Shutdown Reason - Slightly different from the first linked request

Feature Requests
1

First I’d like to say that I doubt this will be incorporated however I am curious how many people would actually appreciate this recommended change. @Whiskydrinker submitted a similar Feature Request which got me thinking, which can be a terrible thing. Watch Out! Joe’s on a rampage.

Problem/Justification
Always being asked to supply a reason for a shutdown/restart.

What I’m trying to solve it the little bit of irritation that goes along with having to locate and select a reason before the TrueNAS GUI will let you shutdown or reboot.

Impact
It adds a little bit of irritation having to scroll through the list of reasons, finding one that fits, or sort of fits, and then having to also check the “confirm” box, and then clicking restart or shutdown. It is just a small bit of irritation personally. This is not a functional problem, there is no bug here. It is personal preference.

Recommendations
My recommendations are two things:

  1. Have a user selectable option called “Shutdown/Restart Reason (enable/disable)” switch. This would allow each user to leave it enabled by default or optionally turn it off and you would not be asked for a reason.
  2. When being asked to select a reason of Reboot/Shutdown, the last selected reason is listed automatically by default. And if a person adds a Custom Reason, that custom reason is there the next time (a bit harder to program the custom message I suspect).

User Story
I personally restart my server quite often while doing things that would require an orderly shutdown or reboot. I will admit that I may be the one person who does this more often than most (a few times a week) but when I want to reboot or shutdown the server for whatever reason, I so dislike having to fumble through a list of reasons and I tend to pick the nearest reason regardless of what it says.

I already have to perform five (5) clicks in order to reboot or shutdown:

  1. Select the Power Button in the GUI.
  2. Select Reboot or Shutdown.
  3. Scroll through a long list of reasons and select one, or enter my own custom reason, each and every time.
  4. Check a box telling the GUI I confirm I want this action.
  5. And finally select “Reboot” or “Shutdown” to initiate the action.

I completely understand the purpose of the question, from my perspective it is a piece of data that may help in troubleshootings a problem. In the corporate world, also an audit function. Maybe the second recommendation is the better answer but having to search for the reason, that sucks.

I realize this would not be a quick and simple change, it is a little more involved than that, however I also do not see it being very difficult.

And while this is an irritation to me, it most certainly would not make me stop using TrueNAS. I can live with the small irritation however I’d rather not and I do feel this could be a GUI improvement.

While my recommendation is what I entered above, if there are variations on this, feel free to add them. If you disagree with my request, please add that as well and I would appreciate some justification so I can try to see it through other eyes.

3 Likes
2

I just randomly pick a reason that lands under my mouse when I pull the dropdown on my test system. I understand the reasoning of the dropdown or at least in the context that I had to do similar with some systems at work for audit. It’s a slight irritation and I agree could be handled with a enable/disable (enabled as default) checkbox for those systems that don’t require audit.

As far as multiple steps to reboot or shutdown a server. One can always if they have the cli open or ssh open issue a sudo reboot now If I am working on something on the test server I usually have the command line open by ssh anyway so I just issue the command.

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Hey, stop making too much sense! I may start using this method as I am typically in an SSH window when I’m rebooting so often.

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4

I get that this is an annoyance for some (I can probably count on one hand the number of times in the past year I’ve shut down/rebooted my NAS other than for updates, but…). But if you aren’t actually auditing, why does it matter what reasons are on the list? Click something, it doesn’t matter what. Sure, that defeats the purpose of giving a reason in the first place, but you don’t care about having that logged anyway. Sure, iX should provide an option to not ask.

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5

At least we don’t have to fill out a 5 Whys form. :grin:

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Another option is to put it only in the Enterprise edition We are on the CE, Community Edition, we don’t need shutdown reasons.

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OMG! Stop talking like we are at work. 5 Whys, Arg! I can’t tell you how many times I had to make a presentation using the 5 Whys. I always got tagged for it because I could get it done in a reasonable time and I knew the customer well and had a very good repore with them. I made it easy for the manager above me and saw no reward for it. Oh well, retirement is good as I no longer have to do that kind of thing.

@dan My case is I do reboot a lot, just because of what I do with the system, not due to any problems. And it is a minor irritation to me. But I appreciate the comments, I’m certain that your perspective is the majority of the users as well.

@SmallBarky That too is a good idea.

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:joy:

@SmallBarky Just having it in enterprise is a good idea.

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9

Both these are reasonable alternatives to the current situation.

However, for the CE - Community Edition, I would suggest an Enable / Disable function, with it being disabled by default. This allows CE users that happen to be Business users too, to have some auditing.

3 Likes
10

I like that idea best. I use my systems for business and while I don’t audit, I see plenty of cases where a small to medium business with a few employees in different roles may want that capability.