Hello PLUGgers! :-)
Helix is proud to introduce the Helix Setup Tools, a set of tools that are aimed at
providing an easy to use user interface for system
configuration in Linux/Unix.
Design goals of the Helix Setup Tools
-------------------------------------
* Targeted to end users:
These tools are intended to simplify the tasks of configuring a Unix system for
workstations. These tools are targeted to people who want to use GNOME systems as
their primary workstation.
They are not intended to be used for configuring UNIX servers or clusters.
* Unified System Configuration:
Configuring different Unix systems is different; Every Unix system has different ways
of being administered. The Helix Setup Tools are targeted towards unifying those
systems.
* Multi-platform:
Each one of the Helix Setup Tools is split in two parts: a backend (which is typically
written in Perl) and a user interface frontend (which is typically written in C or
Python).
The backend is written in a way that would allow us to quickly adopt the backend to
various different flavors of Unix: the backend "probes" your system to check what kind
of system it is running on, and depending on this, it parses the existing system
files. Then after the user has finished editing the system settings, the configuration
is written back to the system files.
This means that the Helix Setup Tools use whatever configuration files are available
in your system, and you can still edit those files yourself.
This is a work in progress release of the Helix Setup Tools, and fine tuning of the
user interface is expected to happen before we can deliver the ultimate user
experience for the desktop.
The tools in this release
-------------------------
Three Helix setup tools have been released for testing:
Networking 0.1.0 Basic networking.
Name Resolution 0.1.0 Basic name resolution.
Shares 0.1.0 Importing and exporting SMB and NFS shares.
They have been extensively tested only with Red Hat, but might work with other
distributions as well. Proceed at your own risk.
This release provides the tools independently packaged; each comes in its own tarball.
Call for developers
-------------------
We want to have support in Helix Setup Tools for as many Unix systems as possible.
Supporting a new system is pretty simple, you just need to extend the backend Perl
script to probe for your system, parse your system configuration files and generate
your system configuration files.
By keeping the backend as a Perl script we hope that seasoned system administrators
will be able to contribute to this project without requiring any Gtk+ or GNOME
programming experience.
The current version only supports Red Hat Linux systems which is what we used to
develop this.
More information
----------------
Introduction: http://www.helixcode.com/desktop/setuptools.php3
Whitepaper: http://www.helixcode.com/tech/helix-setup-tools.php3
Mailing list: http://lists.helixcode.com/mailman/listinfo/gnome-admin-tools
FTP: ftp://ftp.helixcode.com/pub/setuptools/
GNOME CVS: Module "gnome-admin-tools".
Maintainer: Hans Petter Jansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Future Work
-----------
The Helix Setup Tools have been designed to provide a number of extensions that will
be made available in the future:
* Provinding a CORBA-accessible interface to the configuration tools. This will be
achieved by integrating the Perl/CORBA bindings with each one of the backends.
* Cluster configuration: Given that we have a split between the user interface and the
backends, we will be writting tools that would enable system administrators to
configure clusters of client machines.
* Presets: Through a panel applet users will be able to change system configuration to
a number of presets. For example, the user could have a preset in his laptop for the
computer lab, another preset for his home and another for his girlfriend's house.
Depending on those settings the value of your default printer, network connectivity
options and so on will be set.
* Roll back support: By archiving previous versions of the XML state of the system, we
will be able to rollback the changes to a previous state (yes, we are considering
using RCS for storing the configuration history).
So for instance, if your mom has her computer set up and your cousin goes home and
makes a mess out of the configuration, your mom will be able to drag the configuration
slider to "2 days ago" and have the configuration of her system the same way it was
before the cousin came home.
* Integration with the Control Center: Bradford has been working on the new control
center that will integrate the system administration tools into the GNOME Control
Center.
* Single tarball: We are going to put all the tools in a single tarball in the future
to reuse code between the various components.
Marvin Pascual
926-5562
929-7676 local 614
-
Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph
To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
