26.1 Terminology

The following are some terms used in SCPM documentation and in the YaST module.

system configuration

The complete configuration of the computer. It covers all fundamental settings, such as the use of hard disk partitions, network settings, time zone selection, and keyboard mappings.

profile or system profile

A state that has been preserved and can be restored at any time.

active profile

The profile last selected. This does not mean that the current system configuration corresponds exactly to this profile, because the configuration can be modified at any time.

resource

An element that contributes to the system configuration. This can be a file or a softlink including metadata (like the user), permissions, or access time. This can also be a system service that runs in this profile, but is deactivated in another one.

resource group

Every resource belongs to a certain resource group. These groups contain all resources that logically belong together—most groups would contain both a service and its configuration files. It is very easy to assemble resources managed by SCPM because this does not require any knowledge of the configuration files of the desired service. SCPM ships with a selection of preconfigured resource groups that should be sufficient for most scenarios.