Node Manager UX and Issues

[chriso]

OK. I think the confusion here is due to the introduction of the ability to run user-mode services.

Here is a snippet from the recently updated README:

The primary use case for Safenode Manager is to setup safenode as a long-running background service, using the service infrastructure provided by the operating system.

On macOS and most distributions of Linux, user-mode services are supported. Traditionally, services are system-wide infrastructure that require elevated privileges to create and work with. However, with user-mode services, they can be defined and used without sudo. The main difference is, a user-mode service requires an active user session, whereas a system-wide service can run completely in the background, without any active session. It’s a user decision as to which is more appropriate for their use case. On Linux, some service managers, like OpenRC, used on Alpine, do not support user-mode services. Most distributions use Systemd, which does have support for them.

The commands defined in the rest of this guide will operate on the basis of a user-mode service, and so will not use sudo. If you would like to run system-wide services, you can go through the same guide, but just prefix each command with sudo.

Windows does not support user-mode services at all, and therefore, the node manager must always be used in an elevated, administrative session.

The reason for the introduction of user-mode services was to make the TUI usable for those less technical. Prompting for passwords is not really feasible, both from a technical and a UX point of view.

There may need to be some distinction made in the commands to indicate the use of user-mode vs. system-wide service, because clearly people are making mistakes there. I am open to suggestions as to how to handle things in terms of the usage of flags or whatever.