"Lite" Windows OS Client

This message was edited 50 times. Last update was at 01/08/2010 13:37:41

It has arrived !!
It no longer needs to be installed on the Windows FlexRaid Service Host Machine.....

The Last release for a while (2010-07-01) - Moving onto the other Project(s) in Codeplex....

1.1.9 @ http://frwingui.codeplex.com/releases/view/49846

V 1.1.8 has been released with Email notification support and other stuff

Can be found @ http://frwingui.codeplex.com/releases/view/48911

As Always - Comments welcome

OK..
Seems like my "Big" vision I have for the Windows Client to be fully independent of the any GUI's and also independent of the type of target FlexRaid OS is a little big to start with.
So,
I have now decided to take the lessons and code templates I have so far and make a "Lite" client that does not rely on the service, and will not perform offline monitoring, or handle the scheduling, or the monitoring of the FileSystem to see if rsynch etc need to be run.

The Requirements for this "Lite" version are:

It may in the future allow View Management, but that might need Vista / W7 privileges to be taken into consideration.

As always, Comments / Hints / encouragement welcome.

What were the challenges you had with the "Big" version?

It is certainly not a bad idea to focus on one OS first (without regard to any other OSes) to get something going.
Once you have things going, then you can think of how you can port it.

It sounds like you are now think of creating a client that should be on the same host as the FlexRAID host.
Not a bad idea either as you will be able to access the environment directly.

Brahim wrote:What were the challenges you had with the "Big" version?

Trying to find a neat way of allowing the user to "See" the directory structure of the server, without the client actually being on it, and without a long wait time while all the possible directories are passed over the network (Even for my setup this can take a while due to the depth and number of Dirs across my installation!)

i.e. one of the requirements is to allow drag and drop to create DRU's

Brahim wrote:It is certainly not a bad idea to focus on one OS first (without regard to any other OSes) to get something going.
Once you have things going, then you can think of how you can port it.

That was the idea of having a separate Windows Service so that it was independent of any target FlexRaid OS's

Brahim wrote:It sounds like you are now think of creating a client that should be on the same host as the FlexRAID host.
Not a bad idea either as you will be able to access the environment directly.

Need to focus with that. So that there is a "new" client that can go with the New 1.3 Final release.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 27/02/2010 12:06:11

I have to say, I do like the new look... simple and well integrated.

Adding icons to the UoR (DRUs, PPUs, and URUs) would be a nice touch.

Brahim wrote:I have to say, I do like the new look... simple and well integrated.

Adding icons to the UoR (DRUs, PPUs, and URUs) would be a nice touch.

It would, but, I was unable to find those rectangular icon that you use in the Web UI, So I just used the colours instead.

I was actually referring to the paths (i.e., showing them as folders or drives).

Brahim wrote:I was actually referring to the paths (i.e., showing them as folders or drives).

Done.. See preview picture in 1st post
I cannot test the commands at the moment as the Media-Vault is in Create mode.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 05/03/2010 16:38:13

It has taken a while.. But the first GUI client now does actually talk to and allow rsynch's etc to a FlexRaid Service installation.
It has to be installed on the Windows FlexRaid Service Host Machine.

Next task will be to remove this, and be able to install it on another windows machine..
Small steps first etc.

Smurf-IV wrote:It has taken a while.. But the first GUI client now does actually talk to and allow rsynch's etc to a FlexRaid Service installation.
It has to be installed on the Windows FlexRaid Service Host Machine.

I will give it a try once I get home.
Great work!

What was in 1.1.2

Known Issues
#14 When opening in Windows 7 the Forms do not "fill" the area correctly
#15 On machine boot, and then run client, "No process has run since server startup! - ignoring..."
#16 No way to cancel an operation that has started
#17 When using the menu to open the service Log, It does not go to the FlexRaid Directory by default
#18 Pressing cancel on Log open, still opens the View with a blank entry.
#19 Service Log window disables the wrong view menu item

Things done so far

1.1.2
- Create the "Config txt" in a view
- Wired up the rsynch command
- Handle some more failure conditions in the code
- Wired up the other commands
- Performed some testing

1.1.1
- Start the Project
- Add in the Help items to allow Changelog / AboutBox / Help
- Add the View log window
- Add the FlexRaid Service log window.
- Re-use the EditRaid Control component as the default open context
- Add status bar to show last status and allow expanded data to be displayed
- Add DRU / PPU / URU to the State object and allow serialisation
- Drag - Drop into DRU's etc.
- Add Icons to the DRU's etc.
- Disable Action keys until all data is available.
- If an Action is in progress then "disable / change" the start style "buttons / menus"
- Create the "Config txt" in a view

Report:
---------

1. All the tasks worked when executed
2. Create had the nice progress bar and all responses were nicely handled
3. Feedbacks were lacking on rsynch, validate, and verify (responses from the host were not properly handled).

Overall, things were easy and very straight forward.

Nice work.

Brahim wrote:Report:
---------
1. All the tasks worked when executed

Result

Brahim wrote:2. Create had the nice progress bar and all responses were nicely handled

Brahim wrote:3. Feedbacks were lacking on rsynch, validate, and verify (responses from the host were not properly handled).

Can I have the log files to see what the format of those response are please.

.
The reason is, that I am testing against my full system, and it takes ages.. Perhaps I should have smaller subset.

.
Which version(s) of Flexraid was this tested against

Brahim wrote:
Overall, things were easy and very straight forward.
Nice work.

Thanks.
Any suggestions on what the next steps could be

(Over and above or in a different order to what I have already stated in the ChangeLog file about the work I have already identified)

Here are the logs.

This was from the other thread, but it is also useful here

damgaard wrote:
hmm should it load my configuration automaticly? it just loads a explorer insite the program.
//Damgaard

Simple put No..
It does not load the
1) Cmd Line
2) Web GUI configs

But
1) It could on initial start -

I'll add this in the TODO's

2) This is not going to happen as this is stored in an currently unknown format
3) It reloads whatever you last put into it.

#3 Expanded :-
As you create the DRU / PPU etc it saves this information away in a binary file (To be used later for the bigger version that will aloow multiple configurations per target FlexRaid installation).
There is a Config button to show you what the Cmd Line file would look like if it used it.

I know we have not discussed this (it is also not documented

), but you can run the import command to import an existing configuration.

The command is: import <path to metadata file>

The lines in the response are as follow:
1. parity (PPUs definition)
2. data (DRUs definition)
3. disableParityValidation (optional - whether to disable parity validation)
4. baselines (optional - note: baselines are no longer supported as of 1.4)
5. checksum (optional - if empty, then using default checksum)
6. digest (optional - if empty, then not using any digest)
7. metadata (the path to the metadata)

2010-03-05 20 52 27.png

1.1.3

Known Issues
#16 No way to cancel an operation that has started

Things in this version

1.1.3
- Add both "enableUndoOperation=true" and the undo path "undo=URU1{/path}" if Set.
- Progress bar underneath status.
Fixed:
#14 When opening in Windows 7 the Forms do not "fill" the area correctly
#15 On machine boot, and then run client, "No process has run since server startup! - ignoring..."
#17 When using the menu to open the service Log, It does not go to the FlexRaid Directory by default
#18 Pressing cancel on Log open, still opens the View with a blank entry.
#19 Service Log window disables the wrong view menu item
#20 Feedbacks were lacking on rsynch, validate, and verify (responses from the host were not properly handled).

As Always - Comments welcome

Brahim wrote:
It sounds like you are now think of creating a client that should be on the same host as the FlexRAID host.
Not a bad idea either as you will be able to access the environment directly.

OK An Update..
I have been running the V 1.1.4 (Mono) on my Win 7 Host since I released it, And now I am ready to move onto the next phase.
This is - being able to run the client on another window PC that has access to the target.
This means implementing the import function, and handling all those MRU style things that start to happen when you have a remote client that does not have a central service to talk to (i.e the original big vision thing).
So. in now particular order
- Implement MRU
- Change "RaidControl Window" to be driven from another filename
- Create / new / delete style functions (Low priority)
- Use the import command for new by default.
- Allow import to overwrite local files
- Oh, And fix some issues that have been found (See first post !)

What I would like from you guys (The users of FlexRaid) are some suggestions (Big - small - impossible - etc) of what you would like to see.
Then I can keep a record in the ChangeLog file that is distributed with each release, and then I can review each time I have some time to release the next version.

For now, It's back to the garden with laptop, and see if the sun is still annoyingly reflecting off the screen.
TTFN

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 22/06/2010 14:12:14

!! New Bug Items !!
#26 No way of closing the Service log window without closing the application
#27 If there are no DRU's specified then an exception of "Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection." is thrown in the config file

Smurf-IV wrote:
OK An Update..
- Use the import command for new by default.

I seem to have issues with this and how flexraid does it's thing
1) If a task is already running (e.g. rsynch) then command from the Cmd Line client reports

This is when the status of the last command is reported as completed. So it must be something to do with the Meta data stage of going over and verifying something, So its not really finished !
2) I cannot seem to get this to work with the upload syntax from my client !!

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 22/06/2010 14:33:33

Smurf-IV wrote:
2) I cannot seem to get this to work with the upload syntax from my client !!

Nailed it !! Good 'ol Network Monitor

You have to send import and the metadatapath on separate lines without a task specifier, and without the end "."

Now have to see what can be done about Step 1 !!