!!! Warning: Read this through to the end. These tools can be dangerous. !!! Guidance 0.8.0 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ by Simon Edwards , Sebastian Kügler & Yuriy Kozlov , Martin Böhm Introduction ------------ Guidance is a collection of system administration tools for Linux/KDE systems that is designed to be: * Update to date * High quality, designed with user friendliness as high priority. (That is to say that the tools should get the job done quickly, accurately and with as little effort as possible.) * Use KDE and "fit in" with KDE. * Maintainable. * Free Software Warning ------- These tools often require root access and modify important system files in order to do their job. There is a very real chance that these tools can destroy your computer and your data. Backup your data! Also especially backup up /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow and /etc/fstab. If you don't know what I'm talking about now then you probably shouldn't try using Guidance yet. You should have some idea how to fix We accept no responsibility in the event that something goes terribly wrong. You have been warned. Status ------ The tools that make up Guidance are in different stages of development and have only been tested on Mandrake. * userconfig - User & Group configuration. Supports /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow right now. * serviceconfig - System services configuration utility. Feature complete. Works on Mandrake, Debian, (K)ubuntu Gentoo and maybe Red Hat out of the box. * mountconfig - Mount point configuration utility. Feature complete and stable. * displayconfig - Display and graphics card configuration utility. Feature complete but it only tested on Kubuntu right now. * wineconfig - Wine configuration utility. * grubconfig - Grub boot loader configuration utility. beta quality now. Requirements ------------ * Linux. * Python. 2.4 recommended. You probably already have Python installed, and if not then it will most definately be available for you distribution of choice. * PyQt / PyKDE. Version 3.7 or higher. PyQt and PyKDE are distributed with KDE as part of kde-bindings since version 3.3. For versions of KDE before 3.3 it is possible to install PyQt/PyKDE directly. The homepage for PyQt and PyKDE is: http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/pytde/index.php Packages for most popular distributions are available here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=61057 * KDE 3. * "PyKDE Extensions" is needed for installation. It is available here: http://www.simonzone.com/software/pytdeextensions/ This is also a runtime requirement! * libpythonize. If you don't want the tools to appear on the KDE Control Center of you just don't want to bother with libpythonize, then you can build Guidance with this command: python setup.py install build_kcm --no-kcontrol libpythonize is only needed for the KDE Control Center. * You also need to have the development files from your X-server installed, XFree86 or Xorg. Most distributions package these files up in a package called XFree86-devel, or Xorg-devel, or libxorg-X11-devel or some similar. * Specifically, the following packages are needed on Kubuntu: build-essential python-sip4-dev libxxf86vm-dev libxrender-dev libxrandr-dev libpythonize0-dev pyqt-tools libtool kde-devel Installation ------------ As root run: ./setup.py install This will test for a working installation of PyQt/PyKDE and automatically install the files using the same installation prefix as KDE. You will need to have a working Python install before you can even run the setup.py script. displayconfig-hwprobe installation ---------------------------------- displayconfig-hwprobe.py is a small program that should be run at boottime before Xorg is started. It scans the PCI bus looking for graphics cards and compares the list it finds to the previous time it was run. If the two lists of hardware are different then "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" is automatically run in non-interactive mode to generate a new xorg.conf based on the new hardware. The philosophy is that it is better to have a system with a raw but working xorg.conf and X server, than to keep the old configuration and a Xorg that won't startup. Swapping a graphics card should not "break" the OS. The setup.py script currently does not install displayconfig-hwprobe.py by itself. For now this must be done by the packager. displayconfig-hwprobe.py should be put in /etc/init.d and installed to run at boot time with a command like this: update-rc.d displayconfig-hwprobe.py start 18 3 . displayconfig-hwprobe.py only supports Kubuntu right now. Perhaps in the future displayconfig-hwprobe will be expanded to detect hardware and generate an xorg.conf by itself. More information about displayconfig-hwprobe.py and the files it uses is inside displayconfig-hwprobe.py. Currently the hardware data is written to /var/lib/guidance/guidance-gfxhardware-snapshot. IMPORTANT: The directory /var/lib/guidance/ should be created before using displayconfig-hwprobe.py. Running ------- Installation should add a couple of entries to the KDE Control Center in the System section (displayconfig will show up in Peripherals). It is also possible to run the commands outside of the KDE Control Center from the shell as root: * serviceconfig * userconfig * mountconfig * displayconfig * wineconfig * grubconfig Reporting Bugs -------------- Bug reports and feedback can be sent to simon@simonzone.com . Do make sure that say which version of Guidance you are using and also what Linux distribution you are using, and also how you installed SIP, PyQt, PyKDE. Also if any error messages are printing to the console, email those too. By running these tools from the command line you can often get useful (to me) debug information. That kind of information is valuable. Deinstallation -------------- As root run: ./setup.py uninstall Thanks go to ------------ Jim Bublitz David Boddie Sebastian Kügler Theo Houtman Pete Andrews (gamma correction system) -- Simon Edwards