Request to display Server Status to regular users (website owners)

Submitted by yngens on Sun, 10/28/2018 - 18:35

Master users on Virtualmin servers can see the following services and their statuses under the Server Status section of System Information page:

Apache Webserver
BIND DNS Server
SSH Server
MySQL Database Server

and not only see, but also stop and/or restart them. At the same time, regular users (website owners) do not see that section at all. And I thought why not to display the Server Status section for them too. While it is not desirable to let regular users to stop services (not to effect the websites of other users), sometimes they also need to get backend services like the ones listed above restarted and have to ask master admin to do so. Would be nice if regular users could see the list of back-end servers running and even be able to restart them.

If giving them restart server-wide services is not desirable in Virtualmin developers' opinion, then ok, let's not give regular users no actions buttons at all, but I don't see why they should not see the list of services and their current statuses.

Thanks for considerations!

Status: 
Active

Comments

Submitted by andreychek on Sun, 10/28/2018 - 18:36

Assigned: Unassigned »

Joe's picture
Submitted by Joe on Sun, 10/28/2018 - 23:07 Pro Licensee

Status is maybe reasonable, but restarts not so much (though there are circumstances where users that can modify some aspects of the web server configuration can trigger a graceful restart to apply new configuration, such as enabling SSL for a domain).

I think the status is handled in the theme, and I know Ilia has been doing some work on what shows up in the theme dashboard lately...this might even already be in there....hmm, maybe not. I just searched the recent dashboard discussions and this didn't come up. But, I'll ask Ilia what he thinks about adding more dashboard detail for domain owner users.

Ilia's picture
Submitted by Ilia on Mon, 10/29/2018 - 01:12

Hi,

Information that is displayed in the theme, particularly on collapsible penels is provided by the core, thus theme doesn't do anything to make it neither displayed nor hidden.

Ilia's picture
Submitted by Ilia on Mon, 10/29/2018 - 01:28

Besides, theme has extensions CSS and JS. You can tweak it easily, in terms of not displaying icons, that's for sure is easy.

Please tell me if you need help on it.

Submitted by yngens on Mon, 10/29/2018 - 04:22

Joe says:

Status is maybe reasonable... I think the status is handled in the theme... I'll ask Ilia what he thinks about adding more dashboard detail for domain owner users.

Ilia's input on the subject:

Information that is displayed in the theme, particularly on collapsible panels is provided by the core.

So can you please clarify where exactly this should be dealt with - on Webmin/Virtualmin core or Authentic Theme? Guys, let's show to the end-users the list of running back-end services and their statuses at least. Not critical request at all, but it would be really nice to think about comfort of end-users too.

Ilia's picture
Submitted by Ilia on Mon, 10/29/2018 - 04:38

It should be also handled by list_combined_system_info. Jamie, do you find it reasonable to add statuses to users, without having control buttons displayed?

Ilia's picture
Submitted by Ilia on Mon, 10/29/2018 - 04:41

and not only see, but also stop and/or restart them.

Users should no have access to controls, affecting all other users.

Submitted by yngens on Mon, 10/29/2018 - 04:52

Users should no have access to controls, affecting all other users.

I agree Ilia. And that's why I've written above:

If giving them restart server-wide services is not desirable in Virtualmin developers' opinion, then ok, let's not give regular users no actions buttons at all, but I don't see why they should not see the list of services and their current statuses.

So displaying just the list of services running and their current statuses to regular users won't do any hard, but will improve the usability of Virtualmin.