Desktop Factory Advice Service

In addition to the menuconfig interface provided with Desktop Factory that allows you to select from many configuration options that have complex interdependencies in a straightforward and consistent way, Timesys also provides an "advice" interface which will analyze a Factory configuration, identify possible problems, and often suggest a corrective action. This interface provides a place for suggestions or advice when users choose options that are not incorrect, but appear logically inconsistent — like, for example, installing two webservers (redundant) or installing X without required resources like fonts or pixmaps (user can choose between one of many options, or provide their own).

Using the advice service

To invoke the advice service simply type "make advice". However, because this is provided as a web service, login information is required for LinuxLink. Here is the result of running "make advice" without setting it up to login:

$ make advice
Connecting to advice server...

Service for advice requires authentication with linuxlink.timesys.com.
Please add an entry with your username and password to your ~/.netrc file.

When you create a .netrc file, you should set the permission to be readable only the by the current user. This will keep others from reading your passwords out of it.

touch ~/.netrc
chmod 600 ~/.netrc

Now add a line to ~/.netrc for linuxlink, as follows. Replace my_username and my_password with your username and password:

machine linuxlink.timesys.com login my_username password my_password

Once .netrc is setup, you can run make advice successfully, as shown:

$ make advice
Connecting to advice server...

3 Conflicts:
        network configuration is provided by busybox and ifupdown.  Timesys recommends busybox.  
        web server is provided by apache-httpd and boa.
        ssh server is provided by openssh and dropbear.  Timesys recommends dropbear.  

1 Suggestion:
        MPlayer selected.  Timesys suggests a package that provides MPlayer skin such as mplayer-skin-abyss, mplayer-skin-icy, or mplayer-skin-mini.

Suggestions for More/Actual Advice

• Avahi recommends nss-mdns (on desktop systems, too).