Purpose and scope
The single_ops form attempts to provide a simple interface for
the commonest IP address management functions. In particular it
provides registration, renaming, detail modification and rescinding
for simple cases, systems that is which have only a single network
interface and no aliases of any sort. In reality this is far and
away the commonest scenario, as seen in a simple public or private
workstation. This form does not cope with systems that do
have multiple real or virtual interfaces or any kind of alias.
Furthermore the form is for dealing with systems one by one
interactively, and with manual keying of detail, or at best cut and
paste. It is unsuitable for bulk transfer of data that is machine
readable in the first place. An alternative interface, list_ops, is
provided for that case.
The "register" function
This registers a new host as specified in the fields, optionally finding an address automatically.
At its most basic, you just fill in all the fields, press the button
and note the answer, but it doesn't have to be quite that tedious. In
particular, you have a choice between specifying the address, in which
case lan, mzone, subnet and selection range are ignored, or leaving
the address field empty, in which case an address is found for you
within any of lan, mzone, subnet and address selection range that are
specified. The match must be exact, unlike the fuzzy search described
below. If you only have access to a single small mzone anyway, you may
be able to get away with leaving all these fields blank, or as left
over from some previous action.
hostname (fully qualified) must always be specified, as must
equipment, location, owner and sysadmin, in conformance with the
requirements of the underlying database.
updated_by and update_date are ignored.
The "rename" function
The rename function should only be used immediately after an existing registration has been displayed. Then simply type the new name into the special new name field, press the rename button and note the answer.
The "modify" function
The modify function should only be used immediately after an existing registration has been displayed. Then simply type the new info into the appropriate fields over the top of the previously displayed info, press the modify button and note the answer.
Note that only some of the fields can be modified in this way. These are clearly delineated in the display.
The "rescind" function
The rescind function should only be used immediately after an existing registration has been displayed. The effect is to obliterate the whole registration.
The "search" function
This function can be use to find a registration by fuzzy matching of
any of the fields. All displayed fields, even the updated_x fields,
can contribute to the match. Blank fields are ignored. (The
"clear form" button may be of use.) Fields that are not
blank are matched using SQL match semantics (the LIKE function), where
the whole field must be specified but % denotes any string and _
denotes any single character. Thus for example %.botolph.cam.ac.uk in
the name field will narrow the search to the botolph domain. The
search picks out registrations for which all (non-empty)
fields match.
[Experimental] There is an exception to the above, which would not
have been particularly useful in the case of the review_date field.
Here the more useful semantic of testing for not greater is adopted,
and the special denotation "today" is acceptable, allowing you to pick
out entries for which review is due or overdue.
An attempt is made to display the first matching entry, if any, and will succeed unless the search turns up a non-simple registration. If, as is extremely likely, the search throws up more than one match then a pop-up menu of addresses that fitted is offered, together with a button for causing the selected entry to be displayed. The pop-up does not survive into the next display of the form. If you want to re-use it then you will have to use the browser's "back" button.