Setting default and/or mandatory settings

[Josef Wolf <jw raven inka de>]

Hello,

I would like to set some default/mandatory gconf settings for all users
automatically. I know I can do the settings I need with commands like

  sudo gconftool-2 --direct \
    --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory \
    -t bool false \
    -s /apps/gnome-power-manager/can_hibernate

This would set the configuration for all users, just what I want. The problem
is that the gconftool-2 manpage says that the --direct option requires that
gconfd is not running. This is a big problem for me, since I want to do those
settings automated with a tool like cfengine, so I don't know whether any
users are logged in into the desktop.

Unfortunately, gconfd don't seem to have a manpage and google don't find
any really usable information, too.

So here are my questions:

  - given that /etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory is opened by gconfd readonly,
    is it _really_ needed to shut down any gconfd processes? After all,
    setting defaults/mandatory values is something to be done by the
    administrator. There's no point to mess with such things from a normal
    desktop session. And the administrator should be able to change such
    things without logging into any users session.

  - If the answer to the previous question is "yes": do I need to throw
    the users out from the desktops to shut down gconfd? Or can I simply
    kill the gconfd processes?

  - Once the change is made, how do I restart it? Or can I just let gconfd
    running and force it to flush its cache somehow?