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What is System Configurator?

System Configurator is a standalone program which is designed to be run after software installation has occurred on a Linux computer. System Configurator's job is to provide a consistant API for the configuration of Network Scripts, Hardware, and Bootstrapping, and other configuration data, accross all Linux distributions and all architectures that Linux runs on.

It is designed to integrate well into System Installer and SystemImager, but is also useful with other installation methods. SystemImager and System Configurator will form the transport layer of System Installation Suite. Please see the goals page for more info on the function expected out of System Configurator.

System Installation Suite

System Installation Suite is a System Installation and Management Application Framework. Its goal is to provide the framework for image based systems administration under Linux. With the impending integration of SystemImager and System Configurator, the transport layer will reach beta state. System Installer will be the first of the management applications that use this framework, though there will be other tools in the future. More information can be found at The System Installation Suite Website.

System Configurator v2.0.2 is out!

System Configurator 2.0.2 has been released. Changes since the 1.x branch include:

• Time Zone Configuration
  SC now takes a [TIME] stanza, which can be used to set time zone information on the client during installation. This means a single image can be used in multiple time zones and be configured correctly. (man systemconfig.conf for more info)
• User Exits
  A new [USEREXIT\d] stanza was added. This allows administrators to specify an arbitrary number of user exits to be run after SC finishes configuration. (man systemconfig.conf for syntax)
• Native Tools for Ramdisk Generation
  SC now uses native tools (mkinitrd or mk_initrd) for ramdisk configuration, instead of its own home brew solution. This means that ramdisks should look and work just as if they were created by the native distribution. Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, and Mandrake are known to work with the new method.
• iSeries support
  Support has been added for the IBM iSeries (64bit PPC) Platform. iSeries images can now be installed if using a CVS release of SystemImager and SystemInstaller. Official support from the rest of SIS will be coming shortly.
• Grub support
  I'm now convinced we have grub working correctly in nearly all cases. Bootdev other than (hd0) is now supported, as are labels on disk devices. This code has been tested with Red Hat 7.2 and 7.3.
• Better option parsing
  The configuration parsing routines are now far cleaner and order is now more deterministic. The following order of precedence exists:
  • Command line options (other than configsi and configall) override all other sources.
  • User specified config file (with --cfgfile option)
  • Standard in (with --stdin option)
  • Global config file (/etc/systemconfig/systemconfig.conf)
  • Command line options configsi and configall
  Hence --configsi on the command line will turn on --confighw, --confignet, and --runboot. Adding "confighw = no" to /etc/systemconfig/systemconfig.conf with turn of the --confighw option.
• Gatewaydev added
  The GATEWAYDEV option was added to the [NETWORK] block. This allows the user to override the default, which is the device name of the first interface. This is only supported for Red Hat style network configuration.
• Hardware table update
  The PCI ID to kernel module table has been updated to include more recent ids. Hopefully this helps everyone.
• Keyboard hack
  It was found that SuSE SLES7 defaults the keyboard configuration to german, by setting a field in rc.config. SC now blanks that value (which defaults the keyboard to en-US.) This behavior can be turned off by adding "configkeyboard = no" to the systemconfig.conf file.
• EFI enhancements
  The EFI module was made more generic, so it won't assume the EFI partition is the first partition of the first disk, and allows for boot files that are not in the toplevel directory.
• Hardware Overrides
The ability to specify a list of hardware overrides in the case that System Configurator doesn't have the right information for your hardware. Details on this feature can be found in the systemconfigurator man page.
• SuSE mk_initrd fixes
  System Configurator now properly orders modules for SuSE's mk_initrd tool so multi-module drivers are now supported in SuSE initial ramdisks.

Download the code from here.

How to contact us?

If you have questions or thoughts as to how to make this project better, the best thing to do is get on our mailing lists. We are very open to new ideas about how to make this all work well.

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Last modified: Thu Jan 9 13:45:36 EST 2003
by sld