Bugzilla Bug 153113

seems like other distros have pick this to gnome 2.16 release we should do it
too.

Requires system-tools-backends-2.9.90 or anything in 2.9.X, which requires
dev-perl/Net-DBus which is amd64 keyworded only.

there's no problem with Net-DBUS since the s-t-b packages already provides the
bindings. The problem is with liboobs that requires dbus-glib 0.7 at least.

i have g-s-t-2.15.6 running with liboobs-0.6.1 and s-t-b-2.0.0. it also runs
with liboobs-{0.5.0,2.17.2} (2.17.3 doesn't build).

system-tools-backends-2.0.0 is a pain. none of g-s-t's frontends would run
until /usr/share/system-tools-backends-2.0/scripts/SystemToolsBackends.pl ran
as root. running it non-root allows the frontends to run but they are unable to
modify system configurations. 

this solution came from the following thread (not sure why thread title
includes non-existant s-t-b-2.17):
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/system-tools-list/2006-November/msg00000.html

the thread mentions running scripts in /etc/dbus-1/event.d, but would this not
require modifying /etc/init.d/dbus? would it be easier and better to create an
/etc/init.d/system-tools-backends? should we endure this pain and do this
configuration (the versions I tested) or wait until 2.18 and a new stable
>s-t-b-2.1?

another thing, should future system-tools-backends (>=1.9) create a new group
'stb-admin' or use wheel by configuring with '--with-stb-group-wheel'?
s-t-b-1.4.2's ebuild recently added adding group 'stb-admin'. using wheel is
less work for new users but makes migrating 2.14->2.15 harder.

Latest is
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gnome-system-tools/2.15/gnome-system-tools-2.15.6.tar.gz

Thanks

for anybody that feels advanturous enough, you could try g-s-t-2.17 that is in
gnome-experimental, I've commited every pieces this week. I'd be happy to push
any stuff that helps make this work on gentoo to the overlay and eventually
upstream.

Actually the following works out of the box:

(damn enter)

works: 
 - users-admin

half-working:
 - network
 - time

empty list:
 - services
 - shares

gnome-system-tools-2.18.0 has been released :-D

http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gnome-system-tools/2.18/

Thanks a lot

Pacho, we know about new releases, no need to remind us :)

We won't be adding g-s-t to portage any time soon, because most of the tools
don't work correctly in Gentoo and may actually do more harm (see bug 131097,
all gst bugs are like this) than good.

If you really want to see them hit portage, please test them as much as you
can, patches are of course more than welcome. If you want to help out, it's a
great opportunity.

Thanks for your time.

OK, thanks for information, but I will wait until gnome 2.18 goes to stable
(there are many users on my machines that use gnome and need a "secure"
version)

For the record, we really need someone to take ownership of the gentoo portions
of g-s-t (and s-t-b) and work with upstream to make them work well with gentoo.
 So far, no one has volunteered.

I've recently talked with one of the sabayon linux's dev and with garnacho (dev
of  g-s-t) and we're still at the same point. I'll meet garnacho at GUADEC and
hopefully we'll be able to fix this mess.

Is the real problem in gnome-system-tools or system-tools-backends? Or is it
both?

now the problem is in the backends. They either _break_ your system, or just
plain don't work at all :)

This is definitely a Gnome Love type of bug. If someone wants to contribute,
please by all means do!

Does it require experience with perl and some programming skills or is it
"just" a contact upstream and help them test and sort things out thing? 

Basically, this work will have to be done in 3 parts :
- really test things out, tool by tool, try as many features as possible
- report breakage here (upstream only really cares about the UI)
- write patches that will be sent upstream for inclusion

I honestly believe that a good chunck of the tools-backend can be fixed quite
easily (even though they're written in perl), comparing the Fedora/Ubuntu
backends with our own should be a good source of information.

Imho, one tool really worth fixing is the User Management tool, which can act
quite awkwardly. For Gentoo, this tool should never try to modify any files
other than /etc/{passwd,shadow,group}. Right now, I think it modifies a few
more files which break our PAM setup.

Well. I tried with system-tools-backends-2.3.0, gnome-system-tools-2.19.0,
liboobs-2.19.0 and Net-DBus-0.33.5. The tools I have been testing so far
(time-admin, shares-admin, users-admin, services-admin) reads my settings just
fine, but does not seems to be able to write anything (yes.i am a stb-admin)...
And I can't make it drop any errormessages as far as I can see.
The ebuilds are taken or bumps of those in gnome-experimental and Net-DBus from
portage.

remi, you are out of date :)

users-admin work well with s-t-b-2.*, my comment #6 is still valid. The thing
is that s-t-b needs to be run as root to actually do something. being in
stb-admin only gives you the right to read the config.

So how do I run the thing as root?
sudo *-admin does not make any diffrence for me....

s-t-b running as root means that you need to kill all instances started by dbus
and do :

# system-tools-backends

You need to kill other instances or you won't get the good one for
communication over dbus.

Ok, running system-tools-backends as root gave me the following experiences:
time-admin & shares-admin seems to handle ntp & SMB alright.
users-admin & network-admin still seems incapable of changeing anything (tried
to add user and bork up my eth0&wlan0-configs)
services-admin rebooted my computer when I tried to enable samba...
This is with s-t-b-2.3 & g-s-t-2.19.0 so it could be that it is dev-versions.

*** Bug 196373 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

There is some notion that gnome-system-tools 2.20.x and co might actually not
kill babies on Gentoo. system-tools-backends will need a patch though that
makes "rc-status -nc" calls be "rc-status --no-color" instead to not freeze
stuff with baselayout-2

I have a small patch for s-t-b that allows it to show current status on init
scripts.  I still can't enable/disable init stuff properly, but it's a step in
the right direction.

In my limited testing, g-s-t and s-t-b, even in gnome 2.20, does not work well
enough on Gentoo to put into portage.

little status update, even with the patch to handle baselayout-1/2 service
handling is still not right in 2.20. waiting on bheekling input (on #-desktop).

Any news?

2.21 is in the overlay, and there are encouraging signs :) I haven't tried it
myself, but I've heard of some working tools.

Once 2.22 is in portage (around March), we will probably put g-s-t with a big
fat package.mask so that you can all try it and hopefully report bugs (here or
upstream).

Thanks

ok, besides the fact that network is pretty much useless and services work be
isn't perfect yet, I've added gnome-system-tools 2.20 to the tree but pmasked
for testing. Please take time to read installation instructions and report here
success or failures.

users-admin doesn't work for me. I cannot add users with it, it seems to do it
properly but, after closing users-admin, nothing is added to /etc/passwd or
/etc/group

(In reply to comment #28)
> users-admin doesn't work for me. I cannot add users with it, it seems to do it
> properly but, after closing users-admin, nothing is added to /etc/passwd or
> /etc/group
> 

I can confirm this. An strace on users-admin revealed only a read-only access
to /etc/passwd:

open("/etc/passwd", O_RDONLY|0x80000 /* O_??? */) = 3

*** Bug 211636 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Maybe would be cleaner close this and others "version bump" related bugs and
open a new one for users-admin issue (I cannot still test with
system-tools-backends-2.6, if anybody else is able please report if it is
fixed)

I can do it myself if you prefer

Thanks

closing because it is in tree. We are going to handle broken tools on the
tracker.