Status > Interfaces Feedback/Suggestions
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pfSense appears to be very detailed and advanced and geared more towards people that know at thing or two about networking such as myself. I like the detail about pfSense, however the Interface Status page I feel can use an update. The lack of the DHCP lease info such as when the lease expires, least time, baffled me as most routers, even DD-WRT, Tomato, etc. give you that info. I changed a few of the labels as well as I didn't feel they were worded properly for the data. Here's what I changed and why,
*Changed Status to Interface Status, sounds better and tells you what the status is of- Moved the DHCP Status and Release/Renew to be above the DHCP lease info, as seen in the screenshot
- Appended how the IP address was configured (DHCP) (Static) (PPoE) you get it, and it makes sense to me
- Appended the CIDR notation for said subnet, pfSense tends to use CIDR elsewhere and this seems nice and consistent to me..
- Changed ISP DNS servers to DNS server(s), this shows what DNS server(s) are configured for the interface, not specifically what DNS server(s) your ISP sent you, plus you can have just 1
- Added NIC, I got this from the command line where you assign interfaces it shows what the NIC is called, or driver, idk? I feel this could be useful here..
- After DHCP Status I begin to display the DHCP lease information, this is what the DHCP server, in most cases your ISP, sends you to use, you don't HAVE to, but I feel displaying it informational
- DHCP Server, self explanatory, can be pulled from the lease file, informational and say if there was a rogue DHCP server you could tell your ISP the IP and have them verify if it's theirs
- DHCP DNS Servers, what DNS servers the DHCP server sends, now this would be the ISP DNS servers.. unlike the former, however I labeled it DHCP as not in all cases an interface will be used for WAN..
- DHCP NTP Servers, most people including myself will never use the ISP's NTP servers, but once again informational, good to know what the DHCP server is spitting at you
- DHCP Lease Obtained, self explanatory, most routers show you this, I have no idea why pfSense doesn't.. time should be what time zone the box uses to be user friendly
- DHCP Lease Expires.. again same thing
- DHCP Lease Time.. most routers show this as well.. Say if the DHCP lease was 3600, display as "1 hour (3600)" or 7 days "7 days (604800), I appended the time in seconds which is what the lease file uses and some routers use this format instead.
Before
After
I think it looks a bit more detailed and nicer imo. Hopefully a pfSense developer will agree and update it. Also the DHCP Release not sending a release packet, I submitted a bug report https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/6070 with a fix and it ended up getting marked a duplicate and that duplicate bug report, https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/4209 has been ignored for over a year, I hope a pfSense developer can please bump it… I don't want to be annoying but come on. I can provide feedback on almost every page of the web interface, that's why I hope feedback I provide is looked at by devs and at least considered, be like maybe he has a point there.. If it just gets shrugged off or ignored, I'll just stop making the effort of suggestions. I really like pfSense, that's why I wish to aid in improving it.
Thanks.
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… I really like pfSense, that's why I wish to aid in improving it.
Thanks.
Then submit your improvement changes. Maybe they'll get merged into the project.
https://github.com/pfsense/pfsense -
I just used Developer Tools to edit the HTML for this to demonstrate the desired changes. I wish I knew how to do it in the code. Since these changes seem minor touch ups I don't see the developers having to do any back breaking work to implement them. They would know best though. :/
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I just used Developer Tools to edit the HTML for this to demonstrate the desired changes. I wish I knew how to do it in the code. Since these changes seem minor touch ups I don't see the developers having to do any back breaking work to implement them. They would know best though. :/
Well you already seem to have the HTML down. Just add a little PHP to your skill set. Likewise that would not be any back breaking work for you either and would increase your ability to aid in improving not only this project but others too. The more the merrier.
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I don't know that much PHP, and I feel if I did to it, it would be very inefficient and the devs would know a better way of fetching the data or converting the timezones, etc. etc. pfSense only accepts feedback if you provide the code to go with it? ??? :o
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I don't know that much PHP, and I feel if I did to it, it would be very inefficient and the devs would know a better way of fetching the data or converting the timezones, etc. etc.
Only you can change that.
Start with something simple to learn the ropes. Everybody starts somewhere.pfSense only accepts feedback if you provide the code to go with it? ??? :o
Accept feedback != implement. They have seen your feedback I'm sure. For whatever reason they have not implemented it. Probably have plenty of other things to do that are of more importance and greater benefit to a larger portion of user base. The best way to get lower priority features implemented is to submit the code.
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pfSense only accepts feedback if you provide the code to go with it? ??? :o
Not at all, all feedback is appreciated.
Pull requests are certainly the fastest way to get things implemented where you've already written the code or are capable of doing so. But this is something I'd like to see, I might implement it myself at some point if no one beats me to it. IIRC there is an open feature request at redmine.pfsense.org for this, but you're welcome to open one if a search doesn't find anything.
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Great, glad to hear you like my changes Chris! :) I did start doing some of the php coding myself, I was able to get this done so far,
IPv4 address append configuration type
add CIDR to subnet mask
change ISP DNS Servers to just DNS Server(s), very simple change lmao.
display NIC name
Here's what it looks like, and no I didn't edit the HTML this time ;)
What I'll probably not be able to figure out is how to parse the dhclient.leases file to pull the DHCP lease info, but you never know I could figure it out. I'm new to PHP, but I've had my foot in the water a few times with it so it's nothing terribly new to me.
