Systemd-kcm 1.2.0 released

Systemd-kcm 1.2.0 was released four days ago. Systemd-kcm is a KDE control module for graphically managing systemd and related services such as logind. Systemd-kcm was previously hosted on GitHub under the name kcmsystemd, but was recently moved to KDE infrastructure and renamed to systemd-kcm. As of v1.0.0 systemd-kcm is based on Frameworks 5. Since I haven’t blogged about systemd-kcm before I will give a brief introduction here. System-kcm is divided into five tabs. The first tab displays all system units (see Screenshot 1 below). Units can be filtered either through a text search field and/or through a combobox allowing selection of specific unit types (services, targets, timers, etc). There are also two checkboxes for showing inactive and unloaded units, respectively. Hovering the mouse cursor over a unit displays a tooltip containing various useful info about the unit including the last five color-coded journald entries for the unit. Manipulation of units is possible through the context-menu, where units can be started, stopped, enabled, disabled, isolated, masked, etc. It is also possible to easily edit unit files from the context-menu using the associated text-editor.

Screenshot 1. Units tab

The second tab is a new addition in v1.2.0 and shows the units of the user systemd service manager when available. Functionality-wise it is identical to the first tab. The third tab allows graphical editing of the main systemd configurations files, namely system.conf, journald.conf, logind.conf and coredump.conf (see Screenshot 2 below). These files are usually located in /etc/systemd. Configuration parameters which are not set to their default values are shown in bold. Hovering over parameters shows a tooltip with a convenient description of the parameter.

Screenshot 2. Conf tab

The fourth tab is the Sessions tab, where logind sessions can be displayed and manipulated (see Screenshot 3 below). Various info for sessions are displayed in the columns, with additional info available in the tooltip. Basic control of sessions, such as locking, activation and temination, is available in the context-menu.

Screenshot 3. Sessions tab

The final tab is also a new addition in v1.2.0 (see Screeshot 4 below). It gives an overview of active timer units, both system and user timers, and basically provides the same information as the systemctl list-timers command. The time since last activation, the time until next activation and the unit activated by the timer are shown. System and user timers can be distinguished by the icon. As of v1.2.0, no tooltips or context-menu is available in this tab, but will be implemented in a future release.

Screenshot 4. Timers tab

Systemd-kcm releases are available for download at http://download.kde.org/stable/systemd-kcm/ The last release for KDE4 (v0.7.0) can also be downloaded at this location. Systemd-kcm might also be available through your favorite distro’s package system, e.g. it is available in the Community repository of Arch Linux. Git repository is at: http://quickgit.kde.org/?p=systemd-kcm.git Please report bugs and feature requests at the KDE bugzilla