Knowledge base

The top-bar of the NetYCE gui display a button for every NetYCE server in your system. The use can switch from one server to another by selecting it.

The default behaviour is to show the active server as grey text on a slightly darker button. The other servers are shown in gray text using no background colour. To indicate these are buttons to click, a grey background is shown when hovering over it.

This behaviour can (within limits) be customized per server. Such is desirable when deploying separate front-end server and database-servers, or when a front-end server is uniquely connected to a sub-network.

First, where does each server retain/fetch the information of the other servers in the system?

During its installation the file /opt/yce/etc/yce_setup.xml was generated using the installation program /opt/yce/system/yce_setup.pl. This program prompts the user for this and other servers in the system and saves it in the aforementioned XML file. It also creates the various configuration files for the database, webserver and the NetYCE applications.

The file /opt/yce/etc/<hostname>_yce.conf is one of them and has the reference to each server button to be created.

# front-end servers for button-bar
our %yce_server;
tie %yce_server, "Tie::IxHash";
$yce_server{'yceone'} = "yceone.netyce.org";
$yce_server{'ycetwo'} = "ycetwo.netyce.org";
$yce_server{'ycethree'} = "ycethree.netyce.org";
$yce_server{'ycefour'} = "ycefour.netyce.org";

The information here will convert into those buttons in the order listed. It can be manipulated when desired, but one temporarily since the file will be re-generated at the next update.

To make alterations in these buttons, the yce_setup.xml must be modified. This can be one using the yce_setup.pl program or directly using an editor.

Amongst other sections, the XML will have sections for each server:

  <yce name="yceone">
    <database database_id="1" type="mysql" />
    <host domainname="netyce.org" fqdn="yceone.netyce.org" hostname="yceone" />
    <httpd proto="http" type="apache" urlbase="name" />
    <net ipv4="172.17.10.21" />
    <roles database="yes" frontend="yes" />
    <wiki domain="netyce.org" ip="" local="yes" name="yce-wiki" proto="http" />
    <yce_db primary_db="genie" secondary_db="" />
  </yce>

Removing the section removes the server. The order is not defined in the XML, it is dependent on the role and its alphabetical sort-order. You can only modify the order in the <host>_yce.conf file.

The default colours can be modified using the Admin - Lookup form. Select the ServerButton Class to display the entries in this class. Select the entry where variable reads default.

The Num value sets the text foreground colour.

The values in String determine the background colour. It accepts three or six character hex value corresponding to a HTML colour (NOT prefixed with a '#'). It therefore allows for the definition of any subtle or harsh background.

Some examples:

By setting a background colour the button wil be permanently showing that colour. It can no longer show the active-server or hover background.

Initial values for the default are <blank> for 'String' and 0 for Num.

To assign a different colour for each server, create additional entries in the Lookup using the ''ServerButton' class. Set the 'Variable' to the hostname and assign the colour definitions as above.

Blank values for 'String' or 'Num' will result in using the values defined for the default. Entries for servers that do not exist have no impact.

The new colours for the server buttons will not manifest themselves until the page is reloaded by the browser.