system: improve backup restore area selection

[dimitrijp]

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I wanted to restore only IPSec configuration from my backup to new HW. If I go to System - Configuration - Backups - Restore, select restore area IPSEC, select backup file. After reboot IPSec configuration is empty.

Its working if I dont select area, but use ALL instead. OPNSense is the same version on both machines 23.7.5

A clear and concise description of what the bug is, including last known working version (if any).

Tip: to validate your setup was working with the previous version, use opnsense-revert (https://docs.opnsense.org/manual/opnsense_tools.html#opnsense-revert)

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Go to '...'
2. Click on '....'
3. Scroll down to '....'
4. See error

Expected behavior

Working partial restores from backup.

Describe alternatives you considered

Full restore, but the partial restore feature is there to use so it should work.

Screenshots

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Relevant log files

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Additional context

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Environment

Software version used and hardware type if relevant, e.g.:

OPNsense 19.1.1 (amd64, OpenSSL).
Intel® Xeon™ E3-1225V5 3.3Ghz Quad Core
Network Intel® I210-AT

[fichtner]

Given the new components IPsec configuration is scattered over a few config keys nowadays. @AdSchellevis and me have been discussing a good way forward for this page and it’s functionality, but I’m not sure this will happen mid-term. So the question is what to do with this short-term?

[AdSchellevis]

It might be an option to hook it to the xmlrpc sync sections to make this more consistent short term, long term I'm not a huge fan of partial restores as these lack referential integrity and are not guaranteed to work

[dimitrijp]

Personally I don’t need the feature, I was just opening the issue in case it was a unknown bug, since I ran into it while I was playing with IPSEC migration to connections.

[fichtner]

Hooking into XMLRPC sounds like a good plan even though it might add sections to the configuration not formerly seen/intended. But then we could also ditch the „OPNsense additions“ option which is a mashup of all sorts of things (and also only partial IPsec in this case).

I’d be happy to pick this up for 24.1 if ok.

Cheers,
Franco

[fichtner]

@dimitrijp Discussion is good, thanks for raising the issue 😊

[AdSchellevis]

I’d be happy to pick this up for 24.1 if ok.

Sure, it's indeed at least more consistent and likely less code in the legacy page.