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 services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

setup and configuration 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, as well as in SUSE'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, no ...

that SUSE has made available under the

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

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, inst ...

(GUI) and

Text-based user interface In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI) (alternately terminal user interfaces, to reflect a dependence upon the properties of computer terminals and not just text), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an ear ...

(TUI) (with

ncurses ncurses (new curses) is a programming library providing an application programming interface (API) that allows the programmer to write text-based user interfaces (TUI) in a terminal-independent manner. It is a toolkit for developing "GUI-like" ...

) 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 ...

package to fix a graphical installation). YaST offers package management functionality through the

ZYpp ZYpp (or libzypp; ''"Zen / YaST Packages Patches Patterns Products"'') is a package manager engine that powers Linux applications like YaST, Zypper and the implementation of PackageKit for openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise. Unlike some more bas ...

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 GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and propriet ...

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 Ruby is an interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language which supports multiple programming paradigms. It was designed with an emphasis on programming productivity and simplicity. In Ruby, everything is an object, including p ...

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 Package may refer to: Containers or Enclosures * Packaging and labeling, enclosing or protecting products * Mail, items larger than a letter * Chip package or chip carrier * Electronic packaging, in electrical engineering * Automotive package, ...

, shutdown or

reboot In computing, rebooting is the process by which a running computer system is restarted, either intentionally or unintentionally. Reboots can be either a cold reboot (alternatively known as a hard reboot) in which the power to the system is physi ...

the system, change some system settings (such as the time), and change the status of system

services Service may refer to: Activities * Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty * Civil service, the body of employees of a government * Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a p ...

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. 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