I guess it needs to be decided whether this is a bug or not. If you are a Manager you don't have access to save the configuration. Early on it was requested that save to iRules are persisted to disk and that can only be done with a save_configuration() call. I guess I could add another menu option to save the configuration to disk and make it configurable on whether an auto save occurs. I guess this would make sense and still allow those who want auto-save and are running with a role that allows it the ability to do so.
Does that behavior sound good to you?
-Joe
Nimbostratus