Re: System administration with GNOME.

[Hassan Aurag <aurag crm umontreal ca>]

 Simply said, if it's in python count me in for gui related stuff. 
Don't count on me for any real system coding as I know little of 
RedHat sysconf stuff and not at all about any other system, even less 
(-infinity) about kernel cfg stuff.

 But for making a GUI no problemo. I have already though of it as a 
nice GtkNotebook with pages for each major sysconf stuff. 

 On the other hand, Linuxconf is already here. I guess one could 
rewrite the GUI-part because it is not a nice as far as I am 
concerned, even though it looks like windows one. Then one could add 
all plugins we need. It has a plugin architecture, and folks there 
have been working with a lot of distros as far as I know. 

 I suggest everybody interested in this have a look at what it does.

 As a point in its defense, linuxconf has all major access: 
GUI(gnome-linuxconf), text, web which is really a good thing (TM). I 
think, it might need some cleaning, many plugin writers and some folks 
to turn gnome-linuxconf into a more attractive and better organized beast.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

On 3/26/00, 9:32:22 AM, Miguel de Icaza <miguel@helixcode.com> wrote 
regarding System administration with GNOME.:


> Hello guys,

>    One subject we have avoided during a long time in GNOME was the one
> of writing system administration tools.  As time passes, it becomes
> more obvious that we must address this to offer users a complete
> desktop solution.

>    We need to define a central place where configuration tools for the
> system could be launched and write the tools.

>    I am inclined to think that we can do all these tools using
> Python/GNOME or Perl/GNOME for most of these tasks.  So we need to get
> volunteers to work on the various things.

>    A few things:

>       1. Ideally we want to split the core of the work from the User
>          Interface, for exaple in Perl we would have a routine that
>          does all the work:

>             sub set_date {
>                 my ($date) = @_;

>                 ...
>               };

>             lots_of_gui_stuff ();
>             set_date ($result_from_gui);

>           So that eventually we could wrap "set_date" as a CORBA
>           service (using Owen's nice ORBit-Perl stuff)

>        2. I used to fear that tools that would work on BSD would not
>           work properly on Linux or in some brand of Linux.

>         I think we just need to keep a file around, say in
>         $sysconfig/properties that would contain any unique
>         properties of a system.

>         For example:
>               mail_mailer=/usr/sbin/sendmail
>               mail_locking=dot-locking

>         And so on.  The basic idea being that we do not even have to
>         worry too much about this issue.  When the problem arises,
>         we add the new key, and we add the new code to handle it.

>         No over-designing of things here, or we will never get it 
done.

>       3. Non GNOME front-ends are not a priority for now, but are
>            still possible (specially if we do the function split I
>            suggested above).

>          For doing that, using Perl for example, we could have:

>               useradmin_core.pl
>               useradmin_gnome.pl
>               useradmin_web.pl

>          And both the GNOME and the Web main programs would invoke
>          the "core" routines in useradmin_core.pl

>         4. I can set up a mailing list to discuss this if there is
>            enough interest.

>     So who wants to help? ;-)

> Cheers,
> Miguel.


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