topic Re: Functionality - Gaia Web Interface vs. clish in Firewall and Security Management

Functionality - Gaia Web Interface vs. clish

Timothy_Hall — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 19:39:27 GMT

In another interesting thread we discussed what operations had to be accomplished in the SmartConsole GUI and were not possible to perform through the Management API, thankfully the list has gotten shorter with every subsequent release:

Functionality - API vs. SmartConsole

Now for my next question: Are there any configuration operations that you can't do in the Gaia web interface that you must do in clish, and vice-versa?

For purposes of this discussion:

Let's confine the differences to Configuration & related operations (clish commands set/add/delete and the "Configuration" tab in the Gaia web interface) . The Monitoring tab of the Gaia web interface and the clish show commands are excluded.
Assume code version R80.40 and Gaia kernel 3.10
Exclude clish extended command binaries (top, ping, netstat, etc.) and those commands only available from expert mode
Operations that are downright painful to perform from clish, such as Role-based Administration, but much easier in the Gaia web interface don't count 🙂

As an example of a difference that was resolved in the latest code releases, configuration of route redistribution from clish was not possible until version R80.10; prior to that release it had to be done from the Gaia web interface. A starting list:

One indirect difference for clish I know of is that you can delay the activation of multiple commands entered in clish until you are ready with the start transaction, rollback, and commit clish commands. Don't think this functionality is possible in the Gaia web interface.
Another difference is that the expert password must be set from clish; can't do it from the Gaia web interface.

Other than that it sure looks like what you can do in clish you can do in the Gaia web interface and vice-versa, curious to see what everyone else can come up with!

Re: Functionality - Gaia Web Interface vs. clish

Danny — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 21:31:05 GMT

Gaia Portal (WebUI) is based on many different technologies on server side Apache, CGI, TCL and client side Web Browser, JavaScript, CSS, ExtJs and is therefore limited to these technologies' limitations, issues and dependencies (sk91380).

If I simply want to edit the comment of an existing interface, I have to do that in clish via: set interface ethX comments „myComment“ followed by save config
The only way to do something similar in WebUI is to open an interfaces' edit menu, edit the comment and hit the OK button >> unluckily WebUI then writes the entire interface configuration to the Gaia config, which can lead to cluster failovers or disconnects I'm connected to that interface.
If I want to add longer one-liners to Gaia's job scheduler WebUI limits the length and doesn't correctly notify me about it. I have to verify via crontab -l how much it actually added to the cron. Clish allows longer one-liners to be added.
If I want to get one complete list of routes or interfaces I have to use clish as the WebUI only shows a few and puts the rest on additional pages without providing an option of extending the length of the list.

Re: Functionality - Gaia Web Interface vs. clish

Maarten_Sjouw — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 20:45:42 GMT

In the dynamic routing arena both clish and the WebUI have a completely different approach, Clish knows about Routemaps, whioch do noty show in the WebUI and the route filters available in the WebUI are not shown in clich not even in the show configuration list.

Another area I have been having some problems is a multiline banner, that just does not seem to work the same. On top of that the allowed special characters are different as well.

Re: Functionality - Gaia Web Interface vs. clish

_Val_ — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 09:09:19 GMT

From where I stand, it seems to be very close to 100% equivalency.