
Jigsaw property editor
The current version of Jigsaw's property editor, uses HTML form. It
is usually available through the /Admin/PropertiesEditor
resource
on your server. This document explains you how to use this property editor
to customize your global server settings.
Navigation in the properties editor
When launched, the property editor looks like this:
It has three main zones delimited by horizontal rules:
-
The first zone (the editor's header) contains two buttons: the Restart
button and the Save button. The first one can be used to restart the
server (in case some of the properties you change can take effect only after
a server restart, such as the server's port number). The second property
allows you to save the current properties setting (so that they will be kept
across server's invocations).
-
The second zone, that we will usually call the current card displays
a sub-set of the available properties. The screen dump below shows only the
General properties. To set a property, you just type in the new property
value, and click the OK button of the card to perform the change.
The Reset button allows you to set the properties back to their original
values.
-
The last zone (made of the Connections, Logging and
Shuffler links) allows you to navigate from one form card to the other.
You can just follow one of these links to see the relevant server's properties.
Each of the property titles are themselves links to the relevant reference
documentation. You can click on any of them to get the relevant documentation.
Changing property values
To change a property, you just need to type in its new value (or change the
toggle, if the property supports multiple-choice). Once you have entered
the new value, press the OK button. If the provided value is synctatically
correct, and if the change to the property can be applied dynamically (while
the server runs), then the server emits back the form with the property value
updated.
They are two cases were the server will return an error message:
-
If the provided value can't be used as the selected property value, because
it is syntactially incorrect. Try setting the port number to hello,
for example. This will bring up a document telling that hello is an
incorrect value for the server's port number, just click on the here
link to go back to the form.
-
If the server doesn't allow dynamic reconfiguration of the property. As has
been mentioned above, some property changes require a server restart (such
as the server's port number). In such case, when you submit the new property
value (by clicking the OK button), the server will sends you back
a document telling you that for this new value to take effect, you should
restart the server.
Once you have changed some properties, you can test the new values by restarting
the server. To do this, just press the Restart button in the form's
header. The server will first shutdown itself. As it shutdowns, your browser
will probably emit an error message saying that it can't reach Jigsaw.
Wait for it to restart (which will be indicated by the usual welcome message),
and then point your browser back to the property editor. The new values should
be displayed, you can save the properties in order to make them the default
at server startup time.
If the server is unable to restart by itself (probably because one of your
setting is incorrect, as indicated by Jigsaw failure's message on
startup), then restart it manually (it will then use the previous set of
properties, that we know are correct).
Anselm Baird-Smith
$Id: propeditor.html,v 1.1 1996/04/23 19:08:17 abaird Exp $