More GNOME config issues...

[John Collier]

As some of you may remember, I recently got GNOME installed on a little C class box. Thanks to help from this group, I have been able to get most of the bugs worked out of it and have even gotten a flash player installed to work with Mozilla which puts me just this much closer to being able to use this box as a daily use box and maybe get away from the M$ beast at work (even if I have to use ReflectionsX to do it). YAHOO!!!

The last problem I have come up against is being able to set some basic things in the GNOME environment. When I use CDE, i can modify the .profile settings and get simple things like alias information and custom paths set up for my needs. Although I have found some basic info along this line in the /etc/opt/gnome/gdm/gdm.conf file, this doesn't seem to be the correct place to change this info since it would appear to be for every user, not just me.

Searching the web, I have found references to user preferences being stored in XML files and found references to a tool called gconftool-2 which should be installed with GNOME to make editing of these files much smoother, but a search of my box reveals no such program.

Would someone be willing to share the secret of setting simple user preferences for use with GNOME? I don't need anything really special, just some basic alias' and special $PATH settings.

All good input rewarded with points!

Thanks,
John

[Steven E. Protter]

Just a note:

With Hummingbird 7 terminal settings and environment settings were frequently ignoted.

When I upgraded to version 9, that improved a lot.

So the X Softwre has an impact.

the .gnome files, all three of them are supposed to default to the users home directory.

Some browsers require you to manually set the preferences.

It should however be possible to use the $HOME variable in say the mozilla settings and then replicate the .mozilla files to the user home directories after testing. The user will need write permissions on these files.

SEP

[John Collier]

Steven,

So if I am following you correctly, then the 'root' login would have all of it's settings in the / directory and any other user would have them in their /home/{USER}/ directory. Makes sense to a degree...

Are you saying that the file that I mentioned above will be replicated to each user's home directory and that changing the one in the root WON'T effect each user?

If it's truly that easy, then where would be the best place in that file to place the alias info that I would like to have and where is the existing alias info coming from?

I'm still a bit confused...

[John Collier]

OK,

I have made it through all of the files that were created in the test user home directory now that the GNOMME has been installed and the only thing that I can find that even remotely looks like it should have any impact on user preferences is the '.profile' file.

The issue still remains that even when this file is modified in the test user directory I still can't get the simple things like alias information into the user's login. If I try to modify the path information, then the system drops a core in that user's home directory and I am not even able to log in using the ReflectionX session.

The bottom line would seem to be that I have yet to determine how to modify the user preferences and I could still use some assistance from someone who has more experience with this than I.

Anybody willing to share their wisdom?

Thanks,
John

[Alex Glennie · Accepted solution]

John,

I use my .profileunder gnome and
set my user preferences for the gnome-terminal by opening up a gnome terminal and :

settings->preferences-> general-> Use --login by default

are you saying this does not reflect your aliases etc ?

[John Collier]

Alex,

No, I'm not saying that simply because I have never tried it. To be completely honest, I was unaware of this option. I will check that option in the terminal box and see what (if any) difference that makes on my end.

Since you seem to have more experience with this, can you give me a basic rundown of exactly what checking that box does? Is that how we tell GNOME terminal windows to run through the .profile file and set things accordingly?

Thanks for the input,
John

[Alex Glennie]

Hi John,

my understanding is it provides the same functionality as the *loginShell or -ls options for dtterm etc ... ie yes it might help ie it will force the gnome terminal session to examine the contents of your .profile

[John Collier]

Alex,

Thanks for the explanation. The mystery has now been solved thanks to your insight. You have no idea how much I appreciate that.

Thanks to you, my interaction with M$ on a daily basis will now be extremely limited.

Happy Days!!

John