I replaced rear pads and discs on my zj, which actually turned out much
easier than I had thought.
In the process, I got to see that on one side there was no braking shoe
lining left at all (e-brake shoes inside the disc), on the other side
the lining separated from the shoe assembly when I took the rotor off.
Searching here / on google, that seems to be a common problem, and I
remembered that a couple of months ago I had some bad grinding noise
from the rear wheels for a couple of seconds twice, it may be that was
the time when the lining separated and got chewed up inside the
rotors...

When trying the e-brake, it hardly worked at all, as expected. -- I
must admit I hadn't noticed earlier, since I'm not usually using the
parking brake.

So I got parking brake shoes and put them in -- quite a pain without
proper tools (springs), but I managed. However, I went very loose on
the adjustment as I didn't want to screw it up and get the brakes to
permanently drag. Now the parking brake is still working only
marginally when the lever is pulled all the way and I suppose I have to
adjust it for real. I understand the basic procedure, jack up the car,
adjust through the backing plate until drag and then ease off a little.
But I still have some questions:

Is adjusting the actual brakes all I need, or do I need to adjust the
cable length, too?

Since the star wheels are most of the way in, they aren't really very
well accessible through the slot in the backing plate, if at all. I
suppose that's just normal?

Is an adjusting tools necessary, or will a screwdriver do the job?

I forgot to take note which way the adjusting bolt/star wheel assembly
goes, so at reassembly time I just picked a direction. Does it matter
whether the wheel / bolt part is on the front vs the rear? The
inaccessibility problem through the slot mentioned above exists both
ways.