Re: RedHat 8 - MetaCity + Blue Curve Desktop Menu Customization

[Ross Vandegrift <ross willow seitz com>]

On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 10:52:13PM -0500, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> > Requirements
> > Each end-user will run the same applications and the desktop panel.  
> > End-users cannot change the menus or panel.
> > Remove choices and un-necessary items from the menu.

I've deployed a desktop setup that had similar requirements.  I asked
around on the lists, and googled for a way to manage this and instead
came up with an ad hoc solution.

When a new user is created, I parse a generic Gnome environment setup
that I made beforehand to fill in the data needed for the new user.
adduser.local then installs this Gnome configuration into the newly
created home directory.

An obvious extension of this is to regenerate those configs upon login.
I declined to go this route since our installation consists of exactly
one Gnome desktop, and we're encouraging users to try the cool things it
can do.  But since you're looking to limit the power of the users,
blowing their configuration out and reparsing a new one isn't so rude.

Obviously this is insecure - a clever user could write a login script to
reparse their own set of generic Gnome configs and generate a custom
desktop configuration, but I haven't run across anything like what you
want.  Should you find it, it would make my life easier.

-- 
Ross Vandegrift
ross willow seitz com

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