KFM Configuration

KDE Ressource File

The KFM ressource file is named .fmrc and can be found in ~/.kde/config/.kfmrc. It should contain some lines you really need to run KFM. The following entries are a must

[Templates]
Path=$HOME/Desktop/Templates
[Trash]
Path=$HOME/Desktop/Trash
[Terminal]
Terminal=$KDEDIR/bin/kvt
[Icons]
Batch=terminal.xpm
Default=unknown.xpm
Folder=folder.xpm
Executable=exec.xpm
[KFM HTML Defaults]
TextColor=#000000
LinkColor=#FF0000
BgColor=#FFFFFF
BgImage=WATER04.JPG

The first entry tells KFM where to find you templates. Those directories are created by the installation of KFM. The same could be said about the Trash entry. If KFM is forced to use a terminal to run a program, it must know which one. This entry suggests the fine KDE terminal. The Icons section tells KFM about some default icons. The icons are installed by the installation of KFM. Please dont change these lines yet, since KFM 0.6.6 has them hardcoded in some places. All icons must be in the directory $KDEDIR/lib/pics and all wallpapers are in $KDEDIR/lib/wallpapers

The HTML entries configure the way KFM displays the directories. You can choose a text color ( not used yet ), the color of the links ( in this case red ) and the color of the background. The values you may pass are the same like the ones in the <body> HTML tag. The BgImage overrides the background color. In this case a image is displayed as background in every window. Please notice how KConfig uses environment variables like $KDEDIR in the ressource file. You can of course configure each directory different. This is described in one of the next chapters.

Configuring the devices

All mountable devices are supported by KFM. Lets learn by example and have a look at my configuration. I places a file named cdrom.kdelnk in my Desktop directory

[KDE Desktop Entry]
Type=FSDevice
Dev=/dev/scd0
MountPoint=/cd
ReadOnly=1
FSType=iso9660,Default
Icon=cd_mount.xpm
UnmountIcon=cd_unmount.xpm

The first line in the file identifies the kind of file. The [KDE Desktop Entry] files are very common to KDE. For example KPanel uses them, too.

The next line identifies this to be a device configuration file. A device may be a cdrom, a floppy disk drive, a hard disk or a NFS disk. You must be root to allow mounting of devices. But luckily the admin can allow users to mount file systems, too.

The third line tells KDE what device we are talking about. See your linux distribution manuals for details. Sometimes you use for example /dev/cdrom which is a link to a real device. In version 0.5 of KFM you must not mention such a link here.

The fourth line tells KFM where this device should be mounted to. This means that in our example the file system of the CDROM will appear in the directory /cd.

The line number five tells KFM wether the device is read only ( a CDROM for example ). If it is read-write able, you must set this value to 0.

The next line tells which filesystem this device needs. The common file system for CDROMs is ISO9660 as mentioned in the example. You may name several file system types separated by colons. Default is something special. More about this later on.

The last two lines tell KFM which icon to use. The first icon is used if the device is mounted and the second one if the device is not mounted.

Since you may be a non root user, you wont be allowed to mount the CDROM the way mentioned above. But perhaps your admin put a line for you in the /etc/fstab. My one looks like that

As you can see, the user is allowed to mount the floppy and the CDROM. KFM has all information in this case. You must just specify the first three lines and the line

FSType=Default

followed by the two lines for the icons. All other information is extracted from /etc/fstab.

Since I am root, I allowed myself to use default and explicit mounting. To give another example: Here is my file for mounting the floppy

[KDE Desktop Entry]
Type=FSDevice
Dev=/dev/fd0
MountPoint=/floppy
ReadOnly=0
FSType=msdos,minix,default
Icon=floppy_mount.xpm
UnmountIcon=floppy_unmout.xpm

The .directory files

In each directory ( on which you have write access ) you may write a .directory file. Please mention that some directories could be a bad place for such a file. I can not mention one yet, but be warned. KPanel uses this files to give its trees in the start menu an icon. KFM notices that and uses the same icon. Of course you can use these files outside of KPanels directory strcuture, too.

KFM lets you configure the look of your directory in many ways. As mentioned above you can make a default setting. The same entries you may write in the [KFM HTML Defaults] group in .kderc may be written in the group [KDE Desktop Entry]. A sample .directory file may look like this

[KDE Desktop Entry]
Icon=garfield-red.xpm
TextColor=#00FF00
BgColor=#000000
LinkColor=#00FF00
BgImage=file:/tmp/icons/WATER05.JPG

Mention that the background color has no effect since an image is specified.

The .kde.html file

This is a sample file. Have a close look at it

<html><head><title>TMP</title></head><body background="/home/src/kfm-0.5/back.jpg" link=#FF0000 text=#FFFFFF>
<h1>Hallo in Temp</h1>
Klappts?<br>
Ein <a href="http://localhost/html/install.html">Link</a><br>
<files name=*.jpeg><br>
<h1>Tar Archives</h1>
<files name=*.tgz><br>
<files name=*.tar><br>
<files name=*.tar.gz><br>
<h1>Hidden files</h1>
<files filter=Hidden><br>
<h1>Dires</h1>
<files filter=Dirs><br>
<h1>Executables</h1>
<files filter=Executable><br>
<h1>Rest of the Best</h1>
<files filter=Rest><br>
</body>
</html>

It looks like a normal HTML file, but includes some goodies. Look at the <files> tag. With <files name=pattern> you can display all files matching this wildcard pattern. Using <files filter=Hidden> you can display all hidden files ( those starting with a point). Of interest is <files filter=Rest>. This tag displays all files in the current directory, which dont match one of the above criterias. As you may have seen already you can embed links to HTTP and FTP URLs in such a document. This way you can write a better README files. When the user looks at your sources, he will see a HTML file with some explanations for every source file and some URLs of interest. Try it out!


Torben Weis, weis@kde.org