GNOME help PLEASE

[Heliocentric]

On 3/12/06, Wojciech Puchar <wojtek at tensor.3miasto.net> wrote:
> > As far as I know, this only works with a "normal" adduser.conf and
> > using the adduser command or pw.
> >
> > Also, (with X11 programs especially) you'll have to edit all absolute
> > paths in the config files to point to either relative, of if the app
> > supports it, $HOME or ~/, so the programs won't attempt to write or
> > read from the user you copied the configs from.
> >
> > Example:
> >
> > IconPath /root/icons
> >
> > would become:
> >
> > IconPath $HOME/icons
> >
> > hope this helps :)
>
> thank you very much but it would not. i know this and use this.
>
> the problem is where to find documentation about what gnome file does
> what, and how to make these skeleton files.
>
> any attempt to create clean user, configure gnome in it, move files to
> skel etc. failed. gnome gets lots of bugs, panel crashes etc. this way.

I just did a clean gnome2 install, in a new user, changed the
configuration, copied the entirety to skel, and then adduser'd it.
gnome seems to start fine using gnome-session, and the user accounts
are independent, so it is indeed kept entirely under the user's home
directory.

The clean install created these directories:

.gconf
.gconfd
.gnome
.gnome2
.gnome2_private
.gstreamer-0.8
.icons
.metacity
.nautilus
.themes
Desktop

Most of the important elements are under .gnome2 and .gconf, but the
others are gnome components, metacity is the windowmanager, nautilus
is the file manager/desktop, etc.

>
> any attempt to create clean user, configure gnome in it, move files to
> skel etc. failed. gnome gets lots of bugs, panel crashes etc. this way.
>
> now i know how to move desktop icons themselves, but not configuration.
> no idea what files defines what. gnome is even worse than windows in it.

>From the looks of it, the only things you'd really need to worry about
with a default config are in .gnome2/ and .gconf/

Most of the meat in .gconf/ is in the %gconf.xml files.

Skeleton files are nothing special, just have to change the name a bit
and some of the paths like I said.

>
> if you have some description about it - will be very helpful
>

That's all I can think of, it seems pretty straightforward. I'd be
careful to check all %gconf.xml files in gnome2 to make sure they are
'safe' to use in skel (ie, user is changed, paths to private areas in
another's home, etc)

This is gnome 2.10 under freebsd 6.0-rc1, but the version shouldn't
matter that much unless it's 2.6 or less.

If not any info on things that you have done with your install up till
this point might help me to reproduce the problem, or at least
understand it a bit better.