Customising default GNOME desktop

[.kkursor]

Hello all!
I have a rather specific task. I am making an Ubuntu-based Linux distro which main task is accepting users from Active Directory and providing access to Offtopic Server 2003 terminal servers. AD logons are handled by LikeWise-Open 4.
I have customized default user profile and want it to be spread over all new users who log on the computer. On first logon a folder /home/local/%username% is created, but it is filled with default Ubuntu files and folders. I have googled a lot and found that the folder /etc/skel is used to store default profiles, but it works only with useradd. In my case a user is not actually added to system, therefore useradd is not executed and the default profile is not copied to user's home directory.
Is there a correct way to replace default Ubuntu profile with customized one? I have it in /etc/skel and /home/user.
Thank you!

[Copernicus1234]

In whatever script that creates the user directory you should be able to simply add a copy of the profile template files from /etc/skel, or even better, make a symbolic link to the one in /etc/skel so when you change it, the changes are in effect for all users.

Or am I misunderstanding the problem?

[.kkursor]

Thanks for your reply!
You describe the problem absolutely correctly, but I don't know which scripts create the profile. If I knew, I'd modified them easily. Symlink is not a good idea as each user in my system should have his own workspace.

[.kkursor]

Sabayon is probably the solution, but it fails to run properly with an segfault (Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 with all updates applied).
The resulting system will be given to public, indeed :) we test it inside our enterprise now, we have no pirated offtopics on our computers remaining :) and users didn't notice difference, I think...

[Copernicus1234]

Ok, so you need a global file that gets run for all user logins where you can put the copy command of the profile files?

Try /etc/profile, that will get run for all users if they use bash or sh as a command shell. You should be able to see what user it is from the /etc/profile script by checking the $USER shell variable. It will contain the username and you can use that to copy the profile files to the users home directory.

[.kkursor]

Ok, I see. You mean on every login I should check if the needed directory exists, and, if not, create it and fill it with data? That is a solution, but maybe there is a way to do it once on first login and to avoid it on latter logins?

[Copernicus1234]

I wouldnt check if the home directory exist because it should exist already when /etc/profile is run. You have something creating the home directory already, right? You said it was being created and filled up with files. But you dont know which script is creating it.

I would check if the user specific profile file exists (/home/username/.profile) and if it already exists and is the same size as in the skeleton directory, just skip the copy.

Or you could copy it on every logon, its not like you will notice the performance difference. But all changes to individual profile files will then get lost.

In any case, you can implement whatever way of doing this you like by checking for file/directory existence in combination with the $USER variable in the /etc/profile script. :)

Perhaps you want the GNOME settings to be the same for all users? The above is if you want the Linux profile to be the same for all users, and thats not the same as Gnome settings.

[.kkursor]

Perhaps you want the GNOME settings to be the same for all users? The above is if you want the Linux profile to be the same for all users, and thats not the same as Gnome settings.
No. I want the profile to be customized by default (i.e. company logo as a default wallpaper, default screensaver and taskbar parameters and so on), but physically they should be different for each user. I think that there is a script that creates default directory layout in GNOME upon first login.
Default directory layout of user profile (in Russian):

Сарксян_АДМ@dil1:~$ ls -lah
итого 160K
drwxr-xr-x 27 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 15:51 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:06 ..
drwx------ 3 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:09 .adobe
-rw------- 1 root root 284 2009-08-24 15:51 .bash_history
drwxr-xr-x 3 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:55 .cache
drwxr-xr-x 5 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:55 .config
drwx------ 3 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:07 .dbus
-rw------- 1 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 26 2009-08-24 14:07 .dmrc
-rw------- 1 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 16 2009-08-24 14:07 .esd_auth
drwx------ 4 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:08 .gconf
drwx------ 2 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 15:12 .gconfd
-rw-r--r-- 1 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 76 2009-08-24 14:07 .gconf.path.defaults
-rw-r--r-- 1 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 77 2009-08-24 14:07 .gconf.path.mandatory
drwx------ 2 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:07 .gconf.xml.defaults
drwx------ 2 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:07 .gconf.xml.mandatory
-rw-r----- 1 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 0 2009-08-24 14:07 .gksu.lock
drwx------ 6 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:07 .gnome2
drwx------ 2 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:07 .gnome2_private
drwxr-xr-x 2 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:07 .gstreamer-0.10
drwx------ 2 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:07 .gvfs
-rw------- 1 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 155 2009-08-24 14:07 .ICEauthority
-rw-r--r-- 1 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 68 2009-08-24 14:06 .k5login
drwx------ 3 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:55 .local
drwx------ 3 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:09 .macromedia
drwx------ 4 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:09 .mozilla
drwxr-xr-x 3 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:07 .nautilus
drwx------ 2 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:55 .pulse
-rw------- 1 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 256 2009-08-24 14:07 .pulse-cookie
-rw------- 1 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 870 2009-08-24 14:55 .recently-used.xbel
drwx------ 2 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:17 .tsclient
-rw------- 1 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 115 2009-08-24 14:07 .Xauthority
-rw-r--r-- 1 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 12K 2009-08-24 15:05 .xsession-errors
drwxr-xr-x 2 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:07 Видео (Video - my remark)
drwxr-xr-x 2 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:07 Документы (Documents)
drwxr-xr-x 2 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:07 Картинки (Images)
drwxr-xr-x 2 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:07 Музыка (Music)
drwxr-xr-x 2 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:07 Общедоступная (Shared)
drwxr-xr-x 2 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:07 Рабочий стол (Desktop)
drwxr-xr-x 2 Сарксян_АДМ Пользователи^домена 4,0K 2009-08-24 14:07 Шаблоны (Templates)

If only I knew where is this layout created...
If I don't find any other solution, I'll write scripts as you said... Thank you...

[.kkursor]

Up.
Who can help locate GNOME profile initialization scripts?