Version 0.1, Copyright (c) Tuomo Valkonen 1997.

Legal stuff

Rebooter is free software distributed on as-is basis and comes absolutely with no warranty. Therefore shall the author in no way be responsible for any kind of damage possibly caused by the use or abuse of the program or mistakes in the documentation. The author shall in no way be liable for possible infringements on copyrights, trade secrets or any patents by any part of the program. As the program is free software, you are allowed and even encouraged to copy and distribute it to your friends and everyone else as long as they're not paying for the software itself. You are allowed to use the sources but if you do so, the resulting software and sources must be available for free and the original author must be given the appropriate credits.

Introduction

Rebooter is an add-on to Choose-OS (briefly chos) that displays a dialog similar to Windog'95 / NT4.x / '98 shutdown menu:


From the dialog you can:

• Shutdown (halt) the system
• Reboot the system
• Start any of the images/operating systems found in chos mapfile


You need Choose-OS version 0.81 or newer because rebooter makes use of the new 'single-shot autoboot' feature.

How to use

Having installed the program with ./Install just run rebooter to run the program. (If you installed the KDE version, rebooter should have been added in your system menu and you might prefer running krebooter). Select what you wish to do/what OS you wish to boot by clicking on its checkbox. Proceed by clicking ok. You can also use the keys up,down,enter and esc.

WARNING: When your computer reboots, Choose-OS will rewrite first mapfile sector to disk! The write should be safe (or else it couldn't even have loaded it!) but if you feel unsafe about it, please backup all important data on your harddisks.

Configuration

Command line

-c config_file

Used to specify chos configuration file. Can also be set with environment variable REBOOTER_CONFIG. (default: /etc/chos.conf)

-m mapfile

Used to specify chos mapfile (default: /boot/chos.map)

-verify and -noverify

Verify/don't verify action before proceeding. Can also be set with environment variable REBOOTER_VERIFY. (values 1 and TRUE turn verification on).

The KDE version uses KDE's default colors, font, et cetera but with the standard version all standard Qt command line options can be used as well:

-fn font_name

Use font <font_name>
"-sharefont-comicscartoon-*-*-*-*-19-*-*-*-*-*-*-*" is a nice funky font ;)

-style motif | windows

Set widget style to either motif or windog95 style. You don't need this - motif is default and better-looking =-)

-background color

Set background color.

-foreground color

Set foreground color.

Choose-OS config file

Inside image definition:

rebooter.icon=icon_name

Set icon displayed. Size of the icon should be 48x48. (Builting icon names: builtin_shutdown, builtin_reboot, builtin_linux, builtin_dos, builtin_windoze).

rebooter.disable

Don't show this image in the menu.

You can use almost any chos configuration file because the file is not checked to match the mapfile. Only rebooter options are parsed for and no errors are expected to be found.

Permissions

/etc/rebooter.allow and /etc/rebooter.deny list the users permitted to use rebooter.
If the files don't exist, everyone is allowed to use rebooter. If a user's name is found in /etc/rebooter.deny, she's not allowed to use rebooter. If /etc/rebooter.allow exists and the user's name is not found there, she's not allowed to use rebooter. Root is always allowed to use rebooter.

Languages

Rebooter supports multiple languages. If you want to compile it for another language, edit the Makefile in the sources/ directory (set LANGUAGE=<language_name>) and recompile (make clean; make depend; make).

Languages currently supported are:

Finnish

English

If you want to add support for a new language, you can find strings-English.C in the sources/ directory. Copy that file as strings-<language_name>.C and fill in the appropriate strings. Then just edit Makefile and recompile. You may also want to send me the language file.

Other

When you install the KDE version of rebooter, it is automagically added to your system menu in panel. If you don't use KDE you might want to add rebooter to Enlightenment's buttons, AfterStep's wharf or any window manager's root menu, for example.

Requirements

In order to use rebooter...

... you need Qt from TrollTech.

... you need to be using Choose-OS (ftp.funet.fi) instead of LILO.

(If you don't have chos, you can still reboot and shutdown the system but can't directly boot an OS)

... and of course you have to be running X.

Bugs and Restrictions

If installed on a server, rebooter is a massive security hole. This is because it has to be SETUID root to be able to run /sbin/halt and /sbin/reboot and modify chos mapfile. On a server it is therefore recommended that you create /etc/rebooter.allow file listing all the users (if any) allowed to use rebooter. If you're really paranoid, don't install rebooter!

Credits

Rebooter was written by Tuomo Valkonen <tuv1@freenet.hut.fi>

Please send me all bug reports, comments, suggestions, improvements, etc. (flames > /dev/null).