YaST (

Yet another Among programmers, yet another (often abbreviated ya, Ya, or YA in the initial part of an acronym) is an idiomatic qualifier in the name of a computer program, organisation, or event that is confessedly unoriginal. Stephen C. Johnson is credited ...

Setup Tool) is a Linux

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

setup and

configuration Configuration or configurations may refer to: Computing * Computer configuration or system configuration * Configuration file, a software file used to configure the initial settings for a computer program * Configurator, also known as choice bo ...

tool. YaST is featured in the

openSUSE openSUSE () is a free and open source RPM-based Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. The initial release of the community project was a beta version of SUSE Linux 10.0. Additionally the project creates a variety of tools, s ...

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

, as well as in

SUSE SUSE ( , ) is a German-based multinational open-source software company that develops and sells Linux products to business customers. Founded in 1992, it was the first company to market Linux for enterprise. It is the developer of SUSE Linux Ent ...

's derived commercial distributions. It is also part of the defunct

United Linux United Linux was an attempt by a consortium of Linux distributors to create a common base distribution for enterprise use, so as to minimize duplication of engineering effort and form an effective competitor to Red Hat. The founding members of Unit ...

. YaST features tools that can configure many aspects of the system. YaST was released first in April 1995. The first SuSE distribution that included YaST was released in May 1996. YaST was re-written in 1999 and included first in SuSE Linux 6.3 as only an installer. YaST2 was added to the desktop in SuSE Linux 6.4 and co-existed with YaST1 until YaST1's removal in SuSE Linux 8.0.

Details

YaST is

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, n ...

that

has made available under the GPL in 2004.heise.de:
YaST wird freie Software (in German) It is a tool for administering and maintaining a SUSE Linux installation. It allows administrators to install software, configure hardware, set up networks and servers, and more. A feature of YaST is that it contains both

Graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, ins ...

(GUI) and Text-based user interface (TUI) (with ncurses) front ends. This is especially useful for non-GUI installations such as servers, for system administration over slow Internet connections, and for when one is unable to boot into a graphical X server but still requires an advanced user interface to the package manager (for example, a novice user trying to downgrade an

Xorg X.Org Server is the free and open-source implementation of the X Window System display server stewarded by the X.Org Foundation. Implementations of the client-side X Window System protocol exist in the form of ''X11 libraries'', which serve a ...

package to fix a graphical installation). YaST offers package management functionality through the ZYpp project. The first ZYpp enabled package management YaST applications had performance problems and long start up times, but was improved in the 10.2 and 10.3 releases. Starting with openSUSE 11.0 alpha 3, ZYpp was integrated with the SAT solver project, making YaST and Zypper faster than other rpm based package managers. YaST used to include SaX and SaX2, the Suse Advanced X configuration. SaX was re-written as SaX2 in SuSE Linux 6.4. SaX1 was removed in SuSE Linux 8.1 and SaX2 was removed from the YaST Control Center in openSUSE 11.2. SaX2 was removed completely in openSUSE 11.3. The GTK interface was removed in openSUSE Leap 42.1. YaST often receives updates and improvements in Tumbleweed and between versions of Leap. openSUSE Leap 15.1, for example, saw improvements to the YaST interface for managing firewalls including the addition of an interface in the command line version of YaST. In this same release of openSUSE Leap, YaST now has an updated logo and improved partition management module. YaST is implemented in the Ruby programming language.

AutoYaST

AutoYaST is a system for installing one or more openSUSE systems automatically without user intervention. AutoYaST installations are performed using a control file with installation and configuration data. The profile of each current system is stored in /root/autoyast.xml.

WebYaST

WebYaST is a web interface for YaST that can be used to check the status of the current machine. It can check on the installation of packages,

shutdown Shutdown or shut down may refer to: * Government shutdowns in the United States * Shutdown (computing) * Shutdown (economics) * Shutdown (nuclear reactor) Arts and entertainment Music * "Shut Down" (The Beach Boys song), 1963 * ''Shut Down Volu ...

or reboot the system, change some system settings (such as the time), and change the status of system services or daemons.

YaST4Debian

The change of license of YaST from a previous rather restrictive license to the GPL in 2004 made it possible to port YaST to other Linux distributions. As a consequence of this, the project ''YaST4Debian'' was launched, which worked on a port of YaST to

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

. The project, which was in contact with the YaST team of Novell/SuSE, reached some important milestones, such as the port of the modules ''yast2-ncurses'' and ''yast2-qt''. Currently, the project is dormant, searching for a new voluntary project maintainer.yast4debian.alioth.debian.org
YaST4Debian project website

References

External links