GPM-ROOT(1)
NAME
gpm-root - a default handler for gpm, used to draw menus
on the root window
SYNOPSIS
gpm-root [ options ]
DESCRIPTION
The program gpm-root is designed to handle Control-Mouse
events to draw menus on the background of the current tty.
The actual menus are described by a configuration file in
the user's home directory.
Please note that gpm-root needs to run with Linux 1.1.73
or newwer, because previous kernels lack some screen han-
dling capabilities required by the program.
The program uses the files /dev/vcs* to draw to the con-
sole screen. These are available only from kernel 1.1.81
onward. If you miss those device nodes, you should create
them using create_vcs in the distribution directory. The
tool won't run with kernels older than 1.1.81, because
they lacked a full screen dump/restore capability.
Available command line options are the following:
-m number
Choose the modifier to use (by default: control).
The modifier can be provided either as a number or
as a symbolic string. Allowed strings are
``shift'', ``anyAlt'', ``leftAlt'', ``rightAlt'',
``control''.
-u Deny using user-specific configuration files. With
this option on, only /etc/gpm-root.conf will be
used as a source of configuration information. This
option is intended for those system administrators
who fear security could be broken by this daemon.
Thigs should be sufficiently secure, but if you
find a hole please tell me about it.
Each time a menu is drawn, the configuration file is
reparsed if it has changed. This allows modification of
personal setup without reinvoking the daemon.
The actual configuration file is better introduced by
looking at your `/etc/gpm-root.conf.
The syntax for the file won't be described here, being it
quite apparent from the example above. Blanks and newlines
are unused in parsing the file, and the layout of the file
is free. Comments are allowed in the file: any hash mark
(`#') found at the beginning of the line or after white
space makes the parser discard anything up to the next
line. To insert quotes (") in strings precede them with a
backslash.
Note that recursive menus are allowed, to any level of
recursion.
Keywords belong to three groups: the ``button'' keyword,
the cfg keywords and the action keywords. They are all
described in the table below:
button number menu
The ``button'' keyword is used to introduce a menu.
It is followed by the number of the relevant button
(1=left, 2=middle, 3=right), an open brace, a menu
and a closed brace. A menu is made up of cfg
statements, followed by action statements. Cfg
statements can come in any order, while the order
of action statements tells the actual order in
which actions will appear on the screen, top to
bottom.
The following statements belong to the cfg set.
name string
If the ``name'' keyword is present, the specified
string will be used as the name for the current
menu.
background color
This statements is used to specify the background
color to be used in the current menu. The color can
be specified with one of the eight canonical
strings ``black'', ``red'', ``cyan'' etc. The back-
ground defaults to black.
foreground color
This statements is used to specify the foreground
color for menu items. Its value defaults to
``white''. An optional ``bright'' keyword can
appear before the actual color.
border color
``border'' is used to specify the border color for
the menu. Its value defaults to ``white''. An
optional ``bright'' keyword can appear before the
actual color.
head color
``head'' is used to specify the foreground color
for the title of the menu. Its value defaults to
``white''. An optional ``bright'' keyword can
appear before the actual color.
The following statements belong to the `action' set.
string f.fgcmd cmdstring
When the mouse button is released above the corre-
sponding menu item, the `cmdstring' is pasted in
the keyboard queue of the current console. This is
not yet implemented.
string f.bgcmd cmdstring
When the mouse button is released above the corre-
sponding menu item, a shell (/bin/sh) is forked to
execute the specified command, with stdin connected
to /dev/null, and stdout, stderr connected to the
active console.
string f.jptty ttynumber
When the mouse button is released above the corre-
sponding menu item, the console is switched to the
one specified. The `ttynumber' must be specified as
a string. Any tty can be reached this way, even
those which are not accessible via the keyboard.
string f.mktty ttynumber
When the mouse button is released above the corre-
sponding menu item, an unused console is selected,
and /sbin/agetty is executed in it. The current
console is switched to the newly opened console. I
use this command to save kernel memory by opening a
single console through /etc/inittab and requesting
the others only when i need to login.
string @{ Whole-menu
A menu can directly follow the lable string. When
the mouse pointer leaves the menu frame at the
level of `string', a second menu is posted on
screen.
string f.lock
When the mouse button is released above the corre-
sponding menu item, the keyboard and the screen are
locked, and only the locking user or the superuser
can unlock them. This is not yet implemented.
string f.load
The current loadavg when the menu is posted is
concatenated to `string' to build the actual mes-
sage displayed on screen. Nothing happens at button
release.
string f.free
The free memory and swap when the menu is posted is
concatenated to `string' to build the actual mes-
sage displayed on screen. Nothing happens at button
release.
string f.time
The current time is formatted with strftime(3),
according to `string'. The resulting string is the
actual message displayed on screen. Nothing happens
at button release.
string f.pipe cmdline
When the mouse pointer leaves the menu frame at the
level of `string', a message box is posted on
screen showing the last ten lines of the output of
`cmdline'. The `cmdline' is executed by /bin/sh.
This is not yet implemented.
string f.nop
This does nothing, it only displays `string' on the
menu.
The HOME, LOGNAME and USER environment variables are setup
to the values for the invoking user before spawning an
external process (`f.bgcmd', `f.pipe'). The current direc-
tory is always /.
BUGS
Known bugs have been fixed. In particular, if you invoke
gpm-root right after gpm, it will delasy a few seconds
before trying to connect to the daemon.
AUTHOR
Alessandro Rubini lt;rubini@ipvvis.unipv.it
FILES
/var/run/gpmctl The socket used to connect to gpm.
/etc/gpm-root.conf The default configuration file.
$(HOME)/.gpm-root The user configuration file.
/dev/vcs* Virtual Console Screens
SEE ALSO
gpm(1)
The info file about `gpm', which gives more complete
information and explains how to write a gpm client.