Ximian Setup Tools 0.3. "They know what is what but they don't know what is what"

[Chema Celorio <chema ximian com>]

The Ximian Setup Tools 0.3.0
codenamed : "They know what is what but they don't know what is what"
have been released.

You can get it here :
ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/setuptools/ximian-setup-tools-0.3.0.tar.gz

This is a working snapshot of a continuous effort, and the project is
still
in its infancy. As such, there are no guarantees of usability, beauty or
evil
masterplan compliance. Although we've made an effort to iron out all the
bugs, the tools may still damage your system configuration. For that
reason,
we've created a backup system for your config files (see below).

This is a new features and beautification release. Most of the tools
have new
artwork, courtesy of Tuomas and Jakub, and some have new interfaces by
Anna.
Also, there is lots of new code.

Ximian Setup Tools now require, in addition to the GNOME libraries, the
latest version of GAL. You should get by with GAL 0.5, but the latest
CVS
snapshot is recommended.


Tools in this release
---------------------

Boot     LILO boot parameters. Beautified.
Disks    Find local harddisk partitions and mount them. Not beautified.
Memory   Swap partitions and files. Not beautified.
Network  All kinds of network parameters. Multiple interfaces.
Beautified.
Shares   NFS, SMB. Export, detect, import. Not beautified.
Time     System clock, timezone, timeserver synchronization. Beautified.
Users    Users and groups. Beautified.


Participation
-------------

We need help, in particular to test these tools and port them to as many
Unixy platforms and distributions as possible.

If this seems like a worthy challenge, please get in touch with us.
Further
information can be found in the references section at the end of this
text.

Also, if you have any problems with these tools (identified in detail or
not), we'd be absolutely delighted to hear from you.



Backup system
-------------

Every time a tool modifies your system configuration files, it makes
backups
of those files. The backups are rotated (for 9 levels in total), and the
backup made the first time the tool was run is kept forever. This means
that
you can revert your system configuration to the point before you ever
ran a
Ximian Setup Tool.

The backup path is /var/cache/ximian-setup-tools/backup/<tool>/<id>/. In
this
directory, you'll find a complete snapshot of the files that were
modified.
The original directory structure leading up to these files is also kept.
<id>
runs from 1-9, and when the first backup is rotated out, it is kept in a
special catalog called "First", which is never touched again.


Changes since 0.2.1
-------------------

- Time beautified (Anna, Jacob).

- Time backend speedup (Chema).

- Added report display to frontend, which shows actions taken as
  configuration is read/written (Hans Petter).

- Source cleanup (Jacob).

- Backend code refactored (Hans Petter).

- Networking and Name Resolution merged to form new, pretty and more
  functional Network (Jacob, Arturo, Anna, Chema).

- Users fixed and polished (Tambet).

- Implemented Boot tool (Tambet).

- Platform detection and selection (Arturo, Hans Petter).

- New configuration backup/rescue scheme (Hans Petter).

- Generic code for parsing/modifying configuration files (Arturo).

- Countless bugfixes (everyone).


About the Ximian Setup Tools
----------------------------

- Primary audience - desktop users:

  These tools are intended to simplify the tasks of configuring a Unix
system
  for workstations. They are not intended for configuring Unix servers.

- Unified system configuration:

  Configuring different Unix systems is different; every Unix system has
  different ways of being administrated. The Ximian Setup Tools aspire
to
  unify handling of these systems.

- Adaptability:

  Each one of the Ximian 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 backends are written in a way that should allow us to quickly
adapt
  them to different flavors of Unix; the backend probes your system and
  parses the existing system files. When the user has finished editing
the
  settings, the configuration is written back as patches to the system
files.

  This means that the Ximian Setup Tools use whatever configuration
files are
  available on your system, and you can still edit those files by hand
or
  with other configuration tools without conflicts.

Supported platforms/linux distributions
---------------------------------------
This is the list of platforms that Ximian will focus to support. The XST
are
a community effort so in no way is this list limiting the supported
systems.
Contributions to the XST for support of other distributions or UNIX
variants
is very much appreciated.

Please note that the following list is NOT a list of supported
distributions, but rather a list of distributions we are planning to
support.

REDHAT   - Red Hat Linux 6.0, 6.1, 6.2, and 7.0 
DEBIAN   - Debian GNU/Linux (Woody and Potato) 
SUSE     - SuSE 6.3, 6.4, and 7.0 
MANDRAKE - Linux Mandrake 6.1 and 7.0 
PPC      - LinuxPPC 2000
TURBO    - TurboLinux 6.0 
CALDERA  - Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4 
YELLOW   - Yellow Dog Linux Champion Server 1.2 el
SOLARIS  - Solaris 7 and 8 on UltraSparc 
HPUX     - HP-UX


Verification matrix
------------------

This is a matrix describing the current status of tool
platform/distribution
support. To the best of our knowledge.

        Red Hat    Debian  SuSE     MDK    PPC  Turbo  Cal  Yel  Sol   
HPUX
        6.0 6.2    2.1     6.3 7.0  6.1    any  6.0    2.4  1.2  7.0   
10.0
          6.1 7.0    2.2     6.4      7.0                         
8.0    11.0

Boot     ? + + +    ? ?     ? ? ?    ? ?    ?    ?      ?    ?    -
-     - -
Disks    ? ? + ?    ? ?     ? ? ?    ? ?    ?    ?      ?    ?    -
-     - -
Memory   ? ? + +    ? ?     ? ? ?    ? ?    ?    ?      ?    ?    -
-     - -
Network  ? + + +    - -     - - -    ? ?    -    -      -    -    -
-     - -
Shares   ? ? + ?    ? ?     ? ? ?    ? ?    ?    ?      ?    ?    -
-     - -
Time     ? + + +    ? ?     ? ? ?    ? ?    ?    ?      ?    ?    -
-     - -
Users    ? + + +    ? ?     ? ? ?    ? ?    ?    ?      ?    ?    -
-     - -


References
----------

Introduction: http://www.ximian.com/desktop/setuptools.php3

Whitepaper:   http://www.ximian.com/tech/helix-setup-tools.php3

Mailing list:
http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/setup-tool-hackers

FTP:          ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/setuptools/

GNOME CVS:    Module "ximian-setup-tools".

IRC:          irc.gnome.org, #xst

Developers:   Chema Celorio <chema ximian com>
              Hans Petter Jansson <hpj ximian com>
              Arturo Espinosa <arturo ximian com>
              Tambet Ingo <tambet ximian com>
              Jacob Berkman <jacob ximian com>
              Bradford Hovinen <bradford ximian com>

Artists:      Anna Dirks <anna ximian com>
              Jakub Steiner <jakub ximian com>
              Tuomas Kuosmanen <tigert ximian com>