customizing Fedora Core 2

[Aaron Bennett]

Hello,

I need to make some customizations to FC 2, ideally at kickstart time. 
What I need to do is:

- change the Gnome theme
- change the browser preferences to use Firefox
- change the default firefox homepage.

Does anyone know what files hold this information?  Not on a per-user
basis, but globally -- where do I change the defaults?

Thanks,

Aaron Bennett
UNIX Administrator,
Olin College

[Féliciano Matias]

Wrong list. Try :
http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list

Le mar 13/07/2004 à 17:19, Aaron Bennett a écrit :
> Hello,
>
> I need to make some customizations to FC 2, ideally at kickstart time. 
> What I need to do is:
> change the Gnome theme
> change the browser preferences to use Firefox
> change the default firefox homepage.
>
> Does anyone know what files hold this information?  Not on a per-user
> basis, but globally -- where do I change the defaults?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Aaron Bennett
> UNIX Administrator,
> Olin College
>
> -- 
> fedora-devel-list mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list

[Féliciano Matias]

Le mar 13/07/2004 à 17:28, Matias Feliciano a écrit :
> Wrong list.

Sorry for the previous post. It's seems you also work for fedora.us (at
least).

[Leonard den Ottolander]

Hi Matias,
> > Wrong list.
>
> Sorry for the previous post. It's seems you also work for fedora.us (at
> least).

Well well. So it's the person not the question that makes whether one is
referred to fedora-list? Class justice that's called  ;) .

Leonard.

[Aaron Bennett]

On Tue, 2004-07-13 at 11:34, Matias Feliciano wrote:
> Le mar 13/07/2004 à 17:28, Matias Feliciano a écrit :
> > Wrong list.
>
> Sorry for the previous post. It's seems you also work for fedora.us (at
> least).

Thank you.  I posted to this list because there are about 300+ messages
per day to fedora-list and, if I posted this question there, I'd get
three replies saying "RTFM NEWBIE," two saying "go to preferences /
preferred applications," one saying "don't change it bluecurve is teh
r0x0r" and one saying "can you help me configure my web server it don't
server my site rite" :-)

So, now that ( a-hem ) my question as been accepted... does anyone know
what text file these defaults live in?

Thanks!

- Aaron

[Rex Dieter]

On Tue, 13 Jul 2004, Aaron Bennett wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I need to make some customizations to FC 2, ideally at kickstart time. 
> What I need to do is:
> change the Gnome theme

If using kde-redhat packages (at least our gtk+/gtk2/redhat-artwork rpms), 
then you have 2 options:
1.  Use themer to set the default kde/gnome theme to one of: 
Bluecurve(default), keramik, galaxy
To change away from the Bluecurve(default), do
apt-get install keramik-default
or
apt-get install galaxy-default

2.  Use /usr/sbin/alternatives to set the default theme(s) manually.  Once 
themer is installed and running,
/usr/sbin/alternatives --display gtk-theme
and/or
/usr/sbin/alternatives --display kde-theme
should give you some pointers.

-- Rex

p.s.  I thought I'd at least ask if there is any possibility of getting 
this "using alternatives to set the system default theme/style" idea into 
Fedora Core.  What say you?  We've been using it now for a couple of years 
in the kde-redhat project, and our implementation is fairly simple and 
robust.

FC3 wishlist: kde-redhat themer (was: customizing Fedora Core 2)

[Axel Thimm]

On Tue, Jul 13, 2004 at 11:08:36AM -0500, Rex Dieter wrote:
> p.s.  I thought I'd at least ask if there is any possibility of getting 
> this "using alternatives to set the system default theme/style" idea into 
> Fedora Core.  What say you?  We've been using it now for a couple of years 
> in the kde-redhat project, and our implementation is fairly simple and 
> robust.

Yes, please, and also the respective packaging of gtk/redhat-artwork
etc (there are some bugzilla entries for these).

[Aaron Bennett]

On Tue, 2004-07-13 at 12:08, Rex Dieter wrote:
> > change the Gnome theme
>
> If using kde-redhat packages (at least our gtk+/gtk2/redhat-artwork rpms),

eek.  I'm using Gnome only.
> p.s.  I thought I'd at least ask if there is any possibility of getting 
> this "using alternatives to set the system default theme/style" idea into 
> Fedora Core.  What say you?  We've been using it now for a couple of years 
> in the kde-redhat project, and our implementation is fairly simple and 
> robust.

I'm all for that.  Is it really true that there's no easy way to change
the default theme without using Rex's kde-redhat packages?

[Rex Dieter]

On Tue, 13 Jul 2004, Aaron Bennett wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-07-13 at 12:08, Rex Dieter wrote:
> > > change the Gnome theme
> >
> > If using kde-redhat packages (at least our gtk+/gtk2/redhat-artwork rpms),
>
> eek.  I'm using Gnome only.

These packages: gtk+,gtk2,redhat-artwork in question are not kde-specific 
at all.
> > p.s.  I thought I'd at least ask if there is any possibility of getting
> > this "using alternatives to set the system default theme/style" idea into
> > Fedora Core.  What say you?  We've been using it now for a couple of years
> > in the kde-redhat project, and our implementation is fairly simple and
> > robust.
>
> I'm all for that.  Is it really true that there's no easy way to change
> the default theme without using Rex's kde-redhat packages?

Not without rebuilding at least the 3 rpms I mentioned.  They have 
redhat-artwork(Bluecurve) hardcoded as the default theme.

-- Rex

[jeff]

Aaron Bennett wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I need to make some customizations to FC 2, ideally at
> kickstart time. What I need to do is:
> change the Gnome theme

I maintain a FC offshoot distro. I have my own "firstboot" which 
switches the theme in a shell script the first time the system 
runs after install. You may be able to put this in a kickstart 
file (excerpt):

# set default theme to blagCanyon
if [ -f /usr/bin/gconftool-2 ] ; then
        echo "Setting default theme"
        gconftool-2 --direct -s --config-source 
xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults \
        -t string /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_theme blagCanyon

gconftool-2 --direct -s --config-source 
xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults \
        -t string /desktop/gnome/interface/icon_theme blagCanyon

gconftool-2 --direct -s --config-source 
xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults \
        -t string /apps/metacity/general/theme blagCanyon

This will change the theme for all new users. Substitue your 
theme name for "blagCanyon" If there is a cleaner way to do 
this, I'm all ears. :)
> change the browser preferences to use Firefox

Take a peak at these values you can set with gconftool-2

/desktop/gnome/applications/browser:
     exec = firefox

I'm not sure if that's the right value or not as I leave mozilla 
default. You'll have to poke around with gconftool-2.
> change the default firefox homepage.

I don't know how to do this without rebuilding firefox.
> Does anyone know what files hold this information?

OMFG. The /etc/gconf has a slew of XML files with this info.  
For a list of all the values, run:
gconftool-2 -R /

Later,

-Jeff

[Panu Matilainen]

On Wed, 2004-07-14 at 03:45, jeff wrote:
> Aaron Bennett wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I need to make some customizations to FC 2, ideally at
> > kickstart time. What I need to do is:
> > change the Gnome theme
>
> I maintain a FC offshoot distro. I have my own "firstboot" which 
> switches the theme in a shell script the first time the system 
> runs after install. You may be able to put this in a kickstart 
> file (excerpt):

Would be nice if there was something like /etc/firstboot.d from which
scripts get executed on first boot, regardless of whether the graphical
firstboot is run. I've my own package to do just that, very much for
reasons like this... (not everything can be done from kickstart %post)

[snip]
> > change the default firefox homepage.
>
> I don't know how to do this without rebuilding firefox.

At least with Mozilla it indeed requires rebuilding, or mucking around
with the .jar files in /usr/lib/mozilla-* which is nothing short of
hideous for such a simple (and I think rather common) thing. And it'd
seem to be the same with Firefox:
/usr/lib/firefox-0.9.1/defaults/pref/firefox.js has this:
pref("browser.startup.homepage","chrome://browser-region/locale/region.properties");

For Mozilla I've been just modifying indexhtml package so that it
redirects to whatever I want to be the default home (but of course
requires Mozilla to be originally built to point to indexhtml contents).
At least it's less time consuming to modify that than rebuild Mozilla
but still aint exactly ideal for something which SHOULD be a trivial 
perl -pi -e "s/some.host/my.host/" /etc/somebrowser/default.conf 
type of operation.

- Panu -

[Pedro Morais]

> Would be nice if there was something like /etc/firstboot.d from which
> scripts get executed on first boot, regardless of whether the graphical
> firstboot is run. I've my own package to do just that, very much for
> reasons like this... (not everything can be done from kickstart %post)

I agree, it would be very useful.
> At least with Mozilla it indeed requires rebuilding, or mucking around
> with the .jar files in /usr/lib/mozilla-* which is nothing short of
> hideous for such a simple (and I think rather common) thing. And it'd
> seem to be the same with Firefox:
> /usr/lib/firefox-0.9.1/defaults/pref/firefox.js has this:
> pref("browser.startup.homepage","chrome://browser-region/locale/region.prop
> erties");

I create a mozilla prefs.js file in /etc/skel/.mozilla/default/<something>.slt
with at least:
user_pref("browser.startup.homepage", "http://the.new.homepage");
I have several other options there, but I think that should do it.

[Jeremy Katz]

On Wed, 2004-07-14 at 12:29 +0300, Panu Matilainen wrote:
> Would be nice if there was something like /etc/firstboot.d from which
> scripts get executed on first boot, regardless of whether the graphical
> firstboot is run. I've my own package to do just that, very much for
> reasons like this... (not everything can be done from kickstart %post)

For the interactive install case, firstboot uses all of the modules
from /usr/share/firstboot/modules.  You could conceivably add a step
that did this if you wanted without too much difficulty.

Note that a) there is now non-graphical firstboot (although it looks
like it has its list of tools hard-coded :/) and b) firstboot doesn't
get run by default with kickstart installs.

Jeremy

[Panu Matilainen]

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-07-14 at 12:29 +0300, Panu Matilainen wrote:
> > Would be nice if there was something like /etc/firstboot.d from which
> > scripts get executed on first boot, regardless of whether the graphical
> > firstboot is run. I've my own package to do just that, very much for
> > reasons like this... (not everything can be done from kickstart %post)
>
> For the interactive install case, firstboot uses all of the modules
> from /usr/share/firstboot/modules.  You could conceivably add a step
> that did this if you wanted without too much difficulty.

Yeah, I know (and have done so :)
> Note that a) there is now non-graphical firstboot (although it looks
> like it has its list of tools hard-coded :/) and b) firstboot doesn't
> get run by default with kickstart installs.

Indeed, and the problem here at hand concerns especially non-interactive
installations. At some point I hacked firstboot initscript to do
"run-parts /etc/firstboot.d" but that gets really silly when you're trying
to avoid the interactive firstboot step: first re-enable firstboot from
kickstart %post to make it run those firstboot.d scripts and then
re-disable firstboot from one of those scripts to prevent the interactive
firstboot to run.

Would be nice if such functionality would be included in the initscripts 
package, afterall it's just a couple of lines of shell script. I can 
make a patch if it has any chance of getting accepted?

- Panu -