gmodconfig 0.6 review

gmodconfig aims to provide a simple way for end-users to download, install, configure and update Linux kernel modules, in the languag

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Cyril Bortolato

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gmodconfig aims to provide a simple way for end-users to download, install, configure and update Linux kernel modules, in the language of their choosing, through an easy-to-use graphic interface.

gmodconfig is a Gnome application which allows Linux users to:

Here are some key features of "gmodconfig":
configure kernel modules' parameters, in their native language (if such translations exist),
check for new versions of kernel modules, as well as download, build and install those
access kernel modules informations (license, authors, link to website)

It's mainly aimed at inexperienced Linux users, however even long time Linux users might find it useful!

A user might have to set or modify kernel modules parameters in order to get a device driver to work properly on his/her system. One way to assign values to kernel modules parameters is to edit the /etc/modules.conf file. Another way is to load the kernel modules manually on the command line and pass them parameter values at that time. Neither of which is convenient or doable by non-experienced users.

Non-English speakers might find configuring kernel modules parameters even more difficult since informations on parameters returned by modinfo are only available in English.

Another obstacle is that the set of valid parameters values is not always apparent in modinfo's output. For example an "on/off" type of parameter will be documented as being an integer, since boolean is not a supported type. Or an integer parameter whose valid values are 0, 1 and 2 might be documented as integer instead of a [0,2] array. This might make it difficult to users to figure out which values can be assigned to a parameter.

Checking for updates, download, build and install a new version of a Linux kernel module is not an easy task for newbie Linux users. There ought to be an easy and automated way to do all this.

gmodconfig solves these problems by reading accurate parameter types, parameter descriptions' translations, and extra informations such as a link to the module author's website from XML files, that are released along with gmodconfig. Using this data as well as modinfo's output, gmodconfig is able to dynamically build a user-friendly graphic interface which presents the list of parameters that each kernel modules supports.

Boolean parameters can be toggled on and off with a check box. Array parameters, that is, parameters whose valid values fall between a "min" and a "max" values are represented by a pulldown list. Other types of parameters are simple text entry fields.

Users can navigate through the available modules or search a module by name, change parameters settings at will, and will be able (in a future release) to "give it a try" by (re)loading modules, all from the graphic interface. Unsaved modifications can be cancelled at any time, and can also be written out to the /etc/modules.conf configuration file.

Users have the ability to check for new releases of a module if the module author is keeping an XSA file up-to-date on the Net. The gmodconfigedit tool helps module authors create and update those XSA files.

Finally, gmodconfig supports downloading and installing DKMS packages (work in progress).

Requirements:
The GNOME2 libraries, which are shipped in recent GNU/Linux distributions.
libxml2 (as of version 0.4, gmodconfig does not depend on libxml++ anymore)