tpctl -- ThinkPad configuration tool for Linux

[Stein Vrale]

James Hawtin wrote:

> For example, when I start my computer in unix it probes to see if I am at
> home or at work, and reconfigures itself to different
> domain/mail/automount/ip/dns etc. However with windows I have to change the
> settings by hand (and of course the reboot ;-)

Actually, linuxconf already has the possibility to maintain different
configuration sets, separating common and enviroment dependent configs
in different archive families, so you may select the needed config on
bootup. It uses RVS for this, and tracks history information, so you may
go back to the setup you had 6 months ago for instance (if you saved
it). 

> For an X based one, having the linux conf doing it fair enough, just don't lost
> the current system.
> 
> I built my own distribution for linux on my machines, and don;t use linuxconf at
> all. I was not particularly impressed with it when I saw it on my friends
> redhat. Its very HP-UX Sam, nice easy but if it does not do what you want how
> you want, your in trouble, becuase if you do a change by hand, you can not
> really use that part of the gui again (Sam I am talking here).

For some configuration files, linuxconf will remove your ability to hand
edit. The most annoying example is sendmail config, you must disable
this in linuxconf if you mangae it yourself. But for the most part
linuxconf tries to parse the current config files and pickup your hand
made configs. It really depends on how parsable the config files are,
and how much work the developers have done to implement the parsing in
linuxconf. Mostly it will try leave config items it dont understand in
the original file. But the same is true in linuxconf as for SAM (which I
dont know), if linuxconf don't know how to do what you want, its best to
avoid the GUI and do it by hand.

Anyway this is the main reason to maintain tpctl as the main config
tool, for many people it is not an option to install the whole linuconf
stuff. 

But also note that you only need the linuxconf libraries to use it for
tpctl, you don't have to use linuxconf at all, using the tpctl dialog as
a standalone tool. I have two other modules I use in this way, actually
they are desiged both for linuxconf and standalone usage, if you run
them inside linuxconf the dialogs are spread around the linuxconf
menutree, if you run it standalone one main dialog is used instead. You
may even have more standalone frontends from the same code, one for
system administrator, one for users, etc.




Stein Vråle