Red Hat Administrative Tools

On Red Hat, administration is handled by a set of separate specialized administrative tools developed and supported by Red Hat, such as those for user management and display configuration. Many of these are GUI-based and will work on any X Window System environment such as GNOME or KDE.

To access the GUI-based Red Hat tools, you log in as the root user to the GNOME desktop and open the Start Here window (see Figure 4-1) or select the main menu. System administrative tools are listed in the System Settings folder in the Start Here window, and on the System Settings menu listed in the main menu. Here you will find tools to set the time and date, manage users, configure printers, and update software. Users & Groups lets you create and modify users and groups. Printing lets you install and reconfigure printers. All tools provide very intuitive GUI interfaces that are easy to use. In the System Settings folder and menu, tools are identified by simple descriptive terms, whereas their actual names normally begin with the term redhat-config. For example, the printer configuration tool is listed as Printing, but its actual name is redhat-config-printer. You can separately invoke any tool by entering its name in a terminal window.