Hello! I do not have answers to all the questions raised, but I can tell what I have done.
First, it seems easier to postpone gnome configuration for the time after first boot. Then all the necessary daemons are running. There was a recent thread on this list on how to run a script at first boot. Still, I have no experience contacting the gsettings daemon when no user is logged on. What I have used is a script which loops over the following command: gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml::/usr/yki/etc/gconf/defaults --set $1 --type $3 $2 where our own configuration source is at /usr/yki/etc/gconf/defaults and the parameter values are $1 for name of the variable (eg "/apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/login_shell"), $2 is the desired value ("true" in my setup for this variable), and $3 is the type ("bool" for this particular variable). Then I additionally enable this source by installing (via cfengine) /etc/gconf/2/local-mandatory.path and /etc/gconf/2/local-defaults.path containing the single line(s) xml:readonly:/usr/yki/etc/gconf/mandatory and xml:readonly:/usr/yki/etc/gconf/defaults respectively. This way our own configuration source is separated from any system-wide one(s), and I can set both default (user overridable) and mandatory (not overridable) keys. If my understanding is correct, the "gconftool-2" configuration mechanism is now deprecated and may be removed in future versions. Thus my advice will probably have little long-term value... I think that the "gsettings" mechanism is the newer one, but as I said before, I have not used it for system-wide setting yet. If you cannot figure out a way to achieve your goals system-wide, you may try to implement a hook in /etc/profile or some equivalent script which is run when users have already logged in. Therein, you can check if the user is running X, and then issue the necessary commands on per-user basis, possibly also recording a flag in order not to repeat this every time. I admit this is a terrible kludge, but with the world around us becoming more and more "interactive" and "user-friendly", we may soon have no other options left. Perhaps others here have better solutions... Toomas On Thu, 2014-06-19 at 16:39 +0200, Marc SCHAEFER wrote: > Hi, > > I just wrote this to debian-user, but maybe there is a standard FAI > way to preconfigure system-wide GNOME3 ? >