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Feature #10515

closed

Highlight fields that aren't consistent among all copies of a page

Added by Andrew Warren almost 4 years ago. Updated almost 4 years ago.

Status:
Rejected
Priority:
Normal
Assignee:
-
Category:
Web Interface
Target version:
-
Start date:
04/30/2020
Due date:
% Done:

0%

Estimated time:
Plus Target Version:
Release Notes:

Description

I'm running multiple VPN clients, and I expect their configurations to be identical except for necessary alterations like Name and IP address. Initially this is easy because I can configure one and then make copies. But that goes wrong in at least two ways:

1. I copy-paste but forget to make one of the necessary alterations on the copied page. This leaves me with, for example, two clients pointing to the same server IP address.

2. After the initial setup, I make an adjustment to one VPN's configuration to test it, and then I make a mistake when I manually copy the change to the other clients.

In both cases, the error is hard to find. I do it by opening each configuration in its own browser tab, then switching across them -- scrolling all tabs a page at a time when necessary -- to confirm that all the expected differences exist, and that those are the only differences. This is awkward and itself prone to errors.

It would be great if pfSense could help me avoid making these mistakes in the first place -- e.g., with a master template for all the common settings, and individual pages only for exceptions -- but just as useful would be a way to easily find those errors.

I suggest this new feature, which I imagine would be much easier to implement than a template system:

When multiple copies of a page exist, simply highlight the fields on each page whose values aren't identical among all the pages. So for my VPN Client example, I'd expect to see name and IP address -- and nothing else -- highlighted on each page.

Extra credit for also highlighting, differently, any field that is the same in some but not all copies. This would easily catch any copy-paste errors where one of the copies was erroneously not changed.

Actions #1

Updated by Jim Pingle almost 4 years ago

  • Status changed from New to Rejected

I don't see this ever being viable. There is no way it could know what you want it to do here, and trying to come up with some kind of template system would be tons of work for minimal benefit. It's rare that someone would want multiple copies of a VPN like that, let alone do it so often they need this kind of assistance.

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