Hi Jody,
Thanks for the release. I found a strange behavior related to the new File system Sandbox functionality. If I have a url in the text field, like in your example file:data, I get an error with the message “The sandbox directory does not exist”. Which isn’t true if the path is relative to the geoserver data directory. GEOS-11699
It will work with a relative path. It’s the “file:” in front that is problematic, but you will get that if you use the “Browse…”-link to look for the directory.
Data should not be placed in the data directory, besides demo delivery situations (like our release data directory, meant to package a small demo) or small project delivery (all data contained in file system).
Placing large amounts of data (varying by environment, potentially very large not meant for version control) along with the data directory (mostly fixed, small in size, and version controllable) is a malpractice that we should be more careful and vocal to warn users against.
The sandbox is indeed meant to be placed outside of the data directory, its documentation shows absolute path examples.
The choice of screenshot in the release notes is unfortunate, should have been a standard path for data used by services, following *nix practice, like “/var/lib/geoserver”, “/opt/geoserver”, “/mnt/data” or some such.
Like the image used in the docs already, for example:
Specifically for the error message reported by Roar… the message is truthful, but pheraps an input validator should just state more clearly that data dir paths are not supported?