!!! Warning: Read this through to the end. These tools can be dangerous. !!! Guidance 0.3.0 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ by Simon Edwards 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 friendlyness 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 I 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 - Mostly feature complete. Only supports /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow right now. LDAP may be added later. * serviceconfig - Feature complete. But probably only works on Mandrake and maybe Red Hat out of the box. * mountconfig - Almost feature complete. Should work ok on most distributions although it may not recognise some of the more rare filesystem types. (Let me know which filesystems it doesn't recognise!) * displayconfig - Also feature complete except for multi-head support. Only works on Mandrake right now due to the use of ldetect and it's datafiles. Requirements ------------ * Linux. * Python. 2.3 recommended. Hasn't been tested on Python 2.2 but it might work. 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/pykde/index.php Packages for most popular distributions are available here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=61057 * KDE 3. * A little library called libpythonize. Available here: http://www.simonzone.com/software/guidance/libpythonize-1.0.tar.bz2 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. Running ------- Installation should add a couple of entries to the KDE Control Center in the System section. It is also possible to run the commands outside of the KDE Control Center from the shell as root: * serviceconfig * userconfig * mountconfig * displayconfig 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