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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: System Configure tool
From:       Holger Schurig <holgerschurig () gmx ! de>
Date:       2001-05-05 20:20:53
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> cvs checkout kdeadmin.
>
> Have a look into that module. Mostly unmaintained and unuseable.

At least ksysctrl doesn't get much attention because it's purpose is 
not obvious. Why are there all these "Drivers" tabs?   That proggie is 
just a bad mimickry of a windows program.


Basically, if ever any sysadm module for KDE should be written, then it 
should not be written in KDE. It should be written generic, so that it 
can be used by other projects as well. For example just like gPhoto can 
be used with Gnome and KDE's kamera kioslave.

So there is already an interface between some GUI and some worker 
class. This layer would be a good point to have remote administration 
possible.

Third, because of the huge amount of configurable things in a linux box 
I'm wondering how this can should be solved. kuser, kcron etc all 
solved this by hard coding everything in C++. That's a tedious task. I 
mused some time ago if it would be possible to create a "configuration 
file description language", augmented by actions and information gather 
methods. Those three parts would then be used for a central GUI to 
display the control on the screen (from the config file description 
language and info gather scripts) and for doing actions (by virtue of 
the action scripts). This file could, in the sourcecode, sent throught 
a preprecessor to make it distro-dependent.

In the end it should be possible to add a new config item without 
programming, just as one can add a new internet provider to KPPP 
without programming.


--------------------------------
file /etc/resolv.conf:
  style name-value
  termination none
Item "Name servers to be used":
  key nameserver
  help "blah blah"
  type ip
  max MAXNS delimited " "
item "Local domain name":
  key domain
  equal global.domainame
  type string
...
--------------------------------

One could also imagine XML as the config file description. Here I did 
not specify any sort of enumeration (e.g. for the "options" parameter) 
nor any GUI things.



PS: In the old days of linux I once wrote a very simple config tool for 
linux based around dialog. I had to transpose this tool from Red Hat 
4.0 to 4.1. to 5.1 etc, so I know a little bit of what that involves. 
http://it-support.om.org/linux/sysadm/ and 
http://it-support.om.org/linux/internals/sysadmi.html

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