Backup is no longer XML? Why?

[roosterdude]

Hi,

Can anyone please tell me why in FreeNAS 8 backup of the config is no longer in Xml format but is a binary format (appears to be some sort of SQL database format... mysql lite?).

Is there a really valid pressing reason for this?

Cheers - Mark

 

[survive]

Hi roosterdude,

FreeNAS 8 is pretty much a whole new piece of software that happens to have the same name & does about the same thing as the old version.

Read this:

http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Introduction

for a quick bit of history.

-Will

 

[roosterdude]

Thats a real shame. One of the beauties of inheriting from the excellent m0n0wall was the XML based configuration file (of which there are many benefits... you can generate your own XML templates for installations, you can easily edit config files that have issues, you can edit the config files for advanced features for which there is no GUI yet).

The m0n0wall interface/GUI is also very famous for being incredibly straight forward and user friendly... now everything seems difficult to find in FreeNAS 8 and unnecessarily complicated - huge shame in my very humble opinion. But I guess that's another story.

I guess I'll have to fork 7. :-(

 

[William Grzybowski]

Thats a real shame. One of the beauties of inheriting from the excellent m0n0wall was the XML based configuration file (of which there are many benefits... you can generate your own XML templates for installations, you can easily edit config files that have issues, you can edit the config files for advanced features for which there is no GUI yet).

The m0n0wall interface/GUI is also very famous for being incredibly straight forward and user friendly... now everything seems difficult to find in FreeNAS 8 and unnecessarily complicated - huge shame in my very humble opinion. But I guess that's another story.

I guess I'll have to fork 7. :-(

Really? sqlite3 /data/freenas-v1.db "update services_ftp set ftp_port=21000;".. Is that hard over editing the file, finding the xml section and changing the value... I don't think so

Feel free to fork, whoever

 

[roosterdude]

Really? sqlite3 /data/freenas-v1.db "update services_ftp set ftp_port=21000;".. Is that hard over editing the file, finding the xml section and changing the value... I don't think so

Feel free to fork, whoever

It's an order of magnitude more cryptic than editing a plain text xml file. Why on earth do you think Xml was invented. Lucky Tim Berners Lee had the foresight to build Html on Xml/Sgml or we'd all be editing binary web files and we'd all still be stuck 20 years in the past. Come on you really don't think it's better to use cryptic commands to edit a config rather than simple xml in any text editor do you?

You are also presupposing that you have sqlite3 installed. I think you have completely missed the point (and sheer beauty) of a single XML configuration file for any appliance whether it's a firewall, NAS server, etc.

I'll add, ISPs/companies like to generate their own configuration files in plain text on the fly from their provisioning systems. Aren't you forcing these people (the very people that you now seem to be aiming FreeNAS towards) to use a program to generate a binary file. If this is the best way then why are almost all Unix/Linux config files in plain text and not binary database files?

If someone can come back with some solid justifications why the config file had to change from Xml to binary then I'm all ears.

 

[William Grzybowski]

I'm not going to waste my time explaining the reasons, clearly you don't know anything about web development and the technologies chosen, already waste time writing this text, bye :)

 

[roosterdude]

I'm not going to waste my time explaining the reasons, clearly you don't know anything about web development and the technologies chosen, already waste time writing this text, bye :)

FYI - I started programming in 1983, TCP/IP in 1988, HTML and onwards from 1995. Since 1996 I have owned TWO successful development companies, TWO very successful web hosting companies. I started out with Basic in '83, then 6502 Assembler and I moved on to and am very proficient in VB, Pascal, C++, C#, PHP, Javascript and some Java amongst many others. I'm an expert with many OS's and I'm a very proficient DBA and SQL programmer. In my spare time I'm learning Python.

...But then, apparently I know nothing about development or web development or any "of the technologies chosen" :-S

Thanks for your useless responses.

Thanks to a bug in FreeNAS 8 today I have a requirement to edit the config. I really just wanted to edit a config file then restore as I've been doing with m0n0wall, pfSense & Askozia for years, but of course I couldn't. All I'm asking is why was it changed? Is that a really difficult thing to answer?

 

[ProtoSD]

All I'm asking is why was it changed? Is that a really difficult thing to answer?

Because it's in the hands of new developers and they preferred to do it a different way... a way that made more sense to them and the NEW FreeNAS.