The vp front-end
The vp program comprises two parts: a configuration program-finder, and an
SMF GUI.
Configuration program finder
The first can be seen by launching vp without arguments. It gathers
pointers to configuration programs and presents icons for each, categorized
into tabs.
References to configuration programs are collected from three sources:
- The SMF repository. Each service is queried for an ExternalManager
attribute. If present, it indicates the path to a configuration program,
a description, and an icon. The JMX Agent is currently hard-coded to
return dhcpmgr for the DHCP service and printmgr for the print
services, so you don't actually have to alter your repository to see this
in action. - The GNOME configuration applets. These are found by attempting to
parse Gnome's configuration files instead of using any supported
interfaces. Because of this, the contents of these panels may be
incomplete, incorrect, or use icons from a different theme. - A hard-coded "Service Manager" program.
An additional tab, "Anomalies", will appear if any SMF services are in
the maintenance state, and will contain a list of these services. If
a member of this list is double-clicked, gnome-open will be used to
display the knowledge document describing the failure.
Service Manager
The "Service Manager" is the SMF GUI.
In addition to being included as a configuration program under the
"System" tab, it can be invoked directly with vp -s.
It presents a listing of all the SMF services on the system, and allows
you to examine or control them. Highlights:
- Displays description, state, number of processes, dependencies,
dependents, SMF log file, manpages - Provides buttons for the main svcadm actions (enable, restart, etc.)
- Provides a small diagram of the dependencies and dependents (click on the
"Graph" button at the bottom of the "Dependencies" tab (labels will be shown
in the nodes if your screen is large enough)) - If the service has property groups of type application, an "Application
Properties" tab will allow you to modify the properties they contain (see
console-login & rpc/bind for examples). - Services which have an ExternalManager attribute (see above) will
have buttons which will directly invoke the application. - Details of multiple services can be displayed by clicking on the thumbtack in the upper-right corner.
The source for both parts is in usr/src/cmd/vp/vp in the vp source
archive.
Both of these parts are crude. System configuration should be more
integrated than a handful of configuration programs, and finding the
configuration you want to change should be easier. The SMF GUI is
functional, but neither has it been tuned to the most common tasks, nor
does it allow raw property editing or snapshot management. This
incarnation of vp represents a first stab which helps us better
understand what needs to be done, and gives us a place to experiment
with new ideas.