[PC-BSD Dev] Questions

[Fabrizio Parrella]

On Mon, September 15, 2008 1:56 pm, Kris Moore wrote:
[...]
>
>   2. Services.
>> PC-BSD 7 introduce very good feature - concept "Service". it have
>> controls
>> "Start, Stop, Restart, Enable, Disable"
>> But his have no "settings". I think this should be discussed. I wrote
>> ACPI-support for notebooks as Service, but had a problem: I have no ways
>> to user
>> specify their vendor; The workaround was made, but I thinks Services
>> should
>> anyway have "Settings", and scripts which callbacked after settings are
>> set
>> (I'll explain why restart isn't sufficient).
>> for example, they could have optional file "preferences.cfg" and some UI
>> to
>> configure it, via simple conventions in structure file:
>> Each parameter in UI have "select" for controlling, and have three vars
>> in
>> config, for example:
>>
>> vendor_label="Specify your notebook vendor"
>> vendor_selected="asus"
>> vendor_values="None:
>> Asus:asus
>> Toshiba:toshiba
>> Sony:sony"
>>
>> I think that could be useful for future, services not always generics,
>> and may
>> have some configurable options too;
>> Another use: we could add option "Root allowed"  in SSH service. here we
>> need
>> callback - script, which is started when we change settings (it simple
>> repopulate settings to /etc/ssh/sshd.conf if I'm not mistaken)
>
>
> I think this is an excellent idea as well. We should discuss the
> preferences.cfg UI specification, and then figure out how to create the
> UI on the fly. Maybe like this?
>
> preferences.cfg:
>
> [settings]
> title: SSHD Settings
> element1: radio
> element1.text: Enable root login via SSH
> element1.options: enabled, disabled
>
> element2: combobox
> element2.text: Enable root login via SSHD?
> element2.options: combo1, combo2, combo3
>
> element3: checkbox
> element3.text: Allow root login?
> element3.options: checked
>
> We'll have to put some thought into it, but I think something along
> those lines may work and allow us to create nice settings dialogs.
>
>
>

I have been facing this problem other time, and this is how I did when I
was building a website where the user was able to add custom fields to
show on the website to the customers:

each line can start with "element", I did it with a table, and each row
was an entry:
 - text: whatever description for the field
 - type: select/radio/checkbox/input/text
 - default: default value
 - help: text to show in a different place as HELP when that element is
selected
 - values: number of values that will be showed in case of select, radio,
or checkbox (this can be skipped if you can traverse the following)
 - value#: value for the select, radio, and checkbox
 - show#: text to show referred to value1

merging with Kris file, will be something like:

[state]
text = please select a state
type = select
default =
help = "This is the state that we will use to ship your package"
values = 51
value0 =
show0 = Please Select...
value1 = ca
show1 = California
value2 = nc
show2 = North Carolina
value3 = va
show3 = Virginia

[zip]
text = enter the zip code
type = text
default =
help = "This is the zip code that we will use to ship your package"
values = 0

etc .....

another way, I did it with a text file and using a PHP array (you can
easily translate)

name=name of the field
text=text to display
type=select/radio/check/int/boolean/text/char/email/url/...
values=templates
default=
help=this is to help you

and values was build in this way:
 - selects/radio/check
  - values:value|show,value2|show2,value3|show3
  - other keyword that will show, for example, all the ports installed,
files in a specific folder with a specific extension (I.E.:
files:folder1|*.jpg,folder2|*.gif)
 - boolean (display as single checkbox, or dropdown with YES/NO)
  - values is listed as "TRUE,FALSE", so, if you want TRUE to have value
1, and false to have value 0, you can set "1,0".
 - text (display as textarea)
  - value is not used
 - other (apply different error checking depending on the type, display as
inputbox)
  - value is not used


hope that this help.

lately, for pbidir.com, I have created a more complex way to do this as I
needed more in depth references between the modules, so if necessary I can
give you more info about that as well.

Fabry
> [...]