Concept thoughts for improving the Proxmox VE web interface :)

[justinclift]

Hi all,

One of the guys - Rich - on the 2GuysTek youtube channel has put together some ideas for potentially improving the Proxmox UI:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo2X25LkIZE

• Adding folder/subfolder support for grouping of VMs & containers
• Allowing spaces (and maybe other characters) in VM/container names
• Improving the display of the main VM/container layout
  • Cleans things up to be more readable and easier to see important info at a glance

Personally I strongly agree with the folder/subfolder concept, and the support for spaces (etc) in the names of things would be really appreciated too.

The improved main VM display does indeed look cleaner and probably would be easier to work with as well.

Does anyone know how to get these ideas looked at for consideration, and potentially added to the Roadmap as makes sense?

@t.lamprecht @fiona Is this something you could assist with?

 

[esi_y]

Does anyone know how to get these ideas looked at for consideration, and potentially added to the Roadmap as makes sense?

Through BZ as feature requests: https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/

NB Some of the suggestions sound like from someone who does not like to use CLI (which is their choice), but then makes life miserable for the CLI approach.

The part I absolutely do not understand are folders when there's tags (which is a superset of foldering).

 

[justinclift]

Nah, I've tried the tags thing and (at least for me) it's not a good alternative to just having things grouped using folders.

For Bugzilla tickets though, wouldn't those be most useful to create after things have been discussed?

Am mainly thinking that because the forum software here is much easier for people to use for discussion, whereas Bugzilla is kind of a pain though it has all of the needed issue tracking pieces.

 

[t.lamprecht]

Adding folder/subfolder support for grouping of VMs & containers

There's a feature request and a prototype patch series for a "Tag View", which should cover most, ideally all, the needs of manual grouping/sorting. See https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4441

Allowing spaces (and maybe other characters) in VM/container names

The names are used as FQDN/hostname where applicable, i.e. for CTs directly and for VMs if cloud-init is used.
That's why spaces are not allowed and probably won't be anytime soon as that's simply not allowed for "real" FQDNs either (and we don't plan to have punycode support).
Albeit, we could clarify that this is the FQDN, as the UI currently does not convey that with the generic "Name" label, which makes the restrictions naturally a bit harder to understand.
Having an additional, more free form name property that can be also displayed/search for could be an option as small enhancement.

• Improving the display of the main VM/container layout
  • Cleans things up to be more readable and easier to see important info at a glance

This might be good to reduce "function overload" for newcomers and non-technical staff that audits/uses only a small set of Proxmox VE's functionality, but for all power users it would be a big disruption of their workflow experience.

One IMO more realistic idea to solve this without interfering with power/long-term users is adding a new "simple view" which reduces what's visible by default on the user interface to the minimum, like basic load and health overviews of nodes, guests and tasks (like backup) and guest management (start/stop, migrate).

 

[esi_y]

Nah, I've tried the tags thing and (at least for me) it's not a good alternative to just having things grouped using folders.

I think it's a question for asking (from the GUI changes) for a view feature, e.g. having definable view with sections that satisfy your tag condition, which is much more powerful. I mean the tags are already there, if you defined your view into 3 sections that shows you guests with category 1 / 2 / 3, you have your groups. The nice thing about tags is that (for the future) you could possibly e.g. have a tag auto-appear on guests that need updating and then those could appear in a view dynamically, something that gets bizzare with folders over time. And having both is usually a mess (think of notetaking apps that support it).

 

[justinclift]

I think it's a question for asking (from the GUI changes) for a view feature

Oh, that sounds like it could be the right approach to get that happening. That's awesome @esi_y, thanks.

 

[justinclift]

One IMO more realistic idea to solve this without interfering with power/long-term users is adding a new "simple view"

Yep. The folder grouping thing sounds like a new view type on the left hand pane, and a new "simple view" on the right hand side seems like it would be the approach for the right hand pane.

How realistic do you reckon it getting these added to the Roadmap is (probably after fleshing things out a bit more?)?

 

[justinclift]

There's a feature request and a prototype patch series for a "Tag View", which should cover most, ideally all, the needs of manual grouping/sorting. See https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4441

Yeah, that might work. Instead of a folder view, having things grouped by their tag might do the job.

It's a bit hard to tell though, as there don't seem to be any proposed screenshots/mock-ups in that Bugzilla issue?

 

[esi_y]

It's a bit hard to tell though, as there don't seem to be any proposed screenshots/mock-ups in that Bugzilla issue?

Based on what it says on the tin in the linked discussion [1] from BZ now, it will be like your Datacenter view except grouped by all available tags.

[1] https://lore.proxmox.com/pve-devel/20231121124732.2803365-1-d.csapak@proxmox.com/

 

[justinclift]

Yeah, that's still not clear at all to me how that will look. Do multiple tags appear as "sub groupings" of some sort? (etc)

 

[esi_y]

Yeah, that's still not clear at all to me how that will look. Do multiple tags appear as "sub groupings" of some sort? (etc)

If I understood it correctly (I might be wrong), it will be exactly what was asked in that BZ #4441 [1], grouping by tags, individually, so I assume that view to have list of tags on top level (like Server view has list of nodes), then under each tag group the guests listed. If you have guest multi-tagged, it will be under mutilple tags. The tag ordering I expect to be trivial. No filters, e.g. combination of tags. For that you can use search feature I believe already.

BTW You are lucky, the BZ has an assignee and I would say you can definitely ask there, he will get notification if you add comments. Usually, with a bug tracker, I would add something of additional value, e.g. link screenshots what you would like to see. I do not know if @dcsapak is actively on it now or has time to spare to reply on multiple fronts (forum posts), but I would put anything into the BZ since it already exists.

For new / other features, I would open new ones. I have 20 or so pending myself (not on GUI really), if there's someone on the forum asking for the same I know is in what I had filed, I reply to them asking them to +1 themselves into my BZ so that it gets noticed. Nothing wrong with stale BZs, it helps avoiding duplicities.

[1] https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4441

 

[LnxBil]

Just to mention a working solution around folders that has not been mentioned in this thread: use pools and the pool view and you'll have nice folders:

 

[t.lamprecht]

Just to mention a working solution around folders that has not been mentioned in this thread: use pools and the pool view and you'll have nice folders:

View attachment 75303

That's a very good point. Pools also due to some upgrades in the midterm.
One already mostly landed, albeit it's probably not that known yet, i.e. allowing nested pool hierachies [0] (still needs a bit of UI polishing) and others got discussed enough to allow continuing with an implementation, like bulk actions for pools [1] or resource pool limits [2].

[0]: https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1148
[1]: https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5001
[2]: https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1141#c13

 

[esi_y]

Improving the display of the main VM/container layout

• Cleans things up to be more readable and easier to see important info at a glance

I now saw this post [1] where it shows the old livery and layout, I guess colours come in and out of fashion, does not matter, but the layout apparently used to be what was proposed in your YT link (i.e. there was tabs once) to change to. I suppose it's simply optimized to show console better, i.e. you want more vertical screen estate, screens today are all wide aspect ratio.

BTW, what I miss from the stock look is something no one metions - indication of WHICH NODE is that particular GUI served from. I know there's address bar (becoming outfashioned nowadays) and tab titles (what if it is pinned), but it would be more useful than spelling out "Virtual Environment".

[1] https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/it-is-possible-to-edit-the-id-of-a-node.24763/#post-123952

 

[justinclift]

indication of WHICH NODE is that particular GUI served from.

Heh Heh Heh. For me, I just do what you mention and look at the url in the browser. Do you view the Proxmox UI using something that doesn't show it?

 

[esi_y]

Heh Heh Heh. For me, I just do what you mention and look at the url in the browser. Do you view the Proxmox UI using something that doesn't show it?

With a round-robin served DNS A record, you can see e.g. "pve.internal" and it could be any of the dozen nodes there. Similar with reverse proxy. Similar with every post on this forum with a "screenshot" that does not include address line.

 

[LnxBil]

there was tabs once

There are still tabs, they just moved from horizontal layout to vertical layout.

 

[esi_y]

There are still tabs, they just moved from horizontal layout to vertical layout.

I was getting at the the "5:50 Cleaning up the submenu!" part from the OP, but now that I think of it, no they were ... a ribbon ... and now it's a slot machine. BTW I do not care for "cleaning up anything", but I do like discoverability - I remember first time looking for where storage-s (is that a word, really?) are. But then I said to myself, back to the CLI and was just fine. (I am aware normal people don't use it like that though.) Also, the Folder view was the least confusing to me, e.g. I could find where to upload images. The variable-width font in system log with no colouring and no filtering also tells me it's more of a dashboard than serious troubleshooting tool.

PS @LnxBil Now that you are here - and I know you are a veteran - do you have any idea why SSL certificate needs to change when empty node joins a cluster? And why there's no notification that one needs to reload GUI after joining leaving any new user wait and wait looking at non-populated list of nodes...

 

[LnxBil]

PS @LnxBil Now that you are here - and I know you are a veteran - do you have any idea why SSL certificate needs to change when empty node joins a cluster? And why there's no notification that one needs to reload GUI after joining leaving any new user wait and wait looking at non-populated list of nodes...

I never tried to setup the ssl certificates before joining the cluster but that was just like I did it. Normally, a joining node will loose everything it has setup already and everything will be overwritten by the already created cluster so that could be the case for the ssl certificate and the user database including the already issued cookies. Therefore I could image that an already logged in user into a node that is joining an already existing cluster will see nothing (he does not exist anymore after joining) and therefore you experienced what you descibed.

I have to say that I never logged into an about-to-join-a-cluster node gui to setup stuff, I just install the node, log into SSH and join it to the cluster.

 

[esi_y]

I just install the node, log into SSH and join it to the cluster.

I just wanted to confirm this. I found this the most logical way too. Just a first-time user, I presume, will use GUI, where you are then supposed to copy/paste joining Base64 into the node about to be reset. I feel that's kind of backwards. In the CLI [1], the "add" command still confuses me, I believe it should be called "join".

[1] https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pvecm.1.html