Problem/JustificationIt’s quite difficult to see connected speed, MAC address, MTU, duplex settings, flow control on so on, even the comment the user has described the interface with.
Impact
Advantages: users will be able to see more information about NICs ‘at a glance’. Some of this information is on the dashboard, but if more were consolidated about the interface on the Network page it would be easier to troubleshoot.
Disadvantages: As the information already exists and would be read only (from existing config) I don’t foresee any.
User Story
As a TrueNAS administrator
I want to see more detailed information - such as link speed, MAC address, descriptive name on the Network page
Such as :
Descriptive name: Intel I219
interface name for ex: eno1
IP address/mask: 10.1.2.3/24
MAC: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Link speed: 1GB/s
Ideally autoneg/duplex/flow control status (these should be surfaced)
So that I can see more information about the interfaces in my device.
I’m dismayed the UI doesn’t even show the MAC address. I get that TrueNAS is meant to have broad market appeal but I don’t think anyone would object to a few strings of hexadecimal buried three levels deep.
At least knowing the MAC address would be nice, but really, I’d like to also see link speed and whether it is full or half duplex. If one’s link speed is lower than expected or it’s not full duplex, it’s probably something one should investigate, but currently it’s not easy to notice such things.
It is possible that Enterprise Data Center users resort to command line tools for this functionality. Their are lots of details not in the GUI or TUI, (text user interface to the Middleware). This is one reason TrueNAS has a complete Unix OS with SHELL login.
Remember, while knowing the MAC can be useful for Enterprise users, they likely don’t use DHCP, (where knowing the Ethernet MAC is required).
That said, I have no objections to including this information in the GUI… just no need either.
I’ve used EMC Unity, Nimble AF, Pure X, Infinidat, 3PAR, EMC VNX, and NetApp 7-mode. I’m positive the first six displayed MACs for every interface without needing a CLI. Memory is fuzzy on the NetApp as it’s been ~8 years since I’ve touched one.
I do wonder if the TrueNAS UI/UX is benchmarked against other storage arrays. Some aspects of the TrueNAS GUI are “tier-1” but others leave me scratching my head.
You’re right Arwen, many folk will already know where to get this information but if MAC, link speed, duplex, flow control were available options it makes NICs easier to configure from the UI .
For me, I havee two NICs on one motherboard. I wanted to tell them apart (as they use different drivers). As both connect at the same speede that was a lot of LSPCI cross referenced with ip a (which always reminds me of beer!).
As I make no pretence of being remotely competent if this info were on the UI it’d be easier to identify adaptors - heck, even if the descriptive text came through that’d be very welcome.
Why would you want to configure any of these things, though? Displaying them I could understand, but this isn’t 1995 any more–autonegotiation is a thing, and a very robust thing at that. Full-duplex is a thing. Unless for some reason you want to plug your NAS into a 25-year-old Fast Ethernet switch, it’s going to connect at the fastest speed supported by the NIC and the switch, it’s going to be full-duplex, and if this doesn’t happen you have a bad cable.
You raise very good points Dan. I think they’re useful to change if, for whatever reason you find yourself with a dodgy connection and no amount of hardware changes resolves it.
Clearly there’s a long vs short term, where long may be to replace switch/port/adaptor but short term force half duplex.disable flow control may provide a short term solution.
I, for example, have a NIC that just for some unfathomable reason refuses to automatically go for full duplex. If I leave it to its own devices, it’ll only ever do half duplex and I have to manually force it to full duplex. There doesn’t seem to be any good reason for it, it works without a hitch at full duplex and all.
This is to say, while auto negotiation works most of the time, one may still get the occasional quirky gadgets here or there.
