jane's save.

--Cheers, Clayton

[Gregory Neagle]

On Jan 14, 2016, at 9:06 PM, Matt Cahill <cahill...@gmail.com> wrote:

4) UI issues: is there anything that is confusing or counterintuitive? Are there operations that don’t work as expected?

Rendering of the UI elements in the edit panes is a little strange on chrome for me 

Any significant difference from Safari or Firefox?

e.g. Text boxes seem to be as small as possible meaning they have to be resized using the handle to see the contents (single line boxes are ok).

This is normal, if I understand your description properly. You can scroll or resize to view additional contents if desired.

The details pane is larger than the "frame" that contains it meaning you have to scroll horizontally to see the last little bit of the contents.

Same as issue 6? https://github.com/munki/mwa2/issues/6

Text boxes can be resized horizontally which blocks out all titles.

Same as issue 16? https://github.com/munki/mwa2/issues/16

-Greg

[Mike Solin]

I’m really hopeful that someone figures out how to run this on a Windows server (preferably with IIS).  It sounds excellent, and would be really useful in our environment.

Thanks, Greg!

Mike

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On Sun, Jan 24, 2016 at 5:31 PM, Matt Cahill <cahill...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 23/01/2016, at 1:23 PM, Gregory Neagle <gregn...@mac.com> wrote:

On Jan 14, 2016, at 9:06 PM, Matt Cahill <cahill...@gmail.com> wrote:

4) UI issues: is there anything that is confusing or counterintuitive? Are there operations that don’t work as expected?

Rendering of the UI elements in the edit panes is a little strange on chrome for me 

Any significant difference from Safari or Firefox?

Safari and Chrome render the view very similarly. Firefox seems to be more generous with it’s minimum vertical text box size so the whole thing seems less squished up to the top.

e.g. Text boxes seem to be as small as possible meaning they have to be resized using the handle to see the contents (single line boxes are ok).

This is normal, if I understand your description properly. You can scroll or resize to view additional contents if desired.

This is true and works as described for me. I was just wondering in case there is a way to take up all of the vertical space available in any given browser window?

The details pane is larger than the "frame" that contains it meaning you have to scroll horizontally to see the last little bit of the contents.

Same as issue 6? https://github.com/munki/mwa2/issues/6

Yes issue 6 matches what I saw.

Text boxes can be resized horizontally which blocks out all titles.

Same as issue 16? https://github.com/munki/mwa2/issues/16

Yeah issue 16 matches too.

cheers

Matt

-Greg

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[Erik Gomez]

Sounds like a wonderful project for you to take lead on Mike!

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[Mike Solin]

We’ll see!  It’s very much outside of my experience, but looks to be possible.

Mike

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[Gregory Neagle]

Here's a starting point: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/howto/windows/

-Greg

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[Gregory Neagle]

And another: http://www.toptal.com/django/installing-django-on-iis-a-step-by-step-tutorial

-Greg

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[Ronald Carter]

Mike,

It should be posible you can setup Python and PHP under Windows with IIS I just setup MunkiReport-PHP on IIS. the Apache config will need some work to convert to IIS and should probably stick to SQLite for testing.

[Graham]

You could run Docker on your Windows server:

https://docs.docker.com/engine/installation/windows/

And run MWA2 as a Docker container:

https://hub.docker.com/r/grahamrpugh/mwa2/

Cheers

Graham

[Mike Solin]

Very interesting!  Thanks, everyone.  I’ll start experimenting soon.

Mike

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[Gregory Neagle]

Some significant feature additions this weekend:

Mass-deletion of pkginfo items, and mass-editing of pkginfo catalogs.

You use checkboxes in the pkginfo list to select the pkginfo items you are interested in, then click a gear menu:

Mass deletion:

Here’s the current interface for editing the catalogs — you specify catalogs to add and catalogs to remove from the selected pkgsinfo (it’s OK if you add a catalog and it already exists in a certain pkginfo file —  it will not be duplicated, and it’s OK if you tell it to remove a catalog that doesn’t exist in a specific pkginfo file)

I’m considering the use of http://harvesthq.github.io/chosen/#multiple-select to make those multiple-select fields easier to use and more visually appealing.

Since these new features can make mass changes, please do not test on your production Munki repo.

I’ve also overhauled the logging; if you upgrade an existing install you will find all console logging messages will stop. To get them going again, copy the LOGGING dictionary from settings_template.py to your active settings file.

-Greg

[Gregory Neagle]

On Feb 1, 2016, at 10:33 AM, Gregory Neagle <gregn...@mac.com> wrote:

I’m considering the use of http://harvesthq.github.io/chosen/#multiple-select to make those multiple-select fields easier to use and more visually appealing.

Which results in:

[Vaughn Miller]

I like the looks of that!

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[Graham]

Nice to see some of the Munki-Do features being added to MWA2 in a well-designed interface - I think the bulk features will be popular. 

I like the look of the second add/remove interface more than the first, but does that mean you have to type in the name of a catalog to add it to either field?

Does removing pkginfo files also remove packages? There's a feature in Munki-Do where you can remove "orphaned" packages, i.e. packages that are no longer associated with pkginfo files.

Cheers

Graham

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[Gregory Neagle]

On Feb 1, 2016, at 8:46 PM, Graham <g.r....@gmail.com> wrote:

Nice to see some of the Munki-Do features being added to MWA2 in a well-designed interface - I think the bulk features will be popular. 

I like the look of the second add/remove interface more than the first, but does that mean you have to type in the name of a catalog to add it to either field?

Try the demo here: http://harvesthq.github.io/chosen/#multiple-select

Does removing pkginfo files also remove packages?

It can...

There's a feature in Munki-Do where you can remove "orphaned" packages, i.e. packages that are no longer associated with pkginfo files.

No feature like that in MWA2 yet.

Next bit I think I’ll work on might be an advanced search for manifests, replacing some of the functionality lost from MWA(1).

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[Graham]

The demo for multiple-select is excellent. I'd definitely vote for including it.

The checkbox for pkg removal - also excellent. Probably negates the need for an "orphaned" packages removal method.

I'd like to ask for better git support (the ability to commit and push, and git branching), and the ability to restrict access to edit certain manifests based on logged in user. I should be able to fork and PR these features though, if there's interest for them.

Cheers,

Graham