Project Status?

[BashBandito]

Hi,

Just wondering if there is further development planned for this project or is it going to remain in this state?

[natankeddem]

If there are features you want added or find bugs I can try to work on either. I don't have either that I am aware of in regards to this app currently.

[BashBandito]

Hi @natankeddem

Thanks for the swift response. I haven't yet dived into bale but I did recently come across it and was very curious about it.

I'm mostly seeking to have a safe web interface i can install via unprivileged lxc that can manage the ZFS storage tasks of my proxmox storage pools. Mostly to create and manage datasets and dataset snapshots. Also to run replication tasks from one ZFS storagepool to another.

Can bale do this?

[natankeddem]

Bale is targeted at snapshots only , a bale is what a group of (snapping) turtles is called. General dataset management is therefore out of scope of the project.

I suggest you give the Ansible script a try to set things up if you have an lxc. Its been a minute since I have run it myself but it should fully setup an lxc for you. I personally run it on docker.

Once you get it running keep things in manual mode and try running a few management functions in dry run mode this will give you a feel for what the app is doing since it will notify you of all the commands it is running.

The scheduler can run arbitrary command line commands on a fixed schedule. Although it was mostly implemented to run zfs_autobackup for snapshot creation, pruning and replication. There is a helper ux to help setting up zfs_autobackup specifically.

I haven't had any issues since I got this stable with my personal testing, it just runs in docker doing its thing and occasionally I login to do some management. I have notifications setup so if it errors out it will ping my phone. If you run into any issues let me know...

[BashBandito]

Thanks for the thorough explanation. I went ahead and installed it with Docker and now have it deployed.

I'm really happy that I can use it to manage my ZFS dataset snapshots. Being able to do this over SSH while keeping the LXC unprivileged is a big win.

If you don’t mind me asking, is there any particular reason you chose to focus only on ZFS dataset snapshots instead of expanding into full ZFS management? Handling everything over SSH without requiring a privileged LXC would probably appeal to a lot of users like me.

[BashBandito]

By the way, I clicked send key in the initial setup instead of clicking save and this popped up. What exactly happened here when I clicked "send key"? I did click save after and connected successfully but I wasn't clear on the "send key" action and what it precisely did and what I might need to know for later?

That being said, despite how simple the UI is, it feels and looks very nice. You did a great job, I already really like it.

[natankeddem]

When looking around it seemed like there were other tools which could manage other aspects of zfs. Perhaps not via ssh though. I could look into expanding bale, but if I wanted to create some more general zfs management I would probably make a separate companion application.

Promox already has some rudimentary functionality for zfs management so I am not sure if I could provide something meaningful. Typically I create all my applications because I have a vision and a need for them, so I am at least a customer as well. This gives me insight into what features are good and useful. I haven't really needed to have more general zfs tools since once the pools are made they are usually pretty static.

Snapshots on the other hand have ongoing user interactions. IE cleaning up proxmox replication faults or restoring files from historic copies. The problem comes when you are trying recall commands after years of not using them or managing large quantities or snapshots.

[natankeddem]

By the way, I clicked send key in the initial setup instead of clicking save and this popped up. What exactly happened here when I clicked "send key"? I did click save after and connected successfully but I wasn't clear on the "send key" action and what it precisely did and what I might need to know for later?

Bale creates its own ssh keys for key based ssh auth. Pressing the send key button will invoke ssh-copy-id to copy your bale instances public key to the target host system. You can also manually copy and paste the provided public key shown to get the same effect.

[BashBandito]

Promox already has some rudimentary functionality for zfs management so I am not sure if I could provide something meaningful.

Take this Reddit post for example. The comments speak for themselves. ZFS importing, exporting, scrubbing, dataset snapshots, replication tasks, and more. Being able to manage all of that from a single web interface via SSH in an unprivileged LXC is definitely something the community wants. Either way, thanks for bale :)